CONCLUSION

     No matter how many times I’ve seen the D-Link DIR-890L I still consider its design as being one of the best in the market today (the new DIR-879 is not bad either). In terms of build quality the DIR-890L may not feel as sturdy as the WRT1900ACS by Linksys but is right on par with the R8000 Nighthawk by Netgear (perhaps a tad better) so we experienced no problems during the two weeks of testing. Unfortunately when we started testing the wireless capabilities of the DIR-890L we actually got a lot worse results due to the fact that smart connect used the 2.4GHz band first. Disabling smart connect and manually using the primary 5GHz band boosted our numbers to the ones you see recorded here so do keep that in mind if you don’t get good speeds with the DIR-890L right out of the box. The DIR-890L does lack an 1900Mbps band so you may not get the same wireless performance when using one of the latest AC1900 USB adapters (D-Link send us one to test so we will see just what differences you can expect compared to AC1200 ones) but for those D-Link just introduced the DIR-895L AC5300 router (it actually has two 2167Mbps 5GHz bands) which we hope to have here soon (hope is the key word here). Navigating through all available settings may not be as fast as with some other models in the market but I still consider the GUI used with D-Link products to be far more complete (and better looking) than what most manufacturers offer. For reasons unknown we were unable to use the MyDlink service (we got a not able to register device error) but you can take a look at this feature in our previous D-Link review here.

   The introduction of the new D-Link DIR-895L AC5300 model pushed the price of the DIR-890L AC3200 to a new all-time low so currently you can find it for USD229.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 233Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which puts it right next to the R8000 Nighthawk by Netgear and above the Linksys EA9200. Overall however we feel that the DIR-890L has more to offer (including better wireless performance) and that’s why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Design
- Wireless Performance (Top In Our Charts)
- AC3200 Technology (Concurrent 802.11n & 802.11ac)
- User Friendly Web Interface
- Features
- Technologies Used (Advanced Beamforming & Smart Connect)
- Android & iOS App
- 4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 2 USB Ports (USB 3.0 & USB 2.0)
 

CONS

- Price (For Some)