Billion BiPAC 7800DXL review

The Billion 7800DXL is an ADSL2+ modem router with four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB2 port to which you can attach USB drives and printers to share with other users on your network. It’s also a dual-band router, which means the 7800DXL broadcasts on the 2.4GHz and the less congested 5GHz bands, and can provide access to both bands simultaneously. As the 5GHz band is less congested than the 2.4GHz band, you can typically achieve higher data transfer speeds. This is especially convenient if you have a newer smartphones and tablets that can connect to the 5GHz band, as you’ll be able to enjoy better transmission of videos and other media from NAS devices and networked PCs.

As it has an integrated ADSL2+ modem, you can simply connect the 7800DXL to your phone line’s microfilters via its RJ11 DSL port, but you can also use a Gigabit Ethernet port to connect the 7800DXL to an existing network. You can also attach a 3G or 4G dongle to the 7800DXL’s USB port and use that to connect to the internet should your main internet connection fail. This is handy for households that experience occasional or frequent problems with their broadband connection, but is especially good for offices, where an interrupted internet connection is a must.

Compared to many new routers, especially those from manufacturers such as Asus and Netgear, the 7800DXL looks crude and unrefined. It’s not something you’d particularly want to have on show in your living room, but it wouldn’t look out of place in an office, and it can be wall mounted for convenience and better Wi-Fi coverage. Its indicator lights and labels are clear and legible, however, making it easy to see the state of your router at a glance.

Also unlike many modern routers, the 7800DXL doesn’t recommend the use of iOS and Android apps or insist on the installation of intrusive utilities. In some ways this is refreshing, but further serves to make the 7800DXL look crude in comparison to similarly priced routers.

Once it’s physically set up and connected to your computer, the 7800DXL’s web interface automatically loads when you first start your web browser, and you can configure its internet connection and Wi-Fi settings from there. The configuration screens are simply laid out and look unintimidating, but there’s no inline help, which means the process could be confusing to those who are unfamiliar with router configuration.

The rest of its web interface is similarly lacking in explanation and helpful comments, but is otherwise clear, with menu options split into sensible categories. It’ll only take a few mouse button presses to locate all the major features and settings you’ll want to enable and change, whether it’s Wi-Fi security settings or its IP address. It also has many advanced but increasingly necessary options, too, such as dynamic DNS and port forwarding.

WIRELESS SPEEDS
We initially connected our test laptop to the 7800DXL on the 2.4GHz band, and achieved data transfer rates of 33.2MB/s at one metre, 24MB/s at 10 metres and 12.9MB/s at 25 metres. Our lab is a challenging environment for any 2.4GHz-band device and router, but even so, we’ve seen better speeds from devices such as the Securifi Almond and the D-Link DIR-826L under the same conditions.

We also used a Billion BiPAC 3010ND Wi-Fi adaptor to connect to it on the 2.4GHz band, and saw a big improvement at 10 metres, with the transfer speed rising to 61.5MB/s, but a lower speed of 4MB/s at 25 metres. The 7800DXL’s transfer speeds were much better on the 5GHz band, with speeds of 97.2MB/s at one metre, 93.2MB/s at 10 metres when we used our test laptop’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor. However, we again experienced a low 4MB/s at 25 metres. The speeds improved yet again when we used the BiPAC 3010ND adaptor to connect to the 7800DXL on the 5GHz band, with speeds of 133MB/s at one metre, 90.1MB/s at 10 metres and 22MB/s at 25 metres.

From our speed tests, we can see that the 7800DXL is best suited to open-plan offices and living rooms where users aren’t likely to be more than 15-20 metres away from the router.

CONCLUSION

The Billion BiPAC 7800DXL may be unattractive, but it’s still a good general purpose router. There’s no reason why it can’t be used in the home, but its ability to use 3G and 4G Wi-Fi adaptors as a means of connecting to the internet makes it better suited to offices. If you’re looking for a home router then the Netgear WNDR4500 is a good alternative. It has better Wi-Fi performance on the 2.4GHz band and a more user-friendly web interface. If you need a good router for your business, however, you should consider the BiPAC 7800DXL.