Review of D-Link DWA-182 AC1200 Wireless USB WiFi Adapter

Due to a long time is taken by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) to fully rate the 802.11ac wireless standard, some manufacturers have released listed as “draft AC” products of the networking adapters. D-Link DWA-182 is one of them. It is unassured by the D-Link’s engineers that whether the release is upgraded from draft to final or the adapter is fully 802.11ac compliant. Let’s see whether it will stay in the competition or not.

Features and Specifications of DWA-182 Wireless USB WiFi Adapter from D-Link

• The DWA-182 is featured with AC SmartBeam, which sends a separate signal to each connected device to provide the fastest connection speed

• It is designed with the beamforming technology to identify the device and send a focused signal to it

• The chip-based AC SmartBeam optimizes drivers between the D-Link adapter and a D-Link router

• The AC SmartBeam works with 5GHz band and with the latest driver package of D-Link only, which increases the throughput especially for a middle range of an adapter. However, it does not increase the adapter’s range

• It supports AC1200 with dual bands (300Mbps with 2.4Ghz band or 867Mbps with 5GHz band)

• It comes with a Broadcom controller and an internal antenna

• It supports USB 3.0 and backwardly compatible with USB 2.0

• It supports Operating Systems like Windows XP (SP3), 7, 8

• It supports wireless standards like 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.a, 802.11ac (draft)

• You will get a DWA-182 USB WiFi Adapter with a protective cap, a software CD, and a quick-start guide in the package

• It has a WPS button and a green LED

Management and Other Observations

The wireless connection manager of D-Link facilitates the connection of DWA-182 to your WiFi network. If the network is not detected, still you can manually configure the connection. The software is easier than the Microsoft’s built-in configuration utility. It supports WEP, WPA2-Personal, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA-Personal, WPA-Enterprise security encryptions. You can also setup your network as either infrastructure or ad hoc. Though the wireless adapter didn’t get the heat during the tests, it has small slits on its sides for cooling it. The most interesting thing I noticed is that the DWA-182 USB wireless adapter has two internal antennas, since, for a client-side beamforming, there is a need for multiple antennas. Only some lacks in the DWA-182 I got in my testing are, it couldn’t connect to the D-Link router through WPS and it didn’t get any real performance over an 802.11n router.

Price and Warranty

The D-LINK DWA-182 Dual Band USB WiFi Adapter is available for only $43 on Amazon. It comes with a standard one-year warranty from the manufacturer.

Conclusion

Though it doesn’t gain any real performance over 802.11n, it is the only wireless USB adapter supporting the 802.11ac draft. It has an easy set-up and a cool wireless utility manager. However, if you want to get and early 11ac WiFi adapter, then the D-Link DWA-182 is for you.