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INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

avm fritz box 3490a

   With this year's CES almost over the time has come for us to sit down and think about all the new devices and technologies we saw from virtually every single section/area in the electronics industry/market. Unfortunately however although 2016 will see several innovations in home automation and connectivity once again most network hardware manufacturers have "missed" the opportunity to introduce new DSL modem/router models in order to cover most consumers out there so at the end of the day even though we witnessed the unveiling of well over a dozen state of the art standalone routers (could be more that's all i recall however) there were less than half as many modem/routers present. Fortunately there are several modem/router models which we've yet to get our hands on including the latest FRITZ!Box 3490 AC1750 Gigabit Modem Router by AVM which has been with us for two weeks now.


   AVM offers a wide range of products for high-speed broadband connectivity and smart home networking. With the FRITZ! product family, AVM is a leading manufacturer of broadband devices for ADSL, cable, and LTE as well as Smart Home products for wireless LAN, DECT, and Powerline in Germany and Europe. The FRITZ!Box is the best known brand for wireless routers in Germany. In 2014 the communications specialist had 500 employees and generated a turnover of 340 million euros. Founded in Berlin in 1986, from the outset the company has focused on developing its own secure, innovative products for broadband connections. FRITZ! stands for fast Internet, the networked home and convenient telephony. Millions of satisfied customers and hundreds of award-winning products confirm AVM’s commitment to high-quality FRITZ! products and first-class customer service.


   Some of you may recall our review of the FRITZ!Box 7490 a while back which ended with very positive results and us hoping to see a replacement with even faster Wi-Fi connectivity. Well the FRITZ!Box 3490 is not that since it's basically a cut-down version of the FRITZ!Box 7490 that gets shipped without the somewhat secondary (and not so important to many) DECT base station and fixed-line telephony features. However it still packs a VDSL2/ADSL2 modem (up to 100Mbit with VDSL support for vectoring), dual-band AC1750 Wi-Fi (5GHz 1300Mbps 802.11ac and 2.4GHz 450Mbps 802.11n), 4 Gigabit LAN ports and 2 USB 3.0 ports. Under the hood of the FRITZ!Box 3490 AVM has placed a 6-band DSL System-on-Chip (SoC) by Lantiq (XWAY™ VRX288), 3-stream 802.11ac radio solution by Qualcomm Atheros (QCA9880), 6 high-gain antennas, 512MB flash memory (Toshiba in our sample) and two Winbond RAM modules (W971GG8KB-25/256MB total). With everything out of the way the time has come for us to check and see just how good (or bad) the FRITZ!Box 3490 really is.

 


 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

featspecs


 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The box of the FRITZ! Box 3490 has a large product picture at the front right next to the main product features.

 

 

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The features are also printed on the left side and on the right we see the SNR and MAC address of the device.

 

 

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Moving at the rear of the box we find the features list printed in 6 languages right above a product picture used to showcase the various connectors.

 

 

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Once again everything inside the box is placed inside several pieces of cardboard.

 

 

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Along with the FRITZ! Box 3490 you are also getting the power adapter, 1.5m long Ethernet cable, 4m long DSL connecting cable, quick guide, warranty information paper and a product catalog.

 


 

THE FRITZ! BOX 3490

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Just like the 7490 the 3490 follows the same exact "Thunderbirds" design so again we see a 245mm wide, 175mm long and 55mm tall hard plastic enclosure.

 

 

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The FRITZ!Box 3490 is a medium-sized device and to showcase that we placed it right next to the D6300 modem/router by Netgear.

 

 

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Again just like the 7490 the 3490 also has 5 large activity LEDs at the front indicating the power, LAN and wireless status, DSL connection status and finally an info LED which can be adjusted to light up on various "alarms".

 

 

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The WPS and WLAN buttons are both placed at the top of the device right next to the left internal Antennas.

 

 

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A USB 3.0 port is placed on the left side of the FRITZ! Box 3490.

 

 

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At the rear of the device we see the DSL port (used with the 4mm long connecting cable), 4 gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, USB 3.0 port and the power port (unfortunately again like the 7490 the 3490 lacks a dedicated WAN port and an on/off button).

 

 

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Most of the base is also perforated and as you can see the device can also be mounted onto a wall.

 


 

SETUP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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After you follow the installation instructions described in the long paper inside the box you will just need to launch your Internet browser to start the setup procedure and choose your language (if that doesn't work automatically then go to http://fritz.box or 192.168.178.1).

 

 

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The setup procedure asks you to choose your region (plenty included in the setup UI), annex mode (A or B), choose the ISP type and also assign a password.

 

 

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Finally the wizard will ask you to choose the type of connection (DSL or Cable) after which it will take a couple of minutes to check your settings and verify the internet connection (some consider this setup procedure to be hard but i just can't see the why).

