On first encounter, Nitrux 3.2 is a moody beast. The default UI is dark, file management windows have black backgrounds and apps are dimmed when they lose focus. Yet somehow, even if you’re not a fan of dark modes (as this writer isn’t), it works.

You can switch between windows for some real showmanship: apps swoop around each other to make space, and where two windows sit side by side, they part to let hidden windows through. The default font is skinny but easy on the eye, and while the launcher is too angular for our tastes, that’s a matter of personal preference.

Where we think it’s less successful is in detaching the windows buttons – close, maximize and minimize – and putting them up in the screen’s top left corner, where they sit on the end of the menu bar. This is, presumably, why apps without focus are dimmed: so you know which one you’re going to close or enlarge when you click them. A side effect is that when switching between a browser and word processor, if you’re referring to the former while writing in the latter, your reference material will frequently change brightness.

Elsewhere, the file manager (called Index) has a grid of quick access buttons for common folders, such as Music, Documents and Pictures – but when they all sport the same icon and there’s no label, as was our experience with the default theme, you have to hover over each one and wait for its name to appear in a tooltip.

If you don’t get on with the default desktop, there are other themes to choose from, including some with more traditional window controls.

The Calamares installer is logical and offers plenty of guidance, such as the requirements for a secure password. Once up and running, you might not recognise a huge number of pre-installed applications other than Firefox, and there’s no office suite ready for use, although LibreOffice is available through the NX Software Center. So are staples such as Thunderbird, GIMP and Inkscape, which are likewise absent. You’ll find placeholders for Steam, Waydroid and Bottles, with the latter two providing layers for Android and Windows apps respectively.

However, it didn’t detect the two printers on our network until we’d entered their IP addresses.

Behind the scenes, this is a Debian-based distribution using the 6.6.2-1 kernel and a modified version of KDE Plasma to render the NX Desktop. There’s a generous selection of desktop widgets, and a configurable button on the dock, which you can use to run scripts or activate an applet.

The root directory is unwritable by default which, says the developer, strengthens security and minimizes points of failure. It should also mean that if an update fails your machine remains bootable. Other security measures have been implemented elsewhere, such as disabling core dumps, implementing strict password expiration and deactivating the root account. There’s a built-in backup tool – Kup – that can be set to kick in after you’ve been using your computer for a set period, which is an unusual and useful option. The X11 display protocol has been dropped in favour of Wayland, providing a shorter and more secure route between application and display.

One happy benefit of the switch to Wayland, which is taking place across most distributions, is a probable speed bump, and certainly Nitrux feels fast in everyday use. This was particularly evident when we were browsing the web, with pages seeming to arrive more quickly on our domestic broadband connection than they do in other Linux distributions or on our Windows box. We suspected that our broadband had been upgraded (and checked), but that wasn’t the case.

There’s a lot of interesting technology in this distribution, and it’s refreshing to encounter such an individual interface. Going down this road is a brave and largely successful move that has garnered significant praise, including when we named it the best Linux distro for new users.

However, with this review written, we’re now looking forward to returning to a more conventional environment.

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A key player in the Zoho software and services empire, ManageEngine offers a wide range of IT management solutions. The OpManager product family delivers network, server and application performance monitoring, and ManageEngine version 12.7 delivers plenty of new features.

There’s a focus on compliance and security, with support for single sign-on using security assertion markup language (SAML) and SNMP 3 with tougher SHA-2 authentication. Root cause analysis (RCA) profiles compare data collected from multiple devices to help with problem remediation, Cisco ACI, IPMI and VPN monitors are present and OpManager integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams for alert notifications.

ManageEngine’s flexible licensing schemes are good value for SMBs as they’re based on devices, not elements or sensors. The OpManager Standard edition costs £195 per year for ten devices and provides availability, interface and SNMP/WMI network monitoring services, with the Professional edition on review adding features such as virtualization host monitoring.

