[Review] D-Link Ultra WiFi AC3150 Router DIR-885L

DiscMan

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Just manage to get my hand on the D-Link Ultra WiFi AC3150 Router DIR-885L. The smaller DIR-885L comes with Dual Band Smart Connect instead of three on the DIR-890L but has a faster Dual Core processor running at 1.4Ghz and is Multi-User MIMO Ready. The box of the D-Link DIR-885L is much smaller than its bigger brother. The front and rear of the box displays the capabilities of the router as well as the color of it. You can see I’ve gotten a red colored one for this round.

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Within the colorful external box, a much sturdier black box will slide out. Opening up, the interior is nicely designed with accessories all packed into yet another box while black colored foam are strategically placed to protect and cushion the red-colored router.

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Something that caught my eye was that D-Link seems to have taken the suggestions from customers and delivered the D-Link DIR-885L with detachable antennas! All four of them!

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The accessories that come with the D-Link DIR-885L are the bare essentials. Besides the power brick with its adapters, D-Link only provided a network cable and some mounting screws.

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I’m pretty surprised that for the D-Link DIR-885L, such a small power brick is able to power it. Its bigger brother, the D-Link DIR-890L comes with a much bigger power brick, typical type used to power a laptop. This power brick also comes with 2 adapters (a 2-pin and a 3-pin) which are inter-changeable with a push of the small release catch.

The D-Link DIR-885L comes with only four antennas as it is only a Dual Band (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz). It still has the unique UFO design of its bigger brother but with smaller dimensions.

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The bottom consists of many holes for cooling, wall mounting holes and rubber legs. Of course, you will be able to find the default SSID and security keys just in case you need to reset the device to factory settings.

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At the rear, there are four gigabit ports and only one USB3.0 port. However, there is a physical switch that allows you to switch between router and access point mode easily.

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DiscMan

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Comparison with DIR-890L

Now to compare the difference between the size of the D-Link DIR-885L and its bigger brother, the D-Link DIR-890L. From the front and top views, we can see that the older brother is slightly bigger but more intimidating with the additional two antennas.

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At the rear, the D-Link DIR-890L has an extra USB 2.0 port but the D-Link DIR-885L comes with a physical switch to toggle between router and access point mode.

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As show earlier, this antennas on the D-Link DIR-885L is now detachable. The connectors are also golden in color (although I’m not too sure if it’s real gold connector). The detachable antennas also means that it may be possible to replace these antenna for better performance ones in future.

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DiscMan

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Speed Test Results Part 1

And now onto the Performance Tests. The first test conducted was signal strength. Both the D-Link DIR-885L and D-Link DIR-890L were placed side by side and the D-Link DWA-192 AC1900 Ultra Wi-Fi Adapter was used to scan the strengths using the inSSIDer application. Both routers were placed in Smart Connect mode but surprising the D-Link DIR-885L seems to produce a bigger signal than its older brother.

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The next test would involve the iPerf3 to see the speed throughput of the D-Link DIR-885L. To baseline the subsequent tests, a direct wired test was first conducted. Two-way tests (server -> client and client -> server) were conducted to ensure traffic performance on both directions are considered. Just for the record, the command used for the iPerf3 tests were “iperf3.exe -c <ServerIP> -W 768k -P5 -t 60”. This means that the socket buffer size would be 768k, there will be 5 parallel client threads and the test would run for 60 secs. The results showed that the D-Link DIR-885L can achieve about 940Mbits/sec.

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The first wireless test was conducted with the D-Link DIR-885L on Smart Connect mode. In this mode, the router will determine what is the best way to connect to the wireless adapter. Based on the WiFi status below, it seems to be on the 5Ghz band with a speed of 1.3Gbps!

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Never the less, the realistic results from the 2-direction tests showed that the D-Link DIR-885L is capable of 195Mbits/sec over the 5Ghz band in Smart Connect mode.

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The D-Link DIR-885L is then switched to manual 5Ghz mode and the tests were repeated.

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This time round, the D-Link DIR-885L was showing similar results compared to the Smart Connect mode. The test was then repeated with the socket buffer reduced to 256k but the results were still very much the same.

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DiscMan

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Speed Test Results Part 2

Lastly, D-Link DIR-885L was rigged to the 2.4Ghz band. The Windows WiFi status now shows the speed that this connection is “capable” of is at 450Mbps.

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However, when the same tests were repeated, the results were very disappointing. The D-Link DIR-885L was only able to achieve in Kbits/sec type of performance.

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Further analysis shows that there has been much lag in the transmission at the 2.4Ghz band. The transfer rates can drop to 0(zero) bits/sec at 70% of the 60sec test windows. I’ve tried various means to determine the source of this but to no valid outcomes. I’ll try to get another client to test this again to see if there are issues with my setup. Hopefully my set is not a lemon out of the box.. :(

Do share here if you faced similar issues as me. TIA!
 
