D-Link EIR-510L
This portable charger and mobile router could be D-missing-Link.
If you travel a lot or just happen to be really good at draining your phone battery, keeping a power bank handy is almost a necessity. Pair that bank with your very own portable Wi-Fi router and you’ve got a tool that’s a perfect companion for anyone who doesn’t want to be held back by only having access to an Ethernet connection or needing to share a Wi-Fi hotspot.
This travel router/ power-bank device category hosts a few combinations: D-Link’s DIR-510L has two 5V USB ports — one 0.5A for charging phones and connecting USB storage devices and an additional 1A USB port that it says can charge devices up to the size of tablets. There’s no built-in Internet connectivity in this device — you need to plug it into an Internet-connected Ethernet, or you can use a USB modem with a SIM card.
If you have devices that can connect to it, having 5GHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi is not only faster, but also allows you to avoid using the congested 2.4GHz bands. The indoor range on the DIR510L’s 5GHz band is decent too, reducing the -45dBm signal to a usable -75dBm over 10m through a couple of timber walls.
The DIR-510L allows for wireless storage through plugging a USB hard drive into a USB port, but the accompanying software is too cumbersome to make it genuinely useful for anything other than backing up files from your phone.
With a 4,000mAh battery, it’s hard to deny this device’s usefulness; but considering the MobileLite Wireless G3 (right) costs half as much, we wonder if the slightly bigger battery and more compact exterior warrants the cost.