I tested this secure router and the bundled year of VPN service feels mostly like a marketing exercise

Privacy Hero II: 30-second review

Flashrouters is a Canadian business specialising in wireless routers with enhanced security features.

The Privacy Hero 2 (or II) is the second in a series of entry-level wireless routers built to provide easy-to-deploy VPN technology out of the box. It comes with a free year of Privacy Hero Wireguard VPN subscription ($9.99 a month after), but it can also offer a year of NordVPN Basic VPN and an additional subscription discount.

It can be used with any Wireguard-compliant VPN, enabling a simple point-to-point VPN between locations.

However, this isn’t specifically a business product. The wireless part of this equation is only Wi-Fi 6 (not 6e or 7), it doesn’t support Enterprise level security, or Mesh technology, and there is no means to collectively cloud-manage these devices.

The main things the Privacy Hero 2 has going for it are that for about $180, it’s not excessively expensive, and for a non-technical person, VPN or regional spoofing can be up and running quickly.

However, it’s unlikely to be seen as a strategic purchase by professional IT people, and as a wireless router, it’s unlikely to make our best business router collection.

Privacy Hero II: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? $179.99
• When is it out? It is available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from FlashRouters

The Privacy Hero II is available directly from the makers, FlashRouters, for $179.99 plus shipping. For most destinations, including the USA, shipping is $20 for an up to three-day service.

The list of countries that FlashRouters will ship to includes the largest global locations in Europe, Asia, and the southern hemisphere.

FlashRouters doesn’t appear to sell through online retailers at all.

Given its specifications, this router is pricey if the perceived value of the bundled VPN service is excluded. How much a VPN connection costs can vary dramatically, but FlashRouters has decided that it’s roughly $100.

A router with a similar wireless capability, the TP-Link Archer AX55, costs around $79 from Amazon, and that router has Mesh and a USB 3.0 port.

Therefore, getting a similar router with a VPN capability is possible for less than half of what the Privacy Hero II costs.

• Value score: 3.5/5

Privacy Hero II: Specs

Privacy Hero II: Design

• Basic
• No DSL modem
• Minimalist design

This router’s construction is rudimentary at best. Entirely made of white plastic, with plenty of slots to allow heat to dissipate from the internal electronics.

I’ve seen so many routers, like the recent Fritz!Box 7690, that have antennas inside. It is something of a surprise to see the four that this design sports on the outside.

There is no doesn’t need to attach the antenna, as they’re already in position, but that also means that they can’t be removed and replaced with something superior in the future.

Regarding the layout, the Privacy Hero II is about as standard as these things can get.

On the top surface is a series of LED indicators that show if the router can see what is connected, including the physical ports in use.

What exactly these LEDs represent is documented with small stencilled labels that are light grey on a white background, making for challenging reading without bright lighting.

But grey-on-white is superior to the embossed-white-on-white that the LAN/WAN port selection is labelled on the back. Added confusion is created by making all five ports in a single block in the same colour.

There is no DSL modem port as this router has no modem or USB port for file sharing.

What it has is a reset hole and a WPS button, with the latter being in a difficult-to-access location.

There are slots on the underside allowing the router to be wall-mounted, but no screws are included in the box to achieve this.

Overall, the hardware in this solution is a cheap dual-band AX3000 router, which can typically be bought for between $80 or less with this specification. FlashRouters has taken that and added their own firmware to create a router with out-of-the-box VPN credentials.

Design score: 3/5

Privacy Hero II: In use

• Limited controls
• VPN options

The FlashRouter firmware that this hardware offers is remarkably easy to get operational since most of the typical controls are kept well away from those who might be tempted to tinker with them.

Installation involves plugging the router into where it can access the Internet, either directly or via an internal network and then using the QR code on the underside to take your phone or tablet to a prepared login.

This involves providing an email address to confirm who you are, and that’s the whole security scheme. It doesn’t support 2FA or sophisticated access management.

Once an agreed name and password have been established, web access on either a mobile device or PC offers six menu options and a home page that reveals the SSID, timezone, status and those connected via Wi-Fi.

The first menu option is Wi-Fi, and you can turn the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands on and off, see the password and edit the SSID for each. You can rename them to split the SSIDs for each band, but there is no means to create multiple SSIDs, although you can have different logins.

What shocked me a little was that the router only allows three possible options for the channel on both bands, and these appear to have been chosen by the router as low, medium and high options. And, while Flashrouters declares on the box that it supports WPA3 security, there are no controls to force that as a requirement, and no mention of Enterprise encryption.

That might sound basic for a wireless router, and the rest of this device is equally paired down to a minimum.

The VPN menu informed me that I was directed through the Privacy Hero VPN in New York by default, but this can be switched to Private Internet Access, NordVPN or Generic Wireguard.

In this section, toggles for a VPN Killswitch, Malware & Phishing, and Ad Blocking, all without any supporting clues about what these switches do.

I’ll talk more about the general confusion about VPNs and security later, but the switches in here just add to that malaise.