Along with perpetual licenses, they’re also all available as Plus versions that include OpManager’s add-on modules at discounted prices. For example, Professional Plus starts at £983 per year for 50 devices and includes network configuration management (NCM) and NetFlow analysis (NFA), along with firewall and application management.

Whichever edition you choose, you won’t wait long to see it in action: it took us 20 minutes to install it on a Windows Server 2022 host and run an initial scan of the lab’s IP subnet. For device identification and classification, OpManager is a veritable sleuth as it’s endowed with over 11,000 device and 56,000 vendor templates.

It had no trouble figuring out what our lab devices were, correctly identifying all our Windows servers and workstations, routers, switches, NAS appliances, VMware and Hyper-V virtualization hosts and printers. Adaptive alert thresholds are assigned to devices where OpManager uses machine learning algorithms to adjust them for you, and they can be linked to a range of actions using the integral drag-and-drop workflow builder.

The OpManager web console and its multitude of dashboards is capable of presenting a lot of information about your network, with the handy heatmap widget showing a grid of colored blocks representing each device and their status. Detailed custom dashboards are created by choosing from over 200 available widgets, and network operations center views can present support departments with the big picture.

Virtual monitoring is extensive, as OpManager discovered our VMware ESXi and Hyper-V hosts and provided views of system and VM utilization, guest OSes and datastore usage. Add the NetFlow module and you can view all common flows and use the free NetFlow Generator utility to translate raw packets into NetFlow data.

OpManager’s RCA profiles are similar to the SolarWinds NPM PerfStack feature and are just as easy to create. The list of available metrics is very basic, but you can choose devices and monitored items such as CPU and memory usage, add them to your RCA dashboard and view them all on one screen to help identify complex problems.

The Application Performance Management (APM) plugin is a worthy addition as it monitors and reports on a huge range of apps. We used it to check on our AWS account, where it provided details on service availability, EC2 instance and S3 bucket status, plus monthly billing charges and forecasts.

It may take time to get to grips with its myriad components, but ManageEngine’s OpManager is a powerful monitoring solution with a lot to say about your network. The web console is well designed and easily customized to suit, while SMBs will approve of OpManager’s affordable licensing plans.

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Many Debian-based distros, Linux Mint included, use Ubuntu as their jumping-off point. The latest release – 21.2 Victoria – is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and will continue to be supported until 2027. That means it currently uses the 5.15 LTS kernel, but there’s a bleeding-edge edition, aptly called 21.2 Cinnamon Edge, that uses 6.2 should you prefer.

Where many Ubuntu spin-offs stick with Gnome display manager, as used by Ubuntu itself, Mint’s default is Cinnamon. This started as an offshoot from Gnome 2 when version 3 was released. Version 3 was the first to drop support for the panel (taskbar in Windows parlance) in favor of a purer shell, which likewise demoted widgets and jettisoned desktop icons. Cinnamon puts all of these front and center, which is one of the reasons it’s often held up as an ideal distro for anyone switching from Windows. It also has a Windows-like menu, with applications sorted into categories, and essential tools – such as the browser and settings – kept in view up the side. You can pin your most used apps to the panel so they’re never more than a click away.

Cinnamon is certainly a sturdy, tidy interface, but we think it feels a touch old-fashioned when compared directly with Microsoft’s Fluent UI for Windows 11. If it doesn’t immediately grab you, you can tweak the colors, install a theme, or opt for one of the alternative desktop managers, since Mint is also available with Mate or Xfce. And, while it seems highly unlikely that Ubuntu is going to disappear any time soon, the Mint developers are maintaining a parallel build, LMDE – Linux Mint Debian Edition – based on the Debian codebase, from which development can continue.

Whichever build you choose, you’ll need at least 2GB of memory and 20GB of storage, although 4GB and 100GB are recommended. These are hardly onerous, and the same specs apply to the Cinnamon Edge release.