 


 

FRITZ!OS 6.30 PART 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The GUI is the same used for a while now by AVM so once again the first screen is the overview screen which includes various details about the device including the current power consumption, status of connections, available interfaces and a list of all of the devices currently connected. By default the FRITZ! OS (web GUI) is set on standard view (lower end of the screen) but if you want the full experience i strongly suggest using advanced mode (used for our reviews).

 

 

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Through the Internet drop down menu you can check the utilization of your internet connection (there are a couple of nice graphs in the DSL information tab) and the amount of data send and received, setup your connection (IPv6 is supported), set individual parental filters for all connected devices, enable/disable access to the device from anywhere in the world via HTTPS and finally you can monitor your DSL connection from the most detailed information page I’ve ever seen used in a modem/router (along with the 7490 that is).

 


 

FRITZ!OS 6.30 PART 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Next on the list is the Home Network drop-down menu and from here you can once again see which devices are connected to the device (both wired and wirelessly), adjust some network settings including the guest access (perhaps the most important is to enable gigabit connectivity to all 4 ports if you need them since by default only the first is), enable/disable the onboard memory of the FRITZ!NAS function (you can also configure an external HDD if connected to one of the two USB 3.0 ports) and setup the media server feature.

 

 

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The WLAN drop-down menu is self-explained really so here you can setup the two bands (2.4/5GHz), check and see which devices are connected and how to the FRITZ!Box 3490 (wirelessly), monitor the wireless environment to see if something is interfering with the signal, configure the encryption, schedule when you want WiFi to be on and when not, create a guest WiFi access mode and change the operating mode of the unit (access point or repeater).

 

 

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Via the diagnostics page you can run quick diagnostics on both the unit and its security settings.

 

 

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Checking the event logs, unit power consumption, adjusting the use of the two buttons at the top and the activity LEDs, performing OS updates, acking up all your settings and accessing the NAS function are things you can also do through the System drop-down menu.

 


 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   To sufficiently test modem/routers we had to change our methodology quite a bit since we decided to make use of the online internet speed measurement application called SpeedTest (we use it with two different destinations/servers). SpeedTest may not be the most "accurate" way to test internet connection speeds since variables change all the time from our ISP to the ISPs of the servers SpeedTest makes use of but the same can be said for every single way one can test internet speed. Bottom line whatever the results always remember that they may not be 100% on the spot. To somehow "help" our results we also record the connected downstream/upstream values each modem/router is able to get into our charts (reboot the modem/router 6 times to get the average upstream/downstream value).


   The rest of our testing methodology involves testing the wireless capabilities of the modem/router at hand and thus it's the exact same we use when testing standalone routers. So once again we will be using the networking benchmark by Passmark (v.8), the QCheck by Ixia and ATTO 2.47 (since April 2015) to test the bandwidth of the highest available wireless standard/band (5GHz in this case). Our systems are placed 15m away from the router with 3 concrete walls between them while each test (including the ones above) is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average scores are recorded into our charts. Both systems have Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 installed with all the updates until the 5th of January 2016. 

TEST RESULTS

attoconnectionnetworktestqcheckspeedtest


 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

avm fritz box 3490b

   The FRITZ!Box 7490 AC1750 modem router may not have been the fastest AC model to ever make it through our lab but it’s overall performance coupled with its features and extensive web interface were more than enough for us to like it. Personally however I could certainly do without the DECT and fixed telephony features so I was hoping AVM would release a version without them which would also be quite cheaper. Well the FRITZ!Box 3490 is exactly that and thus it retains pretty much the same performance with the same features (minus the above) and the same extensive web interface which many people seem to consider as too advanced and hard to use (not us). I admit that AVM has gone into tremendous lengths to design and offer the most “thorough” web interface we’ve seen with a modem/router to date but I don’t think having more capabilities is ever a bad thing. Wi-Fi performance is also quite good and on par with most current models (from the ones we’ve reviewed anyways) so unless you use many portable devices and need the extra punch offered by larger AC number models I think you will have nothing to complain about.


   AVM is an EU based manufacturer which at least for now has decided to cater to the needs of its EU customers so unfortunately their products are not available in the USA. You can however currently find the international version of the FRITZ!Box 3490 AC1750 Gigabit Modem Router for 145.89Euros (Amazon.de) a price tag which is actually a lot better than we had initially expected (at launch that price was set at around 170Euros). Sure you’ll miss out on the DECT and fixed line features found in the more expensive 7490 model but that aside you’re basically getting the same high-performance and feature-rich modem/router which is why it gets our Golden Award.

goldPROS


- Overall Build Quality
- Wireless Performance)
- AC1750 Technology (Concurrent 802.11n & 802.11ac)
- Compatible With All Line Types (Annex A/B)
- Available Features (Repeater/NAS Server/Media Server)
- Overwhelming Number Of Settings
- Android & iOS App
- 4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 2 USB 3.0 Ports
- 5 Year Warranty
- Price (For Some)

 

CONS


- No Dedicated WAN Port (LAN 1 can be used for that)