What this router can offer is relocation, allowing you to use streaming services in other locations, which might provide a different selection of movies and TV.

As an example; Netflix can be relocated to the USA, Canada and the UK. Currently, the options are Netflix, Disney Plus, DAZN, Acorn TV, Amazon Prime Video, Shudder, SportsNET, TSN, Crunchyroll, Xumo, Fubo, ESPN+, MLB.TV, NBA League, Max, NFL+, Roku, Discovery Plus and Showmax.

However, the last three require a subscription in those regions, along with the one you live in, making the ability to georelocate a bit pointless for those services.

• In Use: 3/5

Privacy Hero II: Performance

• Dual-Band AX3000
• WPA3-Personal
• WAN/LAN limitations

This is a dual-band AX3000 router, and by definition that dictates the fastest possible connection to it is over the 5GHz band at short range, with 1201Mbps possible on one channel using a mobile phone. Note that those are bits, not bytes, and it can achieve that performance at short range.

Even with a Wi-Fi 7 adapter on a laptop, that was also the top speed available.

It doesn’t offer any sort of multi-channel cleverness, like Wi-Fi 7, so the maximum speed is about 150MB/s on each of the two channels. However, some oddness exists with the antenna arrangement, suggesting that while two are dedicated to 5GHz and one to 2.4GHz, the final antenna is both 5GHz and 2.4GHz.

Whatever the arrangement, this router doesn’t support the 6GHz band, and while it might support 160MHz bandwidth on the 5GHz channel, I couldn’t find any explicit documentation from FlashRouters to support that assertion.

The security protocols are automatically selected, and by default, if the host supports it, WPA-3 Personal is the one it chooses. While that’s reasonably secure for home use, many businesses use WPA-3 Enterprise, and some even use the 192-bit version. This router didn’t indicate that it supported those standards.

With this hardware specification, this router is made for an environment of around twenty people, depending on the level of use. What’s important is that while it can communicate using all the antenna and bands at its disposal and send or receive close to 3000Mbps, the wired network side of this equation doesn’t support that from a single source.

All the LAN ports, WAN included, are 1GbE. And, the four LAN ports can’t be channel bonded with a network switch. Therefore, unless you have four servers, each attached to its dedicated port, you can’t realistically get the throughput this router supports unless you have many wireless devices talking to each other.

Because the WAN is also 1GbE, this router isn’t suitable for connecting to an Internet service that supports more than a gigabit.

While the performance for an AX3000 wireless router is what I’d typically expect, limitations on wired networking can cap transfer speeds before the wireless networking is saturated.

• Performance: 3.5/5

Privacy Hero II: Final verdict

Finding a good reason why any business customer would want this router is a challenge.

It’s primarily made for home use and gamers who wish to play regionalised titles in regions other than their residence.

Therefore, it lacks some of the granular features that business routers typically have and assumes a zero-knowledge approach to VPN technology.

For those who want a dual-band AX3000 router from a well-known brand, they’re less than half the cost of this one from most makers.

The lure is that it includes a secure VPN out-of-the-box and will work with NordVPN or a Wireguard service easily. Access to the service is initially free for a year, and that bundle provides some value. If you intend to spend $10 or more a month on a VPN, it might be worth it. Spend less; then, this is a cost overheard of, and you can avoid it with an alternative product.

Yes, those routers might need some configuration to get the VPN operational, and the Privacy Hero II avoids that, at least initially.

Other than the price, the other two bugbears here are how basic this router is and how some of the marketing materials bend the use of a VPN in ways that can’t be justified.

This router does not have 2.5GbE LAN ports, a USB port for file sharing, the ability to spawn alternative parallel SSIDs, or an ADSL modem.

What I find even less palatable is the idea, pushed on the box and the Flashrouters website, that VPN equals security. An idea that misses the point of a VPN by some considerable distance.

On the box is printed “Secure your home network with the most advanced VPN protection”.

To put a pin firmly in that point, the purpose of a VPN is to provide an encrypted tunnel between two systems across a network (typically the Internet). And, data travelling inside that tunnel can’t be decoded by those outside that loop. What doesn’t make either end more secure and by connecting the two networks together, it’s inherently less secure.

When you use a VPN, like the ones this device supports, the ISP that is providing your internet connection knows you are using a VPN tunnel. Because this technology encrypts the DNS calls, the ISP might not know where the tunnel is heading, but it will know it exists.

FlashRouters might claim that within their VPN tunnel is a malware detector and another mechanism to kill ads, but this router doesn’t allow you any insight or control of those things. Neither of those security features is a VPN.

Most people use a VPN to isolate traffic they don’t want to make public as it crosses the Internet, but that doesn’t make the networks where the tunnel starts or ends more secure; that’s a fallacy.

Overall, Privacy Hero II is an interesting marketing exercise, but it is not something professionals in IT would consider deploying due to the lack of granularity in its controls and the numerous missing features.

Should I buy a Privacy Hero II?

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