Q-Waves Quicklink HD review

We’ve already tested out Intel’s Wireless Display by using a Dell Inspiron 15R laptop with WiDi built in, and a Netgear Push 2 TV, but the experience left us frustrated. Not only was the connection unreliable, but you couldn’t use your laptop for anything else while a video was playing.

Q-Waves’ Quicklink HD kit claims to solve both problems. First, it uses Wireless USB technology – also known as Ultra WideBand – rather than WiFi. This provides a connection speed of up to 480Mbit/s and allows your TV to run as an extended desktop, so you can continue to use your laptop screen for other tasks.

The kit supports video up to 1,920×1,080 and audio up to 5.1 channels, so your laptop needs to be powerful enough to play video with these specifications. The laptop doesn’t need a Full HD display, of course, as the video will be played back on your HD TV. Unfortunately Blu-ray video isn’t supported. In the box you’ll find two USB dongles, a base unit with HDMI, optical S/PDIF and minijack headphone outputs and a power supply. You plug the dongle with the right-angle USB port into your laptop or PC and the other into the base. There are two positions – horizontal and vertical – but the manual advises positioning both dongles vertically.

Wireless USB isn’t like WiFi: it works within a room and needs line-of-sight. For the best performance there should be no obstructions between the dongles, and Q-waves say they need to be placed less than 3m apart for proper pairing, and no more than 6m apart for streaming.