Today we take a quick look at the D-Link AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi Router. It’s easily one of the biggest routers I’ve seen and one of the fastest.
Design
At 15.23 x 9.73 x 4.7 inches, the D-Link AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi Router is a size of a small drone. In fact, it even looks like one. The router features an edgy and angular design with six adjusttable antennas on its sides. It has a pyramid shape with a shiny red finish.
D-Link AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi Router (DIR-890L/R) key specs:
- Tri-Band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 5GHz)
- 802.11 a/g/n/ac wireless LAN
- 1GHz Dual-core processor
- Four 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN ports
- Two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0)
- Six External Antennas
- SmartConnect
- Guest Zone
- DD-WRT Open Source compatible
- DLNA Enabled
- Dimensions: 15.23 x 9.73 x 4.7 inches
- Minimum requirements: Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, or Mac OS X (v10.7); Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox v28, Google Chrome v33, or Safari v7
On the front panel lies the LED indicators. At the back you’ll find two USB ports, a reset button, WPS button, four Gigabit ethernet ports, the Interne port, the power button and the power port. It also comes with power brick that’s appropriately sized to the router.
Performance
Setting up the router is easy. I just connected the ports and cables, went to the router’s IP address and configured using the wizard from there. It did take me awhile to customize the SSIDs and security settings though. That said, the Web Interface to set up the router is simple and easy to use. You can access various settings, change the router name, edit SSIDs and so on.
On paper, the router can reach speeds of up to 3,200Mbps. Now, I don’t have an accurate way of testing the throughput speeds, so I did the next best thing I could think of — I streamed a lot of media to check how much it can handle. I plugged in a USB 3.0 thumbdrive and streamed 1080p full HD movies to a smart TV, a laptop, an ASUS tablet, and two smartphones.
Surprisingly, the videos played swimmingly, in full HD with no deterioration in quality. There were no loading errors, no stuttering and no audio sync problems.
Conclusion
The D-Link AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi Router is one big router with an edgy design. It can handle high transfer loads and is perfect for video streaming and games. Albeit a bit expensive at PHP16,000, this D-Link router will faithfully serve those who need fast speeds and have a lot of Internet heavy workloads.
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