Getting up and running is a familiar process, which starts with booting into a live installer and stepping through the wizard. However, because of changes to Ubuntu’s shim-signed bootloader, compatibility with Secure Boot was broken for the ISO that was current when we performed our tests. We therefore had to disable Secure Boot to proceed and, unless the ISO has been fixed by the time you install, you may have to do the same. Linux Mint says that it’s working on a fix.

Once up and running, pretty much everything was ready for use. Our monitor was recognized and its native resolution selected, our two network printers were installed, and a range of default applications were in place. Three desklets – effectively Windows-style widgets – for a clock, launcher and digital photo frame are installed but not activated. You can add others from a desklet store, where we’d highly recommend the weather desklet and notepad.

LibreOffice was ready to roll, and while we can’t say the same for GIMP and VNC, they were available through the software manager, which was set up to work with Flatpak. Thunderbird was pre-installed for handling mail, and Firefox was set up as the default browser.

Hypnotix, Linux Mint’s bespoke IPTV application, is perhaps the most impressive of all the default apps. Its integrated catalogue includes links to more than 1,200 broadcasters, organized by country, with 92 from the UK. Pick a country, then click a channel in the sidebar to tune in. It was quick, efficient and very smooth on our consumer broadband connection. At the time of testing, it wasn’t possible to save favorites, but that may change as work is ongoing for a future release.

Linux Mint with Cinnamon is a pleasant place to spend a lot of time, and while we don’t think Cinnamon feels as dynamic as Windows 11, its familiarity will likely be a significant draw for more cautious switchers (although we would urge anyone in that position to also consider “new kid on the block” Zorin). Hypnotix and the desklets are the star turns in this distribution, and they’re reason enough on their own to make it one for the shortlist.

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Many Debian-based distros, Linux Mint included, use Ubuntu as their jumping-off point. The latest release – 21.2 Victoria – is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and will continue to be supported until 2027. That means it currently uses the 5.15 LTS kernel, but there’s a bleeding-edge edition, aptly called 21.2 Cinnamon Edge, that uses 6.2 should you prefer.

Where many Ubuntu spin-offs stick with Gnome display manager, as used by Ubuntu itself, Mint’s default is Cinnamon. This started as an offshoot from Gnome 2 when version 3 was released. Version 3 was the first to drop support for the panel (taskbar in Windows parlance) in favor of a purer shell, which likewise demoted widgets and jettisoned desktop icons. Cinnamon puts all of these front and center, which is one of the reasons it’s often held up as an ideal distro for anyone switching from Windows. It also has a Windows-like menu, with applications sorted into categories, and essential tools – such as the browser and settings – kept in view up the side. You can pin your most used apps to the panel so they’re never more than a click away.

Cinnamon is certainly a sturdy, tidy interface, but we think it feels a touch old-fashioned when compared directly with Microsoft’s Fluent UI for Windows 11. If it doesn’t immediately grab you, you can tweak the colors, install a theme, or opt for one of the alternative desktop managers, since Mint is also available with Mate or Xfce. And, while it seems highly unlikely that Ubuntu is going to disappear any time soon, the Mint developers are maintaining a parallel build, LMDE – Linux Mint Debian Edition – based on the Debian codebase, from which development can continue.

Whichever build you choose, you’ll need at least 2GB of memory and 20GB of storage, although 4GB and 100GB are recommended. These are hardly onerous, and the same specs apply to the Cinnamon Edge release.

Getting up and running is a familiar process, which starts with booting into a live installer and stepping through the wizard. However, because of changes to Ubuntu’s shim-signed bootloader, compatibility with Secure Boot was broken for the ISO that was current when we performed our tests. We therefore had to disable Secure Boot to proceed and, unless the ISO has been fixed by the time you install, you may have to do the same. Linux Mint says that it’s working on a fix.

