Keenetic Viva KN-1910 router review: middle class

Based on the prices presented on the developer’s website, the difference between Viva and Giga is $20: 8,190 (yes, the price has increased over the year) and 6,590. In fact, it can be less than a thousand. So if you are already going to upgrade the router, then maybe it makes sense to take Giga right away, because the difference is not so big. In any case, for large cities, for sure. But Viva may be preferred for other reasons as well. For example, it is much more compact than the Giga/Ultra — 159 × 110 × 29 mm versus 214 × 154 × 33 mm — and about half as light. True, it heats up a little more because of the different shape of the case. The dimensions are reduced due to the rejection of the SFP port and the transfer of one USB connector: now they are on opposite side faces. However, the general style of the case design remained the same. Viva’s bundled power supply is different, slightly more compact and less powerful (18 W).

This is where the external differences from Giga end. As for the differences in hardware bases, they are also few — and not all of them are significant. First, both Viva USB ports are now version 2.0. Secondly, the amount of RAM is half as much — 128 MB. In practice, this does not particularly affect the basic functionality of the router, but for some additional applications it may already be important. In particular, this may concern the download manager or multimedia. Well, or especially RAM-hungry programs from opkg. However, for most of them, you already need to connect an external USB drive, and you can organize a paging file on it.

Thirdly, Viva lacks separate amplifiers for Wi-Fi radios. And this is perhaps the most significant difference from Giga. How exactly this will affect the operation of the wireless network depends largely on the state of the radio, but in general, you can, for example, count on less coverage. Otherwise, the hardware is the same as that of the Giga: a dual-core SoC MediaTek MT7621A, a Wi-Fi module MT7615D, 128 MB of Flash memory. The firmware capabilities are similar — second-generation NDMS is used everywhere (now it is called Keenetic OS), the functions of which are available in full. The firmware was discussed in both the Giga review and the Ultra review, so we will not repeat ourselves here. Viva was tested with the current version of NDMS — 2.14.

However, there is nothing special to test here. Obviously, USB drives will work slower due to the port limitation with version 2.0: the description claims speeds up to 40 MB / s. The permanent bench drive Kingston SSDNow V+200 with one NTFS partition, packed in an external box LanShuo INIC-3609, showed exactly these figures. Either via FTP or SMB, you can get a little more than 40 MB / s when reading and a little less than 40 when writing. The performance of WAN connections is good: the speed of multi-threaded downloads from the Web exceeds 900 Mbps for all types of connections. The obvious exception is PPTP with MPPE128 encryption, where you can count on 100-120 Mbps.

With Wi-Fi, the situation is more interesting. The basic settings are the same, that is, WPA2 encryption, 802.11n + channel width 20/40 MHz for 2.4 GHz, 802.11n/ac + 20/40/80 MHz width for 5 GHz, all basic MU-MIMO/ Beamforming/256-QAM/TxBurst enabled if available. Stand configurations are the same. First machine: Intel Core i7-3770, 16 GB RAM, ASUS PCE-AC88 based on Broadcom 4366 chipset, Realtek RTL8168, Windows 7 SP1 x64. Second: Intel Xeon D-1540, 32 GB ECC RAM, 2 × Intel I210 (indicated as R in the table), 2 × Intel I350, Devuan Jessie. In general, the test conditions are the same as always. With time, only the state of the surrounding ether changes. The number of visible neighbor access points is not exactly growing rapidly, but the important thing is that more and more of them are moving into the 5 GHz band. Because of this, in particular, it was necessary to forcibly select the 64th channel — only because it was farther from third-party APs.

The router itself (indicated as R in the table), when auto-selecting a channel, stably went to the upper part of the range (beyond the hundredth channel), and it is not really available for the ASUS PCE-AC88 adapter (in table A). The adapter and Viva were in direct line of sight from each other at a distance of four meters. There are no significant differences between Giga and Viva in both ranges. At 5 GHz, the novelty turned out to be even faster in peaks. But at 2.4 GHz with Viva, the coveted “clean” speed of 400 Mbps was much less visible, and much more often the connection went to 200 Mbps, no matter how you sort through the channels. And Giga, in turn, did not allow itself such liberties and gave, if not 400, then 300 Mbps.

Conclusion

We repeat that Keenetic Viva is still the same Giga model, only a little simpler and more affordable. If you don’t need an optical interface and a USB 3.0 port, you don’t plan to launch any third-party applications that are especially hungry for RAM, and compactness is important, then choosing between Viva and Giga, you can safely buy the first model. If all this is needed or if the difference in price and size is not significant for you, then it is better to prefer the second, older one. After all, not for a couple of months buying. As for Wi-Fi amplifiers, there is another question — does everyone need them. But! All these thoughts make sense only now, because prices will change: Giga has been on the market for a year, and Viva has just come out — and, most likely, will drop some pretty soon.

What else can be added? Yes, in general, nothing special. Both Giga and Viva will receive firmware updates until December 2022. Both have the same 4 year warranty: 3 + 1 upon product registration. In principle, there will be no more special choice among gigabit routers for fans of the brand in the near future — forces are thrown into the development of xDSL for foreign markets and LTE. The next generation of older Giga and Ultra is worth waiting for at the end of 2019, and the younger Extra and Air will also be updated at the same time. And we are not talking about the heir to the current Viva at all.