Review: Linksys EFG120

The EFG120 is something of an oddity. Its design seems curiously dated and it is relatively overpriced given it has the lowest storage capacity of any product in this group.

The most obvious feature is its size. The unusual design of the EFG120 means that it is much larger than any of its rivals, measuring almost 8cm wide, 20cm deep and 30cm high.

It has a single 120GB hard disk built in, but also contains a second drive bay that allows you to insert a second hard disk of the same size – providing a quick and easy upgrade route to 240GB.

However, the design seems to hark back to the days (before video downloads) when 120GB was considered ‘top of the range’ and seems rather old-fashioned when you realise that even the smallest of its rivals – the Freecom Storage Gateway – provides 160GB of storage, along with wireless-networking features for a much lower price.

Another oddity is the inclusion of a printer port for networking printing – not a USB port as you’ll find in most of these Nas devices, but an old-fashioned parallel printer port. Many modern printers don’t have parallel ports any more, so this will be of limited use for many potential users. There’s no support for Macs or Linux PCs either, which may deter some users.

To be fair though, the installation and setup process was admirably straightforward. When you insert the Linksys CD-Rom a setup wizard starts automatically, then detects the drive on the network and even puts a shortcut icon on your desktop for you.

Other settings, such as user accounts and passwords can be easily configured via your web browser. Unfortunately, despite its undoubted ease of configuration and use, it’s hard to recommend the EFG120 when there are so many less expensive options on the market.

This article is part of a group test of network-attached devices.
See also
Adaptec Snap Server 110
Buffalo Linkstation Multimedia Home Server
Buffalo Terastation Home Server
Freecom Storage Gateway WLAN
Iomega Storcenter Network Hard Drive
La Cie Ethernet Disk Mini
Maxtor Shared Storage II
Plextor PX-EH25L
Western Digital Netcenter 500
Living with NAS
DIY NAS

The table of features can be read via our pdf download.

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