AVM is an unusual Berlin-based company that focuses on a particular niche and aims to excel at it – home and small business connectivity and communications. Its broadband routers generally offer competitive performance and features you won't find anywhere else. The AVM FRITZ!Box 7690 is a case in point. It takes the latest WiFi 7 standard and adds telephony capabilities. But that's only the headline unique feature in a router that is packed with detailed capabilities.
The AVM FRITZ!Box 7690 is barely distinguishable externally from the AVM FRITZ!Box 7590 that we reviewed nearly seven years ago to the day. But what is inside has been considerably upgraded. It can deliver WiFi 7 up to a theoretical 5,760Mbits/sec at 5GHz and 1,376Mbits/sec at 2.4GHz. You can combine multiple FRITZ!Box devices into a Mesh WiFi system. The
One novel feature, which is shared with the previous model, is support for voice calling. Now that digital-only DSL is being offered without a telephone, this could become increasingly important if you still want a land line number associated with your physical location. This comes in the form of a built-in DECT base station for up to six cordless phones and jacks for analog wired ones. But the 7690 also now supports Zigbee, a wireless standard for controlling smart home devices such as lightbulbs, roller blinds, temperature and motion sensors, smart plugs, and switches. The Matter wireless smart home standard isn't supported yet, but will be soon via a firmware update.
In other words, this is more than just a router – it's meant to be the hub of your smart home and domestic communications at all levels. To achieve this, it's bristling with different connections. There's an ADSL modem built in, plus a 2.5Gbit Ethernet WAN port and a three-port LAN hub with one 2.5Gbit and two 1Gbit ports. There are also two RJ11 ports for connecting analog telephones, and a German TAE phone port on the side. The other side hosts a USB 2.0 port for storage media and dongles.
Despite the plethora of features, the AVM
Let's find out if this new WiFi 7 iteration lives up to AVM's reputation for solid, feature-rich connectivity devices.The AVM £329.84 inc VAT.
is available from Amazon UK forSpecification:
- Wireless protocols: MU-MIMO with 802.11b/g/n/be 2.4GHz, 802.11a/n/ac/ax/be 5GHz
- Performance: BE7100 (5,760 + 1,376 Mbits/sec)
- Antenna Configuration: 4×4 internal antennas
- Ports: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x 2.5Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x 2.5Gigabit Ethernet WAN, 1 x ADSL, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x TAE phone, 2 x RJ11 phone
- Modem Support: VDSL/ADSL 2+ or cable