Once up and running, pretty much everything was ready for use. Our monitor was recognized and its native resolution selected, our two network printers were installed, and a range of default applications were in place. Three desklets – effectively Windows-style widgets – for a clock, launcher and digital photo frame are installed but not activated. You can add others from a desklet store, where we’d highly recommend the weather desklet and notepad.

LibreOffice was ready to roll, and while we can’t say the same for GIMP and VNC, they were available through the software manager, which was set up to work with Flatpak. Thunderbird was pre-installed for handling mail, and Firefox was set up as the default browser.

Hypnotix, Linux Mint’s bespoke IPTV application, is perhaps the most impressive of all the default apps. Its integrated catalogue includes links to more than 1,200 broadcasters, organized by country, with 92 from the UK. Pick a country, then click a channel in the sidebar to tune in. It was quick, efficient and very smooth on our consumer broadband connection. At the time of testing, it wasn’t possible to save favorites, but that may change as work is ongoing for a future release.

Linux Mint with Cinnamon is a pleasant place to spend a lot of time, and while we don’t think Cinnamon feels as dynamic as Windows 11, its familiarity will likely be a significant draw for more cautious switchers (although we would urge anyone in that position to also consider “new kid on the block” Zorin). Hypnotix and the desklets are the star turns in this distribution, and they’re reason enough on their own to make it one for the shortlist.

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Jabra’s PanaCast 50 video bar ensures that no-one feels left out, with its triple 13MP 4K camera turret presenting a full 180° horizontal field of view (FoV). What’s more, lurking inside this 650mm wide cylinder is an 8-microphone beamforming array teamed up with pairs of 50mm woofers and 20mm tweeters.

Speaker tracking is a cut above the rest, too, as the PanaCast 50 incorporates no fewer than nine Edge processors, including two Edge AI chips. These allow it to provide integral video analytics, apply always-on people counting and use Jabra’s Virtual Director technology to focus on the active speaker and zero in on them with its automatic 6x digital zoom.

The camera provides a USB-C port for BYOD meetings or connection to a permanent room computer. Jabra also offers two-room system solutions where one partners the camera with its Android-powered touchscreen tablet while another comes with Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Core + Controller devices.

The kit includes a wall-mounting bracket, with the optional aluminum table stand costing £63. We also checked out Jabra’s Bluetooth remote pad (£39), which provides camera and audio controls plus direct access to whiteboard sharing.

We reviewed the model with a grey fabric cover, but Jabra also offers a black version for the same price. Whichever model you choose, you’ll find integral Wi-Fi 5 services plus a 10/100 Ethernet port at the back for remote management using Jabra’s free Xpress web portal.

BYOD installation is easy: you simply connect the camera to a USB port on a Windows or macOS host computer and wait for the drivers to load. It will work happily with any UVC-compliant VC app, but don’t forget to download Jabra’s Direct app otherwise you’ll miss out on a wealth of features.

The app’s camera controller window allows you to play with the image quality, set a zoom level, move the camera view and save two presets that can be accessed from the remote. From the general settings tab, you can control people counting, enable the Virtual Director and turn on the new dynamic composition feature, which puts the four most recent speakers in a split screen.

A large monitor is recommended, since the highest resolution is a very wide 3,840 x 1,080 pixels. The PanaCast’s army of Edge CPUs come into play here as they apply Jabra’s patented video-stitching technology to produce a single image from the three camera feeds.

This works perfectly as we couldn’t see any joins and the cameras deliver a pin-sharp image with great color balance and contrast. Speaker tracking is very responsive, too: we could walk around our meeting room and, even without speaking, the camera followed us while we were moving.

Jabra’s microphone expertise shines through. Remote participants could hear us clearly at a five-metre distance, and the quad speaker combo was just as impressive. Jabra won’t beat Biamp’s 2023 Excellence award-winning Parle VBC 2500 as the PanaCast 50 lacks a little in the bass department, but it delivers a clean and clear sound quality with a 65% volume level quite sufficient for our 24m²meeting room.

