Linksys Wireless-G WRT54GS

Lightning fast, as long as there aren't any walls in your house...

Being able to surf the Web from your garden is one of the big bonuses of Wi-Fi, but the downside is the limited network speed. However, Linksys reckons its new SpeedBooster technology, as used in this router, delivers a performance increase of about 35 per cent over rivals' 802.11g kit.

The device is very easy to set up, thanks to an intuitive Web interface, but more importantly, it did prove speedy in our tests, outperforming our existing 802.11g set-up by around 30-40 per cent on large file transfers. Disappointingly, the further our laptop was from the unit, the less of a boost we experienced. So if there are lots of walls between your client PCs and the router, you may not experience much of an increase at all.