Sky Q Hub review: Finally, Sky makes a router that doesn’t suck

Sky’s broadband service isn’t bad, but it’s long been hampered by its atrocious Sky Hub router – and the reluctance of Sky to allow users to allow users to replace it with a better third-party model. The arrival of the Sky Q TV system, however, brings with it a brand-new router: the Sky Q Hub.

The Sky Q Hub has been designed to address all the major failings of its predecessor. The Sky Q Hub isn’t a wireless beast on the same level as, say, the Netgear Nighthawk X4S. As ISP-supplied routers go, however, it’s well specified, with dual-band 802.11ac, support for 3×3 stream MIMO on its 5GHz network and 2×2 stream MIMO connections on the 2.4GHz network.

And it’s just as convenient to use as the Sky Hub 2. It supports both ADSL and VDSL connections and has an integrated modem, so you don’t have to plug two boxes into the mains. It’s also one of a very few commercially available routers to have an integrated power supply. Just plug a figure-of-eight cable into the back of the hub and you’re good to go. For those offended by such things, there are no ugly, protruding antennae either.

The other key improvement is the move to Gigabit Ethernet for the wired network ports, removing one of the main performance bottlenecks of the previous model. It’s about time, too: previously if you wanted to connect a high-speed network drive to your router, you were limited to a dreadfully slow 100Mbits/sec (around 11.9MB/sec).

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However, there’s a catch: Sky has seen fit to equip the Sky Q Hub with only two Ethernet ports, so you’ll need to budget for an extra hub or switch if you want to connect more wired devices.

There’s also no USB port here, a feature most third-party routers use to enable printer and basic USB storage sharing. That’s not a huge surprise, though, and neither is it any particular shock that other features are limited. You’ll find very basic URL-blocking and schedule-restricted access here, but very little flexibility otherwise for guest networks and the like.

Sky Q Hub review: Features and performance

If these were the only changes from the previous Sky hub, the Sky Q Hub would be a step up from the broadcaster’s previous woeful efforts. But fortunately, the improvements don’t end there. It has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve.

First on the list is the ability to extend the network, using the Sky Q Silver/Standard and Mini boxes as wireless access points. Second is powerline networking. In addition to Ethernet and Wi-Fi, the Sky Q Hub can send data to the Sky Q TV boxes using your home’s mains wiring; even if you have thick stone walls, your TV boxes should be able to get a solid connection back to base – and extend your Wi-Fi so you get a solid signal everywhere.

There’s one small catch: powerline networking is a feature Sky isn’t going to unlock from the get-go. It’s coming later in a firmware upgrade. Also, don’t expect other powerline components you might already own to be interoperable with your Sky Q gear. Despite being based on the Powerline AV 1.1 standard, Sky is completely locking it down.

At this stage I want to stress that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test out the Sky Q-specific features of the Sky Q router detailed above. That will come next week, once I’ve had the system installed and it’s all had a chance to bed in.

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Sky Q Hub review: Wi-Fi performance

The first signs, however, are promising – very promising indeed. As I’ve already highlighted, the Sky Q Hub is a dual-band router and one that supports 802.11ac, which is a good start.

However, Sky ships the router with its 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks on the same SSID. That isn’t helpful if you want to keep your high-demand network devices, such as your TV, connected to one, and your low-demand stuff, such as internet radios and smart-home devices, hooked up to the other to keep them from interfering with each other. Still, it’s comparatively simple to separate the two.

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Here’s how to get the fastest speed out of your Sky Q Hub:

• Log on to the router’s admin pages via a web browser: type 192.168.0.1 into your web browser’s address bar
• Go to the Wireless Settings page, pop the username and password in (they’re admin and sky by default)
• Untick the Synchronise Settings tickbox, give the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks different names, and click the Apply button

With that little hurdle overcome, performance and range are good. I didn’t have a Sky Hub 2 to compare it with, but even compared with the mighty Netgear Nighthawk X4S, the results are good.

The first tests I carried out were a site survey of both the ground floor and the first floor of my tiny Victorian terraced house. As you’d expect, the reach of the Sky Q hub isn’t as good as the Netgear Nighthawk X4S, either on the 2.4GHz or 5GHz networks – you wouldn’t expect that. But it isn’t far off.

Sky Q Hub signal strength over 2.4GHz

Sky Q Hub signal strength over 5GHz

Note that in the diagrams above, the colours equate to signal to noise – in other words, the relative strength of the signal, and not the actual throughput. Here, blue is poor, green is acceptable and yellow represents a strong signal. For these tests, the router was placed on the ground floor near the left wall in the middle of the lounge.

You’ll see that nowhere in the house is shaded dark blue for the Sky Q box, and in the kitchen – a notorious Wi-Fi black spot in my house –there’s still a usable signal across both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks.

Next I tested the throughput rates using the iperf command-line utility, and the news is good once again. In the same room, I saw transfer rates of around 40MB/sec on the 5GHZ 802.11ac network, while in the kitchen two walls away I was able to get throughput of 27.9MB/sec on the 5GHz 802.11ac network and 10.3MB/sec over 2.4GHz.

Those are great numbers on their own, but what’s really impressive about these figures is that over 5GHz at long range, the Sky Q Hub performs at a faster rate than the Netgear, which gained a throughput of 23.6MB/sec.

Sky Q Hub: Verdict

So the Sky Q Hub is an improvement for Sky, and a big one at that. And that’s even if you’re only looking at it from the point of view of a standard wireless router.

It isn’t as good as the best third-party routers on the market and it doesn’t have the same spread of features either. Those twin Gigabit Ethernet ports are the biggest limiting factor, so it won’t be the answer to all of Sky broadband customers’ Wi-Fi woes.

But with the powerline networking enabled (whenever that happens) and your Sky Q boxes working as wireless extenders, it’ll be a force to be reckoned with. I’ll report back with my findings on those functions next week.

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Further reading: The best wireless routers of 2016 – this is how to get the fastest Wi-Fi