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Ah-Pin-Kor

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are these results better than your previous product?
I've maxed out the speed of my 200Mbps plan with the 5GHz so I can't tell what the max limit really is but the range is better than previous AC3200 routers I've owned (both Asus AC3200 and D-Link 890L). Below are some screenshots which compare the signal with an AC68 (with tricked-out hggomes firmware; the stock Asus firmware will be weaker). It edged out the Ac68 marginally.

around 2m from routers, which are side-by-side in living room:
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master bedroom (a kitchen and 2 bathrooms away)
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(the last SSID at the bottom is a neighbour's so just disregard it).

The 2.4GHz is weaker than the 5GHz though, but nowadays I mostly use the 5GHz even for my mobiles.

I used manual settings for the channels because the auto mode seemed to set the 5GHz to channel 40. I prefer to use the upper channels for more power.
Temperature of the outer casing is just slightly warm (much cooler than asus ac3200).
 

TechVodoo

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I've maxed out the speed of my 200Mbps plan with the 5GHz so I can't tell what the max limit really is but the range is better than previous AC3200 routers I've owned (both Asus AC3200 and D-Link 890L). Below are some screenshots which compare the signal with an AC68 (with tricked-out hggomes firmware; the stock Asus firmware will be weaker). It edged out the Ac68 marginally.

around 2m from routers, which are side-by-side in living room:
7h8C2rg.jpg


master bedroom (a kitchen and 2 bathrooms away)
zPhjWqk.jpg


(the last SSID at the bottom is a neighbour's so just disregard it).

The 2.4GHz is weaker than the 5GHz though, but nowadays I mostly use the 5GHz even for my mobiles.

I used manual settings for the channels because the auto mode seemed to set the 5GHz to channel 40. I prefer to use the upper channels for more power.
Temperature of the outer casing is just slightly warm (much cooler than asus ac3200).

Do you think I should get this instead of AC5300? My plan is 1G Starhub. 5-rm hdb... household 5 adults, each holding min. 2 mobile devices. Only my son is into gaming... the rest into casual internet surfing / email checking / youtube / movies
 

Ah-Pin-Kor

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Do you think I should get this instead of AC5300? My plan is 1G Starhub. 5-rm hdb... household 5 adults, each holding min. 2 mobile devices. Only my son is into gaming... the rest into casual internet surfing / email checking / youtube / movies
Depends on how much you constantly use the 5GHz band, cos the extra 5GHz radio is the main difference. If you are constantly downloading/streaming with the 5GHz band on multiple devices, the tri-band AC5300 should help.

On a different note, I just found out recently that Kong (dd-wrt dev) now supports 885L and 890L with his R8000 builds so I've tried that out and so far so good. You still have to flash the initial build with a Brainslayer build and ddup is not supported for these models.
 

AshSim

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Depends on how much you constantly use the 5GHz band, cos the extra 5GHz radio is the main difference. If you are constantly downloading/streaming with the 5GHz band on multiple devices, the tri-band AC5300 should help.

On a different note, I just found out recently that Kong (dd-wrt dev) now supports 885L and 890L with his R8000 builds so I've tried that out and so far so good. You still have to flash the initial build with a Brainslayer build and ddup is not supported for these models.

Sounds like good news to those who bought 885L...wonder if they will drop price for IT Show.. If can get below $300 then its a good deal.
 

DiscMan

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Update on my DIR-885L

As advised by Ah-Pin-Kor, I connected up my DIR-885L over the weekend again and tested the 2.4Ghz band using speed test.

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Seems that the speed over the 2.4Ghz band is ok at about 54Mbps. As a baseline, I also ran the same test with the same server on the 5Ghz band.

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I'm on the Starhub Fibre 200Mbps plan and the results looks ok at speeds of more than 200Mbps.

At least from these results, the DIR-885L seems ok. Now is to find another AC1900 USB adapter to test again with my iPerf3 setup.
 

TechVodoo

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Sorry anyone known can it work with Singtel MIO TV?

I pre-ordered AC5300 instead of AC3150 even though pricing difference was $100.

Spoken to the sales head, was told that the VLAN (for ST customer like me) feature will be ready by May for my AC5300 and also AC3150.

So good news for the AC3150 users.
 

bear1sg

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I pre-ordered AC5300 instead of AC3150 even though pricing difference was $100.

Spoken to the sales head, was told that the VLAN (for ST customer like me) feature will be ready by May for my AC5300 and also AC3150.

So good news for the AC3150 users.
This good news to me, as I ST user also.
Will the new firmware support MIO TV? any ideal?
 

AshSim

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This good news to me, as I ST user also.
Will the new firmware support MIO TV? any ideal?

I never ask cos I don't have MIO TV. Not sure how's the speed like for Wi-Fi. Cos I read that for these MU-MIMO enabled routers... the real difference will only come in when we pair with MU-MIMO devices also...
 
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