D-Link

D-Link today announced the availability of the dual-band AC3150 Ultra Wi-Fi router (model DIR-885L/R) which is the answer to Asus' recently announced RT-AC88U. The new router shares the same Wi-Fi specs as its Asus counterpart and also supports muti-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO).

MU-MIMO is a new Wi-Fi technology that allows for better efficiency in data transmitting over Wi-Fi and as such it enhances the connection speeds to clients of different Wi-Fi grades. This means you should be able to connect many different types of devices and have them all perform optimally.

The new router has the top speed on the 5GHz of 2167Mbps and on the 2.4GHz, up to 1000Mbps. Combining the two numbers, D-Link designates it as an AC3150 router while Asus designates the RT-AC88U as an AC3100 router. Coming in all red, the new DIR-885L/R shares the same radical design as its older tri-band brother, the AC3200 DIR-890L/R, but now has four detachable antennas instead of six non-detachable ones.

D-Link DIR-885L/R router's specs Wi-Fi standards 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with MU-MIMO Wi-Fi bandwidth 2167 Mbps (5Ghz) and 1000Mbps (2.4Ghz) Processor 1.4GHz Dual Core Processor Flash memory 128 MB of NAND System memory (RAM) 512MB of DDR3 WAN 1 Gigabit WAN (Internet) port LAN 4 Gigabit LAN ports Antenna Four detachable dual-band antennas USB 1 USB 3.0 port and 1 USB 2.0 port Features Intelligent QoS, SmartConnect

While this new D-Link router shares similar hardware specs as the Asus RT-AC88U, it has only four LAN port, while the Asus counter part has eight. It also seems to pack few features and has just one USB port, instead of two.

Despite that, the D-Link DIR-885L/R costs the same as the Asus RT-AC88U. It's available now with the suggested retail price of $280.