Trendnet can legitimately claim bragging rights for being the first company to bring a three-stream IEEE 802.11n router to market. Unfortunately, our first impressions of the TEW-691GR are not all that positive. While we never expected this router to deliver actual throughput of 450Mb/s (150Mb/s per stream), its sparse feature set and bipolar real-world performance left us unimpressed.As you can see from the benchmark charts, the TEW-691GR proved to be very fast, but only when our wireless client was in relatively close proximity. Trendnet recommends reviewers use a notebook equipped with Intel’s integrated WiFi Link 5300 three-stream adapter, because you can’t buy a three-stream USB Wi-Fi adapter today. But since we can’t expect readers to buy a notebook based solely on which wireless network adapter is inside, we elected to stick with the dual-antenna TEW-664UB USB adapter that Trendnet provided.In our first test, with the router operating in a bedroom with the client 20 feet away in the kitchen (with one insulated interior wall and a set of plywood cabinets in between), Trendnet’s router out-performed Netgear’s WNDR3700—our current best-of-the-best pick—by a whopping 33 percent. In our second test, we moved the client onto an attached, enclosed outdoor patio, 35 feet from the router with two insulated separating the device. The Trendnet delivered a great performance here, too, besting the Netgear by 58 percent.