D-Link DIR-605L Cloud Wireless Router review

The D-Link DIR-605L Cloud Router is a very simple device. It only uses the more congested 2.4GHz band, only has Fast Ethernet ports instead of the faster Gigabit Ethernet ports and doesn’t have a USB port to share printers and storage on your network. It is, however, very cheap, making it a good choice if you simply want a Wi-Fi access point for your home or office.

It’s compatible with the 802.11n standard and has a theoretical maximum Wi-Fi speed of 300Mbit/s. In testing, we achieved transfer speeds of 40Mbit/s at one metre, 41.2Mbit/s at 10 metres and 19Mbit/s when we connected to it using our Centrino laptop’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor.

We also connected to it using the D-link DWA-182 Wi-Fi dongle and achieved higher transfer speeds of 55Mbit/s at one metre and 54Mbit/s at 10 metres. Sadly, the DIR-605L and DWA-182 failed the wireless transfer test at 25 metres.

The DIR-605L uses a similar web interface to other D-Link routers. It’s clear, but it can be confusing to find your way around at first. Thankfully, the initial screens provide wizards for many common configuration tasks, so you shouldn’t have to interact with the web interface often.

Sadly, the cloud services provided by the DIR-605L only extend to remote access of its web interface and email notifications when certain events occur, such as when a new device connects to the DIR-605L, when a device fails to connect and when new firmware is available. As the DIR-605L doesn’t have a USB port, you can’t attach USB drives to share media over the network, which also means you can’t access media remotely. We don’t think many people will find the DIR-605L’s cloud services useful.

If you need an inexpensive router or network access point, the DIR-605L isn’t bad, but you should look to D-Link’s more expensive routers such as the D-Link DIR-826L Cloud Gigabit Router N600 if you want to access media when away from home.