D-Link @ CES 2015

I’ve never been a big fan of D-Link’s cylinder router device because it makes it hard to wall mount and external antennas perform better, so it has been good to see them shift away from that recently. I was surprised to see their stylish new line up of high-end 802.11AC routers including a three radio AC3200 available now, and two Wave2 MU-MIMO enabled (AC5300 & AC3100) coming later this year. Of particular interest was that the Wave2 routers are based on Broadcom’s chips (all the existing kit uses Quantenna) so it will be interesting to see how they stack up, both from a performance and power consumption standpoint. D-Link also had a cute little AC1900 USB Wi-Fi adapter, one of the first I’ve seen, and some new Powerline AV2 2000 Gb adapters on display.

Last year D-Link moved into the home automation (HA) space, so there an expanding array of switches and sensors on display demonstrating a growing commitment to developing capability in the space. The ecosystem still lags some of the established/dedicated HA vendors, and it was disappointing to see broader compatibility not a strong priority although to be fair D-Link is hardly alone in this stance.

D-Link has a strong IP camera portfolio, so there wasn’t much to see there except for a new 802.11AC model and one targeted at baby monitoring which had a Micro SD slot to store any custom sound –just imagine the possibilities :).