Solwise NET-3G-A10 3G router review

Data on the move is increasingly important to business users. With each passing week it seems there's something else that needs to be online all the time to help you get your job done.

To keep data simple, buying a 3G router like this Solwise NET-3G-A10 means you only need one data-enabled SIM, and everything can use it. This is handy if you have a laptop, tablet and smartphone which would usually each need a data plan.

For £80, this device offers you a 3G router that can create an 802.11n hotspot for up to 20 devices.

Design
The Solwise A10 is a little larger than an average business card. Its depth is more substantial, but it's only the same as our Motorola Milestone 2, so nothing too worrying. It's diminutive size is an advantage too, as we did criticise Solwise's other recent 3G router, the 3G-183n, for being a little on the large size.

However, the smaller size removes some of the useful features of the wired network fallback, and the battery life is also reduced.

On the front are some illuminated symbols. There's a power indicator, battery light and three icons that give details about the connection to the internet and signal strength.

Construction
Built from plastic, the A10 is light and comfortable to carry in your pocket. That said, however, the plastic does feel a little cheap. This problem is worst when you remove the rear battery cover. Putting this back on feels as if it might snap, or at least lose some of the plastic clips that hold it in place.

We also didn't feel that the back really fitted all that securely, and we did worry that it would come off when we were carrying it around in our bag. However, that never happened, and the back didn't prove to be a problem at all during real-world testing. Nor did the overall quality cause us any problems.

The SIM card socket is a slightly odd system, though. It's accessible from the outside of the device, but to remove the card you have to open the back, take out the battery and push it out. This works fine, of course, but it's a little bit odd. Other devices have a mechanism to spring-load the SIM card socket and make removing or inserting it a little bit easier.

Configuration
By far the most impressive part of the A10 is the web configuration system. To get the device up and running, you simply power in on, and it will create an open Wi-Fi hotspot which allows you to start the configuration process.

WEP and WPA security options are available, and you can configure your pass-phrase from the intuitive web page.

As with most routers, you can configure pretty much every major option too. So DHCP address ranges can be user-defined, you can restrict the clients that can access the device with MAC level filtering, and there's the option to put one machine into a de-militarised zone.

If you're looking for a more controlled way to allow external services access to certain ports on specific machines, there's also a 'virtual server' option. You can have up to 32 entries here, which should be more than enough on a portable device like this.

While a lot of these options are probably overkill on a 3G router, it's always nice to have choice and control, so we're pleased to see them here.