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

AIRPLAYER

With the CV-7438nDM you can turn any speaker with an auxiliary input into an Airplay compatible device. Connect the CV-7438nDM to your speakers via its 3.5mm audio output and from there you can select the CV-7438nDM in iOS as the device to which music should be streamed. Your iOS device needs to be connected to the same router as the CV-7438nDM, but if that’s your home router then it’s highly likely that it will be. You can also select the CV-7438nDM within iTunes and stream music from your PC or Mac. We found that there were occasional audio drop-outs when streaming to the CV-7438nDM, but our lab is heavily congested on both Wi-Fi bands, so it should perform near perfectly in a typical home environment.

It’s worth noting that Edimax recommends that Android users use the Twonky Beam app to stream music to the CV-7438nDM.

NOT JUST A QUIRKY FACE

As the CV-7438nDM is essentially a wireless adaptor, we connected it to our test laptop and configured it to communicate with our test PC via a Linksys EA-4500 wireless router on the 5GHz band. This test setup transferred data at 119.8Mbit/s at one metre, 114.8Mbit/s at 10 metres and 28.9Mbit/s at 25 metres. When we used our test laptop’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor to perform the same test, the setup achieved transfer speeds of 76.3Mbit/s at one and 10 metres, and 21.7Mbit/s at 25 metres. This shows that the CV-7438nDM is capable of pretty good wireless performance.

Although we’re unconvinced by the CV-7438nDM’s unconventional looks, it is a brilliant means of connecting Ethernet-only devices to your network, and the fact you can stream music to a pair of speakers from Airplay-compatible devices is a major bonus. If you’ve no interest in audio streaming and prefer something a little more discreet then you should consider buying the Netgear WNCE2001 instead. However, the WNCE2001 only works on the 2.4GHz band. We like both devices, but would be happy to pay more for the extra versatility and convenience provided by the Edimax CV-7438nDM.