D-Link DIR-2150 AC2100 Wi-Fi Gigabit Router Review – A dual-band router with MU-MIMO technology

The DIR-2150 is the newest Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac Wave 2) router from D-Link. Unlike the EXO series, the DIR-2150 targeted towards budget and regular home consumer users. D-Link also claims that, DIR-2150 can be utilized by power users as well, through a proper configuration.

The DIR-2150 is powered by a Mediatek dual-core processor clocked at 880MHz per core. The processor is assisted by a 128MiB RAM and the rated wireless speed of the unit is AC2100, 300Mbps for 2.4GHz and 1733Mbps (5GHz), respectively. The company claims the DIR-2150 utilizes 802.11ac Wave 2 technology for a better data transmission for a smoother internet experience. The DIR-2150 is suitable for 300Mbps to 500Mbps internet users.

Out of the box, you will get a unit of D-Link DIR-2150, a power adapter, a user manual, a CAT 5E cable, a few IoT booklets and a warranty card.

The DIR-2150 features a four non-removable antennas. Although at some point, the non-removable antennas protects the RF terminal copper from wear-and-tear process. A total up to four LED indicator present although I prefer each LAN port gets their own individual status LEDs. The DIR-2150 shares the similar design with DIR-882 with a good ventilation hole for a better heat dissipation.

The DIR-2150 features five gigabit port with yellow port reserved for WAN. Also, a reset button, a WPS button, a DC-in port and a power button present. One of the advantages of this router is, it doesn’t comes with a USB port, which is a huge security risk. In addition, D-Link executed a good safety implementation by giving the users to enable or disable UPnP feature.

Router Model	D-Link DIR-2150
Wireless Class	AC2100
Processor	Mediatek (880 GHz, 2 cores)
Flash Memory	128 MiB
RAM	128 MiB
Data Rate (802.11ac)	5 GHz: 1733 Mbps 2.4 GHz: 300 Mbps

The setting up process is pretty simple and straightforward. If this is your first time setting up a third-party router, all you need is to have your PPPoE credentials. These credentials can be obtained from your respective ISPs.

Say, if you wanted to do a network maintenance, or you want to temporarily halt the access to the internet, most of us definitely turn off the router physically right? Now, what if I say, you can temporarily halt the internet connection without requiring to power off the router. D-Link adds this feature in the firmware itself. Figure 7 shows the status of the internet connection. Certainly, this is a good feature.

Next feature I would like to share here is the QoS Engine feature. Similar to other D-Link routers, you can place your preferred client devices in the QoS priority column. You can key in the internet subscription speed and arrange the clients according to your preferred priority.

For parents, the parental control feature is a good add-on for this model. I’ve personally confirmed that the website blocking and internet access schedule for the selected clients, working. For a regular home user, you can add more rule to block sites to secure your home network from accessing to an unwanted site.

The DIR-2150 supports IPv6 feature out of the box. I’ve used NextDNS‘s IPv6 DNS address. When I proceed with the test, I able to get the IPv6 address from my ISP. In order to double-confirm the feature is working, I also did separate test on Cloudflare‘s IPv6 DNS server. Again, I able to get IPv6 address from my ISP. Well done.

Port-forwarding is an important feature. I do torrenting a lot. Although port-forwarding is a threat to home network security, but through a proper configuration, you can use this feature, securely. Port-forwarding is useful for remote connection to access to any private client within a local area network (PAN). With current Covid-19 pandemic status, D-Link gives importance towards employees working from home by providing excellent support and environment needed for a better productivity execution.

The DIR-2150 has a decent built-in firewall with a few additional security features. I barely notice network performance degradation while using this feature, enabled. D-Link certainly focused on providing a secure environment for users especially for work-from-home users.

The DIR-2150 features the latest WPA3 wireless encryption for a secure home network. By far, the DIR-2150 is the cheapest wireless router to feature WPA3 encryption by default. For a smaller business, you can utilize the guest wireless network by isolating the access to internet only. This is certainly a good feature to secure your intranet from being accessed by unwanted visitors.

The wireless client used for this test is my benchmark PC equipped with Archer TX3000E Wi-Fi 6 adapter. I don’t share my house’s floor plan since the wireless signal congestion may differ from the environment and your environment. Hence, I only share the best reading I able to get from the DIR-2150 through my benchmark PC located two rooms (approx. 8 meters) away. Based on Figure 15, I able to get a good speed with both wireless channel and width set to auto.

Another advantageous of D-Link routers is, it is highly suitable for the users who just buy a router and leave it as it is with default settings. Even if you’re not a power user, but want to secure your home network further, the automatic firmware upgrade is one of the best feature available here. In addition, you can pick your own preferred upgrade time. Something that not even ASUS and TP-Link router has. I certainly welcome this feature and kudos to D-Link’s system engineer team for implementing this feature.

The DIR-2150 can be managed through a dedicated Wi-Fi application by D-Link. I’ve browsed through each feature provided in the application. To my surprise, the feature of offerings quite decent. Each feature is easily accessible and maintained. The DIR-2150 supports centralized management by default.

Conclusion time. To summarize the review of DIR-2150, this Wi-Fi 5 router is certainly a good router for its price. With more wireless router that utilizes Wi-Fi 6 technology already available in the market, is the DIR-2150 is still recommended? I would say, yes. The DIR-2150 is recommended for regular home users who is under a tight budget and not ready to migrate to Wi-Fi 6 technology. With its excellent wireless coverage and future mesh pairing technology, the DIR-2150 certainly is the best bet.