Remote monitoring and management are good, with the Xpress portal providing analytics on camera and room usage. “Packages” group camera settings together and, when you install the local Jabra Direct app, just copy a package URL to it.

You can remotely apply settings that override the local app. During room creation, you add a device serial number and apply maximum and safety participant capacities. The camera uses its people-counting skills to provide room usage details and will warn you if the room is over capacity.

This sleek cylinder delivers great video and audio quality, fast speaker tracking and a wealth of advanced features. Jabra’s Xpress web portal offers smart remote management services, and the super-wide view helps make the PanaCast 50 ideal for all-inclusive meetings.

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Fedora Linux is refreshed every six months, with version 39 shipping in November 2023, 20 years (and one day) since the first iteration’s debut. It was originally a spin-off of Red Hat Linux, but the tables have been turned and it now forms the basis of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS Stream.

Of the five versions on offer, we reviewed the desktop build, which sits alongside server, cloud, containerized and IoT editions. Each release receives support for 13 months, with version 40 scheduled to appear in April 2024, and build 39 reaching end of life in November 2024.

Fedora has a free-to-download media creation tool, much like Microsoft’s equivalent for Windows, and the Raspberry Pi imager for the single-board computers. This writes the latest build to a bootable thumb drive. Use this to start up, and you’ll encounter one of the best installers we’ve come across. It’s simple, straightforward and painless.

System requirements are 4GB of memory and a 40GB SSD, although Fedora Project notes that it’s possible to run the OS on less than this.

Our installation featured a slim selection of pre-installed applications, including Firefox 119, Rhythmbox Music Player, Boxes virtual machine environment and the latest edition of LibreOffice – release 7.6. However, we needed to install our own email client, as well as common creativity tools such as GIMP and Inkscape. You can do this through the integrated software tool, where we found 61 updates waiting to be processed on first launch. This isn’t as drastic as it sounds, as many of them were fonts and codecs.

The Flatpak package manager is enabled and, if you prefer to update manually, Fedora uses the DNF package manager for RPM.

Where some distributions are just now managing the transition from the X11 display server technology to Wayland, Fedora began that process several releases back, and release 39 marks the 14th edition since it completed the transition. Wayland’s frequently touted benefits, not just by Fedora but in general, include greater security and better performance.

The default desktop environment is Gnome 45, which isn’t a huge step up from 44. There are some welcome touches, though, such as subtly redesigned window elements, where two-tone colorways and full-height sidebars tidy things up. There’s also an improved workspace indicator in the top left corner. Click it once and you get an overview of your open windows, some of which might otherwise be hidden, alongside a quick way to switch between desktops. It’s useful, but you can achieve the same result by pressing the Super key.

There’s also a new Image Viewer, which Fedora notes has also been rewritten for high performance, while Gnome search has also been reworked with a focus on speed. The improvements don’t only apply in the Files app, but across several core Gnome tools, such as Software and Characters.

If you don’t get on with Gnome, there are several alternative builds – Spins in Fedora parlance – running the lightweight XFCE desktop, KDE Plasma or Cinnamon, among others. Cinnamon, as used by Linux Mint, is often touted by advocates of Windows-to-Linux switching as a reason to choose that distro.

There’s also a handful of immutable deployments, which keep OS code and apps separate, as with Nitrix. By making the core of the OS read-only, it can’t be hijacked by malicious actors or corrupted by a bad or incomplete update. The result is a more secure environment, for use in sensitive workplaces such as finance and government.

Fedora scored 1,105 in our Geekbench single-core test and 3,053 in the multicore section. These figures were broadly similar to what we saw in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based Rocky Linux, which, while slightly lagging in the single-core tests, was around 1.8% faster on the multicore tests. In neither case should it make any noticeable difference in day-to-day use.

