Edimax CV-7438nDM N600 Dual-Band Wi-Fi Bridge review

The Edimax CV-7438nDM is a curiously shaped device that lets you connect up to two Ethernet-only devices, such as smart TVs, older Sky+ HD boxes and Blu-ray players, to your wireless network so that they can access the internet. Not only that, you can also use the CV-7438nDM to stream audio from Airplay-compatible devices to a set of speakers.

The Edimax CV-7438nDM is incredibly easy to set up, and you don’t even need a PC to configure it, just a tablet or smartphone. The CV-7438nDM can draw power from a spare USB port on your computer, Blu-ray player or some other device, or you can connect it to the mains via with a supplied plug adaptor. However, we found that the Ethernet connection to our test laptop kept cutting out when the CV-7438nDM was powered by USB but not when it was plugged into the mains.

Once switched on, you can connect to the Cv-7438nDM via Wi-Fi with your tablet, computer or smartphone and select the network to which you want to connect the CV-7438nDM in the device’s web interface. The CV-7438nDM scans the airwaves and lists all the wireless access points it has detected and displays them in two lists: one for those on the 2.4GHz band and one for those on the 5GHz band.

You’ll need to reboot the CV-7438nDM once it has connected to your router, and after that you can connect the CV-7438nDM to a computer, Blu-ray player or any other device with an Ethernet port so that it can access your network and the internet.

You won’t be able to connect to the CV-7438nDM wirelessly again after setup because it’ll work as a wireless bridge only, conveying data to and from the device to which it’s physically connected with an Ethernet cable. It is possible to access the CV-7438nDM’s web interface again so that you can make it connect to a different router or access point. However, we found we could only access the CV-7438nDM’s web interface using the computer to which it’s attached, unless we entered the CV-7438nDM’s IP address into a computer’s web browser rather than the configuration web address.