Buffalo AirStation WZR-D1800H Pro Reviews

Buffalo's WZR-1800H delivers more bang for the buck than Belkin's AC 1200, but that's not really saying much.

If you don't mind its inability to support USB hard drives formatted in NTFS, Buffalo's WZR-D1800H delivers better value than Belkin's AC 1200 router. Both models carry street prices of around £100, as does Buffalo's AirStation AC1300 wireless bridge. Belkin's 802.11ac bridge hasn't reached the market, yet, and its absence sharply curtails that router's usefulness. Moreover, Belkin's router and bridge support only two spatial streams on each wireless network. So if really want an 802.11ac router, and your budget limits you to an outlay of £100, Buffalo has one for you.

If you are looking for ultra-fast performances via Wi-Fi, the new 802.11ac standard is a must have. Buffalo is first out of the gate with their new flagship WZR-D100H Air Station and the pure speed of this router might be enough to overcome the challenging GUI and limited features.

There is both good and bad news for those itching to run out and buy a draft 11ac router. The good is that, when paired with its WLI-H4-D1300 partner, the WZR-D1800H can produce almost 450 Mbps of aggregate throughput when handling multiple clients. Even better, though, its that the pair can produce around 100 Mbps of usable throughput at my weakest signal test point for a single test client! This is more bandwidth than I've ever seen available from any other 5 GHz wireless product and may even be capable of sustaining a trouble-free 1080p HD video stream. The catch, however, are the large and long throughput dropouts that I saw in many of my tests. So unless your HD streaming player has some decent buffering, you may still be out of luck! I will have to give HD streaming a shot in the coming weeks, after I clear out some of my review backlog. The bad news is that you'll need to spend almost $400 to run the above experiment. And the more practical bad news is that the WZR-D1800H isn't a particularly good simultaneous dual-band three-stream N ("N900") router. If that is what you're looking for, you may be better off spending about the same price and picking up an ASUS RT-N66U.

I think I've ridden the "How Fast Will Draft 802.11ac Go?" horse as far as it will go. I have to say I am impressed with draft 802.11ac's ability to provide unprecedented aggregate throughput when handling multiple data streams. Now I can move on to Part 2, where we'll look at throughput vs. range for as many modes as I can stand testing.

Phenomenally fast when used with an 802.11ac adaptor, but the WZR-D1800H's web interface is cluttered and confusing

The Buffalo AirStation AC1300 WZR-D1800H router is an exciting product that offers a taste of the new 5G Wi-Fi standard. Unfortunately, when coupled with the only 802.11ac client on the market at the time of this review, it didn't show the type of performance that 5G Wi-Fi promises. That, plus its lackluster performance on the 2.4GHz band, its limited support for external hard drives, and especially the current dearth of available 5G Wi-Fi adapters, means that for now, this router is not clearly better than a solid N900 Wireless-N router that costs the same. Early adopters with mostly 5GHz wireless clients, however, shouldn't be disappointed if they decide to invest in the Buffalo, either.

The Buffalo AirStation AC1300/N900 Gigabit Dual Band WZR-D1800H is the first 802.11ac router to come to market, though it's draft 802.11ac. The device is the fastest router we've tested to date with excellent range. A poorly designed interface and no native IPv6 are the only blemishes on this otherwise killer router.