D-Link DWA-X1850 AX1800: Meet the first Wi-Fi 6 USB 3.0 adapter

Main features

The main characteristics of this new Wi-Fi adapter from the manufacturer D-Link is that it incorporates selectable dual-band with Wi-Fi 6 and is AX1800 class. In the 2.4GHz band we can get one speed up to 574Mbpsthanks to its two internal antennas in MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration, the 40MHz channel width and the Wi-Fi 6 standard. 5GHz band we can get one speed up to 1201Mbpsthanks to its two internal antennas in MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration, the 80MHz channel width and the Wi-Fi 6 standard, unfortunately in this frequency band we do not have support to configure 160MHz of channel width, something that would achieve up to 2402Mbps and be of the AX3000 class.

This Wi-Fi adapter has all the technologies of the Wi-Fi 6 standardso we can get the best possible speed, coverage and user experience:

• MU-MIMO: This technology allows us to send data simultaneously with other WiFi clients, optimizing the network globally and achieving a great combined wireless speed. All Wi-Fi 6 routers and access points have this technology, so we can achieve high transfer rates globally.
• OFDMA: This is the star technology of the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, which allows us to connect dozens of wireless clients without having an appreciable global speed loss.
• Beamforming: This technology allows the wireless signal to be focused on the clients, and these clients benefit from extra coverage, and the real speed will also increase somewhat.

This Wi-Fi adapter is compatible with any previous Wi-Fi standardsuch as Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) and also with the popular Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), although the maximum real speed will be achieved if we connect to a WiFi router or access point with the WiFi 6 standard.

This D-Link DWA-X1850 has a very elegant design and small size, something very important if you are going to use it in a laptop or ultrabook, in this way, it is very easy to always carry it with us to connect it to the USB port and enjoy the wireless improvements. This device has a USB 3.0 interface, so we won’t have a bottleneck with the data interface, and furthermore, we won’t have to disassemble our desktop or laptop computer as it happens with other devices with similar characteristics.

This Wi-Fi adapter incorporates compatibility with the WPA3 data encryption, therefore, we will be able to configure this type of wireless security on our router or WiFi access point, and have the best possible security on the WiFi network. This feature is very important because right now we are in a transition phase, all new devices already support the WPA3 standard and as time goes by, they will stop supporting the old standards such as WPA or WPA2, just as it happened with the popular WEP more than a decade ago. Of course, this model also has support for WPA2, so if your router does not support WPA3 encryption, you will be able to continue connecting without any problem.

This D-Link DWA-X1850 adapter no need for complex driver installation in Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating systems, since we will simply have to double-click on the storage unit that will appear, then the drivers will be installed completely transparently in the operating system. In this way, the operating system will detect it completely automatically to start working and connecting to the wireless networks around us.

Once we know the main features of this Wi-Fi 6 D-Link DWA-X1850 adapter, we are going to see the unboxing of this device.

Unboxing and first impressions

The first thing that caught our attention about this D-Link DWA-X1850 Wi-Fi adapter is its small size, we expected a somewhat larger size, above all, somewhat thicker due to the two antennas that we have inside, however , this WiFi 6 adapter is quite flat, and also quite small in size. The dimensions of this adapter is 95.5mm long, 30mm wide and 12.7mm thick with a weight of only 23.6 grams, therefore, this new WiFi adapter is very portable, to always carry it with us , or to connect it to a desktop computer and not see too much.

The only thing we must keep in mind with this adapter is that we must connect it to a USB 3.0 port, either USB 3.1 Gen 1 or USB 3.2 Gen 1 since they all use the same standard, what we should never use is a USB 2.0 port that we have in our team, because we will have a bottleneck in the data interface.

The price of this adapter is around 45 euros, a fairly competitive price if we take into account that it has the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard and is of the AX1800 class, it is already available in stores such as Amazon:

In the following video you can see the unboxing and first impressions of this WiFi 6 adapter for desktop and laptop computers, here you can see the contents of the box and also how is this new device from the manufacturer to connect to routers and access points with the latest wireless standard.