With one of the best thought-out installers and a wide choice of desktop environments, there’s much to like about Fedora, which is why it’s our runner-up to Ubuntu. The default installation was minimal, but many will appreciate this, and all the tools you could possibly need are waiting in the software manager.

That Fedora is a primary source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux should fill you with confidence, and the fact it’s available with a variety of desktops will make it immediately familiar, whether switching from Windows or a Debian-based rival.

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Many distributions are available in full-fat and light editions. Zorin and Linux Mint are good examples, each giving a choice of Gnome- or Xfce-based ISOs. Debian with Raspberry Desktop, which closely resembles Raspberry Pi OS, is different. Available for PCs after a decade as the default OS for the eponymous single-board computer, it uses neither Gnome nor Xfce, but PIXEL, the Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight, which itself is based on the lightweight LDXE desktop manager.

Don’t let the “lightweight” moniker put you off. PIXEL sports many features familiar from rival environments, including a menu bar, application menu, desktop icons and context menus. It does lack some frills, though. There are no widgets, as there are in Mint, you can’t snap windows to the edges of the screen for easy arrangement, and it lacks Zorin’s visual flair.

However, it does boot extremely quickly, it has every feature you’re likely to need, and its options and settings are as easy to find as they are to understand.

The operating system’s original name – Raspbian – hint at its Debian roots. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking you were installing stock Debian when working your way through the installer, as there’s no mention of Raspberry Pi to be found.

It’s built on Bullseye (Debian 11) and the Linux 5.10 kernel, both of which are starting to show their age. Debian is currently at 12.2 (Bookworm), on which the regular Raspberry Pi OS for single-board computers is based, and it supports the 6.1 kernel.

Where Raspberry Pi has produced its own imager for setting up Raspberry Pi OS, which also handles user creation, configuring SSH, establishing Wi-Fi credentials and so on, the process for installing Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop is much like that for most other distributions. Download the ISO, write it to a bootable USB drive, and boot the installer from there. Around ten minutes later, we were sitting in front of the desktop, with a full complement of essential applications ready to be used.

The pre-installed office suite is LibreOffice 7.0.4 (the latest is 7.6), Claws is installed to manage mail, and the default web browser is Chromium. Other applications can be installed via the Add/Remove Software tool, or using APT through the Terminal. We opted for the latter to install Firefox and Thunderbird, and in each case it set up version 115. This is particularly welcome where Thunderbird is concerned, as 115 marked a significant interface refresh, which makes the suite a more pleasant environment in which to spend the working day.

Elsewhere, the list of pre-installed apps is a reminder that Raspberry Pi is popular in STEM environments, coding and automation. Both Geany Programmer’s Editor and the excellent Thonny IDE are in evidence, alongside Scratch and Mu. So is the SmartSim circuit designer.

VLC and an image viewer are both pre-installed, but GIMP (for bitmap graphics), Inkscape (vectors) and Shotwell (photos) all need to be installed manually – if you use them. Again, this can be done through the Add/Remove Software utility, but this isn’t as friendly as the equivalent installers in Ubuntu, Mint and co, presenting sometimes extensive lists of options in response to a search, each accompanied by the same default icon. You might occasionally find yourself scratching your head, wondering which you need.

PIXEL includes a Recommended Software tool, which does allow you to sidestep both the software installer and APT for a handful of common applications, but the three mentioned in the previous paragraph are absent. We’d like to see them included in the next refresh.

While we’ve griped about a few aspects of Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop, there’s much to recommend it. It’s extremely fast to boot, the PIXEL interface is refreshingly distraction-free, and it’s compact enough to be a reasonable option for running full-time from a USB thumb drive.

Yes, it’s starting to look outdated in places (note that it was released in July 2022), but Raspberry Pi tells us an update is planned, which is expected, although not guaranteed, to arrive before Easter. In the meantime, if you’re looking to recycle some older hardware as a no-frills workhorse, or want to use the same environment on your single-board computer and desktop, this distro could be just what you’re after.

