Review: DAP-1720 AC1750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender

Review: DAP-1720 AC1750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender

The DAP-1720 is a wireless extender offering AC1750 speeds, which can extend your home or even office wireless network easily. It really irks me when I move to a spot in my house where WiFi coverage is poor and connection gets drop, or worse, I get the dreaded “You Are Offline” message, especially when I am in the midst of loading an important page – e.g. online shopping, or downloading a large file.

The DAP-1720 is designed to be flexible and versatile, it can act as a wireless range extender or a wireless access point, through the built-in ethernet port. I reviewed the DAP-1860 previously. The DAP-1720 has the same feature set, just 1 lesser antenna and a smaller bandwidth. As a quick recap, the DAP-1860 offers 800 Mbps (2.4 GHz) + 1732 Mbps (5 GHz). In comparison, the DAP-1720 offers 450 Mbps (2.4 GHz) and 1300 Mbps (5 GHz). The significant difference is for the 2.4 Ghz spectrum, but most devices (such as laptops and handphones) are now supporting 5 Ghz so I would expect less utilization and congestion at the 2.4 GHz spectrum.

Front
Back

Setup Process of the DAP-1720

You can set it up easily with the touch of a button. It supports WPS. But I went the manual route, which wasn’t too difficult. I was up and running within 5 min.

  • Plug it to a 3 pin wall point
  • Connect to it via the credentials as listed on the back of device or on a card in the box
  • Scan and select your home WiFi
  • Specify your credentials
  • Reset and you are done!

What I like

The Ethernet port is a useful feature, albeit not an essential one. The DAP-1720 also features a Smart Signal Indicator to help you locate the best place to put your Wi-Fi extender to get the best coverage in your home. You just need to plug it in and the LED would light up to show the signal strength. Also, range performance was quite good, as it was still able to maintain a decent connection even at previously WiFi dead spots for my handphone. Overall throughput was also decent, and I was able to achieve sustained download speeds of approximately 100-200 Mbps. Nowhere near the theoretical limits, but significantly better than 1-2 Mbps or frequently dropped connections.

What I didn’t Like

The size. The DAP-1720 does take up quite a bit of space, and you might face difficulties in installing it to a small power strip. Also, it would have been better if D-Link could have included a power pass through socket, so that I can still retain the use of the power socket.

Overall, for most home networks where a usual 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz Wifi Router is being deployed, the DAP-1720 is a easy to use range extender to boost wireless range. It can be purchased at yout usual electronic retailers, or online such as Qoo10 for S$139. The future is moving towards mesh networking but that is still at its infancy and will take a little while longer before it becomes really popular. In the meanwhile, range extenders such as the DAP-1720 will still play an important role in helping us manage our wireless network setup.