Hardware Geeks

When I unboxed the D-link DIR-685 that D-Link sent me to check out, someone messaged me on Live Messenger and said, “The DIR-685 is overkill”. I laughed and thought about it. It does have a lot of features that a router doesn’t really need...such as a digital photo frame, the ability to display my local news and weather.

So maybe they are right, maybe it the DIR-685 is overkill. But as Mike Mason one of the forum members here at HardwareGeeks said “Nothing in Technology can be overkill”

When companies like D-Link design a product, their designers try to design a product that will be of use to its user now and in the future and I think the D-Link DIR-685 is indeed the type of router that was designed with the future in mind.

Lets get on with the review. The first thing I did was install the DIR-685 onto my network, and when I test something new I try to act like a noivice user to get the experience most people will have when they buy this product. Becuase of that I really wanted to use the included software and follow the included instructions. So I read the instructions and installed the software.

It installed but It didn’t work, not sure why it didn’t work and I have no clue what I did wrong but it just didn’t work.

I thought maybe my machine was acting up so I tried it on different systems each with the same result. I eventually trashed the included software, ripped and burned the instructions and set it up manually.
I connected it to my modem, plugged it in and waited for it to power up, I then accessed the router via my web browser (http://192.168.0.1) entered the default password and performed a manual internet setup. After 2 minutes I was on the internet.

After I was connected to the internet, I tested my internet speed. My ISP (Cablevision) advertises 30Mbps down and 2 MBps up. I average 25 down and 2 up when connected directly to the modem. I tested my speed several times while connected to the DIR-685 and I averaged 25 down and 2 up. So there was no loss of speed.

Other routers I have used from Belkin, D-link and even Linksys I have always experienced some loss of speed, so I was happy when I didn’t detect a loss of speed when using the DIR-685.

After I tested my speeds while wired, I decided to configure the router.

Configuring the DIR-685 and any D-Link router for that matter is extremely easy. I always liked the fact that D-Link has wizards that are easy to use in the routers web interface. Using he wizards even the most novice of users will have their wireless network and local network up and running in a breeze.
It literally took me less than a Minute to set up my wireless network, and once I had it set up I again ran speed test.

With my previous wireless router I averaged 18 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up, even though my advertised Speed was 30 Down and 2 Up.

When I ran the speed tests while on the DIR-685 wirelessly, I averaged 24 Mbps.  While still 6 Mbps lower than my advertised speed, it is only 1Mbps my average speed when connected via a wire or directly to a modem.  A huge improvement over my previous router. Which by the way was also a wireless N router.

On my network wired and wirelessly but mainly wirelessly I stream a lot of HD Video Content to televisions and computers, I stream pictures to Wi-Fi digital picture frames I have in my home. It’s safe to say that my home network is pretty congested and as my network grew with more devices, such as my iPhone wanting access, and a new netbook. I began to experience connectivity issues and streaming HD at a rate that was viewable became undoable.

However when replacing my previous D-Link Wireless N router which was about 3 years old with the DIR-685 my network could now could handle the load. Streaming HD was again doable and my wireless connectivity options became a thing of the past. My network improved 10 fold in the 10 minutes it took me to swap out routers.

The DIR-685 literally gave me a faster and more stable connection.

But as I said at the start of this review, the DIR-685 is more than just a router it’s a Network Accessible Storage Device (NAS), digital picture frame and a way for me to check my local news and weather.

Let’s talk about the NAS part of the DIR-685. First thing you will need to know is you will need to purchase a hard drive. A notebook hard drive.  It’s really easy to install. I made a quick video to show you how easy.

When you install the router, all you have to do is via the routers web interface, and then set up user and a group if you want. You can even set up a UPnP AV server along with an iTunes Server which comes in handy if you like to stream your iTunes music. There is also a BT manager for those of you who like bit torrent. In iTunes the DIR-685 is listed as a shared device.

When you click on the DIR-685 label in iTunes you will be able to access all of your music that is stored on the hard drive with-in the router. Pretty sweet feature!

Below is an image of what the web interface for the HDD looks like and the image to the left is how the router appears in iTunes.

When your hard drive is installed and set up, put some pictures on it. Then head over to the router and run a slideshow with those pictures. The touch interface responds well to each tap although sometimes I do find myself double tapping.

But as I said before you can do more than just view pictures, using the built in Frame Channel software (http://www.framechannel.com) you can literally set your D-Link DIR-685 to display your local weather, local news, check facebook status, view facebook friends pictures, twitter status, your local lotto numbers, the news, your own RSS feed and more.

There is so much you can and only so much time, I made a quick video of the different apps available via FrameChannel.com for your D-Link DIR-685.

Something else that is cool about the DIR-685 is if you install the included Share Port Utility Software on any PC connected to the network. When you plug in a USB device into the router, it pops up on your PC as if you plugged it into one of the USB ports on your system. Comes in handy!

Overall the D-Link DIR-685 is an amazing product, great for streaming HD content wirelessly around your home, easy to set up NAS device (HDD not included ) and being able to view different channels via Frame Channel is pretty cool as well. So we award it our 5 Star Gold Editors Choice Award for the month of December and it will also make our Holiday Gift Guide “Ten Things To Get your Geek”.

The DIR-685 is available from most major retail stores, and will run you $229. For more information on the router visit http://www.dlink.com

Post Tags: review  dlink  best router ever  dir-685 

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