Is upgrading your basic broadband router worth the money?

BT routers can be found in millions of homes across the UK, and have been through numerous iterations. The BT Home Hubs went up to version 5, and then the Smart Hubs superseded them. The original Smart Hub we have here began shipping around 2017, and the second version arrived a couple of years later.

In other words, if you signed up for BT Internet around five years ago or more, there's a good chance it came with this device. The BT Smart Hub is the company's sixth generation router, and arrived with the claim that it could cover an entire house like none of its competitors at the time.

The BT Smart Hub's box is very thin, and so is the router inside. It's designed to fit through a letter box so you don't have to be in when it's delivered in the mail. Apart from the device itself and its external power supply, plus some documentation, there's nothing else included. So you will need to add your own Ethernet cable to hook up any wired LAN devices. However, you don't need a LAN cable for broadband, as the ADSL modem is built into this router.

The router is designed to sit upright. Two feet pop out on springs as soon as you take it out of the box. But this is still a relatively unobtrusive device.

The BT Smart Hub is meant to work with BT Broadband only, so its built-in ADSL modem connects directly to your phone line via RJ-11 rather than having any kind of separate modem in between with an Ethernet connection. It therefore won't work with cable broadband.

Otherwise, it has four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB 3.0 connection. So you can connect the same number of wired Ethernet and USB devices as the MSI RadiX routers.

Specification:

Wireless protocols: MU-MIMO with 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz and 802.11a/n/ac 5GHz
Performance: Not stated
Antenna Configuration: 4×4 plus 3×3 Internal Antennas
Ports: 4 x Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, RJ-11
Modem Support: VDSL/ADSL 2+ built in

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