Wireless kits are like that famous number 13 bus: you wait ages for one, then five come along at once. This issue, it’s Buffalo’s turn to lay its offering of MIMO technology at the PC Plus altar. More specifically, Buffalo is offering us so-called ‘True MIMO’. This is the brand name for technology facilitator Airgo’s MIMO products. If you’re a wireless connoisseur, you might have heard it before: it’s the same technology that Belkin is using in its MIMO products.

We found it initially surprising that Buffalo bee-lined for Airgo’s chipset, since it’s usually in bed with Broadcom. However, Broadcom hasn’t yet readied its MIMO chipset and Buffalo is already one of the later brands to market globally, if not on the UK scene.

Buffalo’s RRP cites £108, although since both the Belkin Pre-N and Netgear RangeMax routers are currently hovering around the £90 mark, we expect this to drop in no time at all. We are a little disappointed with the design of the product, which looks cheap. Buffalo says this is to do with the antennae specification handed to it by Airgo. The technology provider specifies its trident-pronged antennae should be 6cm apart. But Belkin hasn’t let this stand in its way; its Pre-N Router is the best of MIMO for looks by far.

As expected, Buffalo’s kit is comparable with Belkin’s. We shoved a 100MB zip file between two WLI-CB-G108 MIMO PC Card wireless adaptors in just over a minute; that’s around 20Kbps or 1,952KB/s. Throughput over distance is where MIMO wins over. At a line-of-sight position around 50 metres away, we managed to transfer the same file in just under three minutes.

It’s still very difficult to say whether you should plump for a MIMO set at this stage. We would bet our antique Rickenbackers on seeing proper ‘Pre-N’ devices by this time next year – a kit that conforms to the almost concrete specification for 802.11n. Updates can then be provided by firmware when 802.11n is ratified. It’s the physical factors that are holding the current raft of devices back, but Netgear’s standard is completely different. Whatever wireless adaptors you have, you should consider MIMO. The increase in range will always be suitably incredible. But if interoperability will be a paramount concern going forward, be prepared to junk it in a year and a half.