D-Link DIR- 895L router
Not quite fully baked
PRICE $ 649 www.dlink.com.au
First announced at CES 2015, it’s taken over 16 months for D-Link’s top-of-the-line Wi-Fi router to finally make it into stores. This is likely a result of the MU-MIMO functionality included within, which is still not actually enabled. At the time of press, D-Link was expecting to release a firmware update in the future that would finally bring MU-MIMO support to the table. So what the heck is MU-MIMO, and why should you care that this router has it?
Today’s routers can only send and receive data packets to one device at a time. When multiple devices are connected, one device is getting data, while the rest wait. Thankfully this happens so quickly that we usually don’t notice, until we start to load up lots of extra devices to the network, or we start eating up the bandwidth. MU-MIMO is a new Wi-Fi standard that changes this approach, by allowing a router to talk to multiple devices simultaneously, with each device having its own dedicated stream of data. This helps improve performance without requiring more bandwidth. However, it’s taken a couple of years for the likes of Broadcom – who supply the chipset in this router – to get it working properly. In fact, they still haven’t. It’s more than a little dodgy to promote a feature in the name of a product which isn’t actually working yet.
D-Link claims this is a 5300Mbps router, delivering twin 2166Mbps networks on the 5GHz band, along with a single 1000Mbps network on the 2.4GHz frequency. However, the 802.11ac standard tops out at 1733Mbps, so how has D-Link managed to deliver 2166? The answer is NitroQAM, an update on the TurboQAM enhancement it’s used in prior routers. The problem is that this isn’t supported by any client devices, such as phones, tablets or laptops, so there’s no way this router will hit those speeds in the real world unless it’s talking to another DIR895L. This means it’s actually limited to the 1733Mbps of other 802.11ac devices. We understand that D-Link wants to hit shelves with a router claiming performance numbers better than anybody else, but when it uses marketing shenanigans like these, their credibility takes a blow.
So just how fast is this router? Well, it really depends on what you’re connecting it to. As the router uses a 4x4 transmitter/receiver configuration, you’re going to need an identically equipped 4x4 device to hit the maximum theoretical speed of 1733Mbps. These are about as common as dropped iPhones with no cracks in their screen. We tested on a 3x3 equipped laptop at a range of ten metres with one brick wall in the way, and measured a speed of 712Mbps, around the middle of what we’d expect. However, for this router to really fly, you’ll need to connect five or more devices to start sucking up all that bandwidth.
There’s no denying this is a speedy router, but D-Link really should be called to task for some rather shady marketing tactics. Wi-Fi networking is confusing enough to mainstream users without misinformation being fed to them by the manufacturer.
VERDICT:
There are much cheaper options out there that will deliver the same performance, and who have MU-MIMO enabled already.