BIZ TECH: D-Link AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 PCie adapter review

Especially working from home, it can be a challenge to connect a PC to a wired internet connection, you either have to locate it by the main Router/Fibre Terminal or pay to put in some Cat5 or Cat6 network cabling. For this reason, many people use Wi-Fi to connect. Laptops come with Wi-Fi built in, but most desktop PC’s do not. You can get a simple USB Wi-Fi dongle, which is okay but usually has some limitations, or go for a PCie card such as this. Installing the card does require you to delve inside the PC but it is a simple plug-in card. You then attach leads for the antenna and put the antenna in a suitable place.

The DWA-X3000 Wi-Fi 6 PCIe Adapter with Bluetooth 5.1 is designed to achieve AX3000 Wi-Fi speeds up to 2402Mbps (5GHz) + 600Mbps (2.4GHz) and is backwards compatible with 802.11ac/n/g/a/b technology, allowing you to connect to your older devices.

We have a max speed fibre connection, and the downstairs office area is wired up with a Cat6 cable and switch (The main router is upstairs and is a D-Link top of the line AX-5400 Wi-Fi 6 unit).

After installing the card and drivers we tested the PC both on the wired network and the Wi-Fi.

We used speedtest.net and in all honesty it was hard to separate the performance given the variability between test results.

The wired connection gave a ping between 3 and 4 ms with download between 580 and 620 Mbps and upload of 300-380 Mbps. The Wi-Fi connection gave between 3-8ms Ping, 560-660 download and 330-350 upload.

Just to compare we also ran speedtest on a PC connected directly to the router with 2ms Ping, 899 Mbps download and 440 Mbps upload showing there are some distance and connection  losses over the cabling.

Having said that the Wi-Fi result is very impressive and given a lot of people working from home have 100/30 connections, still provides blazing performance. This especially shows the benefits of moving to Wi-Fi 6 versus the previous Wi-Fi 5 standard which is noticeably slower (and more so if there are multiple users).

As a bonus the AX3000 also allows a Bluetooth 5.1 connection, although we did not test that, but it would be good for connecting headphones, game controllers or keyboards.

This is an excellent option for robust Wi-Fi connection for a work (or gaming) PC in the office or at home.

The DWA-X3000 is available now from www.dlink.co.nz (RRP NZ$179.99) and from all authorised D-Link Partners and Retailers