Microsoft Brings Its Network Speed Test App To Windows 8 & RT

When we sign up for a broadband plan, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) quite happily tells us about the maximum internet speed we can get. Though when things don’t turn out quite as presumed, with webpages not loading properly or downloads getting stuck half way through, one is bound to get frustrated. There are a lot of ways to check your current internet speed via a variety of websites and apps and last week, Microsoft Research released their own speed testing tool for Windows Phone called Network Speed Test that allows users to test their broadband speed without much effort. The app has now also been made available for Windows 8 and Windows RT, and looks and works exactly like its Windows Phone counterpart. Read on for our full review.

Even though one can check their internet speed from websites like SpeedTest without having to install anything on their computer or device, there are obvious reasons for having an app at your disposal for the purpose, first and foremost of which is that you don’t need to fire up your web browser and navigate to the website every time you want to perform a quick test. Furthermore, what if the service you use to check speed goes down itself?

Sporting a user-friendly interface, Network Speed Test looks plain simple on the surface, featuring a completely white background with no funky colors. The interface carries a large speed meter to the left that measures the upload and download speeds. In addition, the app provides you with brief information about your network such as connection type, network name, internet status, hostname, BSSID, authentication and encryption type. To begin the speed test, make sure you are connected to your desired network, and hit the Start button under the speed meter

The app first measures the network delay (ping), followed by download and upload speeds of your connection. The upload speed is represented by a light green color to distinguish it from the download speed, which is a darker shade of grey green. The whole process lasts only a few minutes and the analyzed results appear at the bottom afterwards. A history log is also saved, and can be viewed from the right.

The app keeps all the entries in its history, so you may analyze or compare your current and previous results any time in the future. The entries comprise of network, date, delay, and download/upload speeds. And that’s pretty much all there is to Network Speed Test.

In a nutshell, Network Speed Test is a very minimalistic app with limited functionality, but it’s fairly useful for what it does. The app can be installed for free from Windows Store.

Install Network Speed Test from Windows Store