Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System Review

While the Securifi Almond isn’t the best Wi-Fi extender on the market, it’s the best Wi-Fi extender for a medium home for the price. This is because the range is enough to cover a medium home and the touchscreen makes the booster extremely easy to set up and use. If you have smart devices, this is a great option to be the hub of wireless activity.

The Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System is the first single-band router I have seen in a while. This is mostly because most new wireless routers, including budget ones, are now dual-band. But the Securifi Almond has its own unique feature as it’s the first compact router on the market that can be managed entirely via its touch screen.

Securifi specializes in creating multifaceted routers designed to be easy to use and easy to set up. The company wants its products to be the hub of your smart home, and this is evident in the touchscreen of the Securifi Almond. The Almond is simultaneously a Wi-Fi range extender, network access point, wireless bridge and a regular router.

It doesn’t provide a huge extended range, which is why it’s ideal for a medium-sized home with dead zones. However, when you combine the usability and versatility, it’s an excellent WiFi booster for your home. If you’re just looking for a compact, simple router for your small apartment or flower shop, the Securifi Almond will make a good investment.

Video – Securifi Almond Review: Touch Screen Wireless N Router + Range Extender

Securifi Almond Review: Touch Screen Wireless N Router + Range Extender

Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System Features

• 95% of customers Set It Up 3 Minutes using Touchscreen Wizard. No PC/Mac/CD needed for Setup or Management.
• World’s 1st Touchscreen Router.
• Multi Purpose Usage: Use as primary WiFi Router or Range Extender or Access Point or Wireless Bridge – No built-in DSL modem.
• Universal Range Extender Mode: Compatible with any existing router (eg: Netgear, Linksys, Belkin etc.); COMPATIBLE WITH PC, Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, XBOX.
• 1 Year Limited Warranty and Unlimited Technical Support.

Our Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System Review

What makes this Securifi Almond Wi-Fi booster relatively unique is the 2.8-inch touchscreen. This may seem like an odd addition to a Router Wi-Fi extender, but it enables you to make changes to the Almond’s settings on the device itself. You won’t need to use your computer to enter an IP address or anything.

This is a major advantage for many people who aren’t tech savvy. Let’s face it – wireless technology is complicated. It can be difficult to set up a wireless router, to understand things like IP addresses and wireless channels. By adding a simple touchscreen with an intuitive interface, you don’t have to lean on your IT relative to set it up for you. Getting your home network up and running shouldn’t be limited to those who have knowledge of networking technologies.

Securifi Almond Design

The Securifi Almond doesn’t look like a router at all, but rather a digital alarm clock, due to its compact size and its, well, alarm clock type of shape. On one side, it has one WAN port (to connect to an Internet source, such as a broadband modem) and two LAN ports (for wired clients). All of these ports are regular Ethernet (10/100) and not Gigabit. This means you can’t expect a fast-wired network out of the router. Under these ports are a recessed reset button and the power connector.

On the front the router has a large, for its tiny size, LCD screen that resembles the Metro interface of Windows 8, with buttons organized as tiles. This is the Almond’s distinctive feature. Using these tiles, you can change all the basic settings of the router, such as its Wi-Fi network, Wi-Fi Protected Setup, whether it works as a wireless router or as a Wi-Fi extender, upgrading its firmware, and so on. Basically, you can configure your network without using a connected computer at all, making it very convenient to use. I did notice, though, that the Almond needs to restart to apply almost every single change, each time taking some 45 seconds. Still in the end, it took me just a few minutes to set it up.

You can’t get everything done via the touch screen. For example, if you want to change the settings of port forwarding, firewall, content filtering, and so on, basically all the advanced settings of a router, you’ll need to use the Almond’s Web interface. To do this, from a connected computer point a browser to the router’s default IP address, which is 10.10.10.254. The default log-in info is admin for both username and password or you can set these to what you like via the touch screen.

The Web interface also has a Metro-type interface: well-organized and self-explanatory. I did find it rather buggy, however. For one, it doesn’t work very well with Firefox. For example, when I used Firefox to add a URL to the list of filtered Web sites, the process seemed to stop midway with the browser showing a blank page. Using Internet Explorer (IE) this went through easily. Even with IE, I noticed that if I re-entered a URL that was already on the block list, the interface would create anther entry for that. It would also take entries that has no value. While this is not a big deal, and the blocking mechanism worked in my testing, it gives the impression that the interface is still in beta state.

There are a few other oddities like that here and there in the interface but what baffled me the most is the fact that the Web interface offers the option to make the router work in either the 5GHz or 2.4GHz band, as if it were a selectable dual-band router. In fact, the router is just a single-band router that works only in the 2.4GHz band.

Also, while the Almond offers the type of advanced features commonly found in most routers, it doesn’t seem to support IPv6. Hopefully this will be added via a firmware update since IPv6, which is to replace the existing IPv4 that’s running out of addressing space, is being officially used by many Web sites.

As mentioned above, setting up the Almond is easy thanks to its LCD. But if that seems difficult, the router comes configured with a main Wi-Fi network and a Guest Wi-Fi network, the settings of which you can see by tapping on the Wireless tile button of the touch screen. And that’s all you need to get connected. The router supports a maximum of 50 Wi-Fi clients.

Securifi Almond Performance

Considering the Almond’s small size, I didn’t expect much from the router in terms of performance and it indeed didn’t impress. It wasn’t bad either, scoring about 50Mbps in the close-range (15 feet) throughput test. When I increased the distance to 100 feet it now registered only about 17Mbps.

And 100 feet is about as far as you want to use the router. I saw where one other reviewer tested it at their office where there are many other Wi-Fi devices that might interfere, and the router’s range was just about 150 feet. This reviewer also put the Almond through a 24-hour stress test and said that during this time it didn’t disconnect once.

The Almond worked well as an extender but since its range is rather limited, it didn’t offer much extended range in my trials. Also, since it doesn’t support the 5GHz band, clients connected to its extended-range network should expect much slower data rates and more lag, than when connected to the original network.

What Securifi Almond WiFi Wireless Router Customers Say

“The problem I had in my home was that WiFi was not able to reach all the rooms in my house; which happens to be 1255sf ranch style block home. Since my brother-in-law is an IT tech, he advised me to get an extender to assist with full coverage. I read the reviews on this product and was impressed and relieved that my search came to an end. I really like the touch screen and colorful display. Not a hard product to set up and works like a charm. I gave it 5 stars because it actually did what it was supposed to do.” …. Read More

Video – Securifi Almond Touch Screen Router: Unboxing & Review

Securifi Almond Touch Screen Router: Unboxing & Review

Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System Review Verdict

While the Securifi Almond Smart Home Touchscreen WiFi Wireless System isn’t the best Wi-Fi extender on the market, it’s the best Wi-Fi extender for a medium home for the price. This is because the range is enough to cover a medium home and the touchscreen makes the booster extremely easy to set up and use. If you have smart devices, this is a great option to be the hub of wireless activity.

Video – Securifi Almond Range Extender Demo

Securifi Almond Range Extender Demo