D-Link DIR-850L Pro Reviews

Just as N600 routers are the current bread-and-butter of today's wireless routers, so will AC1200 be for tomorrow's. Since most AC clients will be 1x1 or 2x2, i.e. AC433 or AC867, AC1200's will provide best price performance. Companies are already focusing on this, being careful to bring AC1200 street prices in close to $100. This first look at what Realtek draft 11ac silicon has to offer isn't that impressive. But it's not that bad either. Good enough, in fact, to rank the DIR-850L in the #2 spot for AC1200 class routers in our Router Ranker. The summary below shows that the 850L's main weakness is 5 GHz range. But if the NETGEAR R6100 wasn't capped by its 10/100 ports, I suspect the D-Link would have come in at #3 for Routing throughput due to its severe throughput reduction in the simultaneous up/down tests. Of the three AC1200 routers tested so far, I have to agree with the Ranker and suggest TRENDnet's TEW-811DRU. But we've only begun to scratch the surface of what is fast becoming a crowded field. If you don't have to buy right away, I'd wait to see what the other AC1200 routers we'll be testing soon bring to the party.