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AI seems to be everywhere lately, and that includes the world of home networking: D-Link’s latest “smart router” proudly wears its AI credentials on its sleeve. As we’ll see, this is definitely a case where the buzzword oversells the reality, but if the R32 is short on smarts it makes up for that in value. As we went to press, it cost only £73 inc. VAT on Amazon, making it one of the cheapest Wi-Fi 6 routers around.

The Eagle Pro AI R32 is the successor to last year’s Eagle Pro AI R15, which was similarly cheap and looked almost identical. The main difference between the two is what you might guess from the name: the new model is just over twice as fast as the old one, in terms of wireless bandwidth. It supports connections of up to 800Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band, while the 5GHz radio goes up to a maximum speed of 2.4Gbits/sec. There’s also more wired bandwidth available, as the R32 gains an extra Ethernet socket at the back, to make up a full quartet of gigabit LAN ports.

Aside from those sockets there’s not much to see: no USB, no multi-gig connectors and only four LEDs on the front to show you the status of your power, internet and Wi-Fi. But that’s fine – do you really need more?

Getting set up is delightfully simple, via either D-Link’s Eagle Pro AI mobile app or the router’s built-in web management interface. There isn’t a huge amount to configure, but D-Link builds in more features than you might expect from such a cheap device. For example, a basic quality-of-service tool lets you assign different priority levels to individual clients, and you can also enforce internet access schedules and time limits for kids’ devices.

For added security, you can flick a switch to replace your ISP’s default DNS with secure DNS from Google or Cloudflare, offering protection from hijacking attacks. There’s a basic configurable firewall, too, and an unexpected treat is an incoming VPN server, plus integrations with no-ip. com and dyndns.com to provide easy external access to your home network.

If you want to use the R32 as a Wi-Fi extender for an existing network you can alternatively switch it into bridge mode – or use mesh mode to connect two or more units together and spread your wireless signal over a wider area. Remember, though, that beaming mesh traffic back and forth between wireless stations eats into the bandwidth available for your devices, so you’re trading off performance for range.

Finally, let’s not forget the R32’s promised “AI” capabilities. In practice, this simply means the router periodically checks its Wi-Fi channels and tunes its beamforming settings to get the best connection to your clients. These are welcome features, to be sure, but it’s a pretty egregious overreach of the term AI.

Never mind; you’re probably not buying a £73 router in the expectation of a world-class feature suite. The real question is, how does the thing perform? And the answer is very well – at close range. I tested the R32 by hooking up a NAS drive to one of its Ethernet ports, then hawking a laptop around my home and measuring upload and download speeds as I copied a set of 100MB test files to and from the NAS.

Initial findings were very positive. I was delighted to see an average download speed of 85.5MB/sec in the same room as the router, and when I moved downstairs to the living-room I still got a speedy 72.9MB/sec.

Unfortunately, the R32’s four little antennas aren’t beefy enough to keep up that sort of performance all through my home. Speeds fell to 25.8MB/sec in the kitchen and 21.1MB/sec in the bedroom; that’s still ample bandwidth for typical internet tasks – a 4K HDR video stream requires about 4MB/sec – but it’s still a pretty precipitous drop.

Unsurprisingly, the R32 fared worst in the bathroom at the back of the house. Here I could clearly see my file transfers momentarily hang and resume several times during my tests, so while the eventual average download speed of 5.5MB/sec might sound fine for web browsing or cloud syncing, it’s patchy: I’d rather not rely on it for video calls or online gaming.

Does this mean you should steer clear of the R32? It really depends on what you want from a router. Those who need reliable wide-area coverage should consider spending the extra £50 on the Asus RT-AX59U: as well as more stable long-range coverage, it will give you a broader range of software features. However, if you just want basic connectivity across a few rooms, the R32 will fit the bill very nicely – there’s no need to pay more.

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