AVM continue their expansion into the UK with a companion product to their brilliant FRITZ!Box routers that can also be used with any router on the market. The FRITZ!Repeater 3000 is a wireless LAN repeater (wLAN) that can be used to boost your home WiFi signal and eliminate any weak signal issues you’re experiencing.
It’s a nice looking device, following the same style as the FRITZ!Box 7530 it is mostly white with red highlights. A single button sits on the front along with some feedback lights. Around the back you get 2 x gigabit LAN ports, the power plugs in underneath the device. It’s not a small unit, it looks like a small router and will require a small area to sit on, unlike powerline adapters which typically just need a plug socket as space.
The box proudly claims a simple 3 step setup…and it was exactly as simple as it said! Power it on, press the connect button on the front of the FRITZ!Repeater 3000 and then press WPS on my router, a Virgin Media Superhub 3. The process took less than 5 minutes, I didn’t need to log in to any web panels or enter any passwords, it just worked.
Once set up you’ll need to find a good position, you want to place this where the existing WiFi signal is OK rather than non-existent. The repeater takes your existing signal and boosts it so it is stronger and can reach further.
I’ve tried this in two locations: inside my house in a bedroom and in an outside cabin and the results were impressive in both locations.
| Location | Suberhub Speed | Fritz!Repeater Speed |
| House | 70.1 Mbps down / 17.5 Mbps up | 215 Mbps down / 20.8 Mbps up |
| Cabin | 12.6 Mbps down / 15 Mbps up | 43.8 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up |
A great result for the FRITZ!Repeater 3000 which delivered faster speeds in both locations, in the house giving me the full potential download and upload speeds possible from my Virgin Media connection and the cabin got a very nice boost as well.
The cabin result was especially surprising given the low WiFi signal it has to work with from the Superhub 3. In such locations, I’d recommend the Devolo Magic 2 powerline adaptors which aren’t reliant on an existing WiFi signal and so can provide even higher download speeds.
If you own a FRITZ!Box there are extra benefits, for a start, this will work with the inbuilt mesh networking technology. It will also synch any relevant settings, for example, if you have a guest network set up or a WiFi schedule, you don’t need to set these up again.
If you don’t have a FRITZ!Box but would like to take advantage of schedules and guest networks you can do so by logging in to the web interface powered by the excellent FRITZ!OS. It’s a cut-back version compared to the routers as this device doesn’t have the same features, even so there is a lot of information and options available to you.
The results speak for themselves, the FRITZ!Repeater 3000 easily doubled my WiFi connection speed. The setup process makes this simple to set up, once it’s in position you can forget about it and enjoy fast WiFi around your home.
