D- Link DIR-X1860
D-Link fills a price-gap in the market, but is the product worth considering?
A few months ago we reviewed D-Link’s first budget Wi-Fi 6 router, the EXO AX1500 Wi-Fi 6. We complemented it for being the cheapest Wi-Fi 6 router on the market and for offering blistering, close-range speeds (although performance dramatically declined at distance). Now, here’s D-Link’s EXO AX1800. It costs $50 to $100 more (depending on where you buy it) and has an RRP of $299. So, what does the extra, nomenclatorial 300 get for the money?
Both devices resemble traditional, four-pronged Wi-Fi routers and use D-Link’s standard Wi-Fi app. Setup requires scanning a QR code (in the box) which walks you through the connection. The 2.4GHz band and 5GHz band are combined into one network so you simply choose a network name and password (plus a device administrator password). If you use the app to log in to a D-Link cloud account you can set up Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice commands which enable you to pause internet, reboot the device and check login credentials.
The app is intuitive and allows you to do the following: see which clients are connected, enable guest Wi-Fi, turn off the four, bright, status LEDs, update the firmware and set parental controls. The latter lets you set-up different profiles which enable different devices to access the internet, at different times, during the week, in 30-minute increments. As with the AX1500, there’s no network security and so we wondered where the extra money was going.
We had our concerns: the AX1500 was so-called because it offered 300Mbps theoretical speeds across its 2.4GHz band and 1,200Mbps across its 5GHz band. The AX1800 boosts the 2.4GHz band by just 300Mbps to 600Mbps. That’s a bit like saying the difference between two cars is that one can go faster than the other when they’re both in first gear – modern Wi-Fi performance all comes from using 5GHz bands. This, plus the fact that Wi-Fi-rated performance is only theoretically possible in laboratory conditions, made us wonder if we’d see any difference at all.
We ran our standard tests which involve downloading large video files from a Synology DS1019+ NAS to a Dell XPS 15 laptop in a three storey Sydney townhouse in three locations (the router was on the ground floor): up close, one floor up and two floors up. The AX1800 managed a decent 582Mbps up close but repeatedly plummeted to a pitiful 8Mbps in the subsequent tests. We forced it to use the 5GHz band only and speeds increased to 582, 105 and 26Mbps as we moved up the house. Conversely, the AX1500 managed 735, 61 and 22.5Mbps... but without having to force the 5GHz band.
Comparisons between the two models are rendered moot by the existence of TP-Link’s $159 AX1500 router which scored 387.5, 191 and 157Mbps in the same tests. Despite being cheap-and-plasticy looking, its performance at distance is significantly better and it’s almost half the price of the DIR-X1860. This leaves the DIR-X1860 looking expensive and underpowered even in this budget end of the Wi-Fi 6 market and so is not worth considering. NICK ROSS
Despite being a budget router, it’s expensive and underpowered.