Give D-Link points for creativity. A router that serves overtime as a photo frame? Sure, why not? It’s already on the network. And if you thought the LCD display on Belkin’s N1 Vision was cool, D-Link’s widgety-looking 3.2" LCD on the DIR-685 ($209.99) is downright futuristic. The question is whether you think a 3.2" display—roughly the size of your palm—makes a practical, viewable photo frame within your environment. If not, then you’re probably back to using the display for router control...if you use it at all.
Fortunately, there’s a lot more to the DIR-685 than being a quarter-sized photo frame. While there’s no external switch for an easy short-cut, you can still configure the router’s options to turn it into an access point. There are menu options for configuring Internet access via a 3G USB adapter, as well as QoS support for specifically optimizing VoIP and streaming traffic.
Of course, the headline feature of this unit is that it’s a “storage router.” Normally, that means the vendor integrates a USB port or two and provides remote access to USB-attached storage. D-Link gives you two USB ports but then takes the unique step of adding a 2.5" hard drive bay into one edge. You could plant a top-end drive in that bad boy and have yourself 640GB or more of instant network-attached storage accessible by up to 64 user accounts or general FTP. With only one internal drive, there’s obviously no RAID support, so use this drive for redundant data you want easily accessible for outsiders, not as your primary storage location.
Other hot router features include a UPnP server and iTunes server for media streaming to compatible players on the LAN. The seemingly obligatory BitTorrent download manager is present (this requires a 2.5" HDD to be installed). We like that the DIR-685 can email alert and firmware patch messages to the admin. And yeah, getting LAN, WAN, and wireless performance speedometers on the LCD (and several other widgets besides) is still pretty cool, too.
D-Link did the right thing by putting four gigabit ports in place, although that’s pretty much expected at this price point. And for the price (which still shows as $299.99 on D-Link’s site), we would have expected 2.4/5.0 GHz dual-band support. As it is, the DIR-685 is 2.4 GHz-only, which seems a gaping oversight for a supposedly media- and streaming-savvy router. On the other hand, we dig D-Link’s SharePort feature, which makes attached USB devices appear as local assets to client systems running D-Link’s SharePort software. For these and several other small but useful perks, we found the DIR-685 to be one of this roundup’s most intriguing routers. If nothing else, it sets a positive example for the networking industry in how to innovate for a more experienced consumer audience.
- Router Reignition
- Asus RT-N13U And RT-N16
- Belkin N150 And N1 Vision
- D-Link DIR-685
- Linksys WRT610N
- Netgear WRN2000v2 And WNDR3700
- Ruckus Wireless 7811
- TP-Link WR741ND
- TRENDnet TEW-654TR And TEW-671BR
- ZyXEL X550N
- How We Tested
- Benchmark Results: 1GB Transfer, Many Files
- Benchmark Results: 1GB Transfer, Single File
- Benchmark Results: IxChariot Throughput
- Benchmark Results: IxChariot Response Time
- Benchmark Results: Zap TCP
- Benchmark Results: Zap UDP
- Benchmark Results: PerformanceTest TCP
- Benchmark Results: PerformanceTest UDP
- Conclusion



Good point.
Which firmware was installed on it?
I have one (V1), but am very unhappy about the signal range! I have it replaced with a WNDR3700 and have now a twice as strong signal as before!
Bit the bullet with the $$ and opted for the Linksys and am very pleased.
pato, my WRT600N was the v1 variant. I forget the release version of the firmware, but it was the latest version, as Linksys has not released any updates for it in roughly a year (I've had the router since a few months after it was first released). I liked it due to the dual radios, however, but it would drop wireless clients randomly (which was aggravating and required me to reset the router about once every other month) and it would not retain my port forwarding settings for my home server. And I agree with you, signal range was marginal with that router.
2) Should have tested N + G concurrency on 2.4GHz as well as N only on 2.4 + 5GHz concurrency (for devices that had dual radio). This data is important for most people who will run a Wireless N device or two, but likely also have a few smart phones or a game console that only supports 2.4GHz... I know the Airport Extreme currently has a bug making this dog slow, do some of the others?
3) onyl 2 concurrent devices? how about 5 or 6? I regularly have 7 or 8. I notice performance drops off consistently just based on the number of connected devices, even if only one is "in use" actively downloading, and want to know if some routers hold out better with that.
4) no feature comparison chart?
How much did you guys test the shareport function? (Not much from what it looks like). The shareport function hooked up to an external hard drive only works if you are transferring a file or two using windows. It totally fails when you try to us it with a 3rd party backup program (such as acrea). I personally haven't tried connecting a printer to shareport. I also couldn't get it to work using eraser (a disk erasing utility. I concluded that it just doesn't work with third party apps. So far, none of the driver, firmware or shareport software updates have fixed this problem.
D-link does have a nice forum on their site where people can post their problems. For fixable problems, other users will helpfully solve your problems. For unsolvable problems (shareport being one of them) the user complaints just keep piling up. Rarely do d-link's own tech support grace the forums. Apparently, D-link is currently collecting all of the shareport grips and cataloging them. Ostensibly, this will result in a fix at some point in the future. Still waiting.