D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System Review
Disclosure: D-Link provided Blog of Dad with the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System and other products mentioned for the purpose of review and ongoing use. Any thoughts expressed about D-Link products in this article are based on my own experiences. For more information, visit my disclosure statement.
The home Wi-Fi setup is a vital, yet often overlooked part of the modern home. More than ever, we are reliant on fast, stable and secure internet access for all manner of tasks. Entertainment, social connections, working from home and general mindless scrolling sit alongside less obvious drains on bandwidth – connected robot vacuum cleaners, smart watches, smart speakers, lightbulbs, security cameras, air conditioners, connected fridges and washing machines… sometimes it seems like every new product that enters the home requires a connection. Many ISP-provided Wi-Fi routers simply aren’t up to the demands created by the modern connected home and therefore suffer from substandard performance, making the user experience feel slow or even broken. Could the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System be the answer?
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System
The new D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System is exactly what I have come to expect from D-Link – a user-friendly, no fuss home network solution. The EAGLE PRO AI M32 packs some of the latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology, making it a worthy contender for any home currently struggling with either Wi-Fi range issues or an overloaded, congested network.
Pros
User-friendly app
Great price for Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System
Subtle good looks
Wi-Fi 6 (AX) performance
Extensive Wi-Fi coverage
Fast and easy to set up
Significantly greater network capacity than Wi-Fi 5
Cons
Lacks some advanced features
May need to experiment with placing nodes for optimum performance
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System – First Impressions
D-Link sent me the 3-pack version of the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System for testing in this review. When it arrived, my immediate impression was that the package was much larger than I expected. I had previously reviewed the D-Link COVR AC1200 (COVR-1103) mesh setup, which included very compact devices.
While significantly larger than the previous generation of devices, the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 system also packs in a whole lot more technology. It also still looks good, is discreet and blends into a wide range of décor. The front of each device is a pleasing, curved white plastic with reasonably subtle D-Link branding. The top provides a subtle point of interest, with a very pale blue ventilated design and a single status light. This light is in the shape of an X and is a single point of flair on an otherwise discreet design.
The rear of each D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 access point has more perforation for ventilation, two ethernet ports, an internet port, a WPS button, reset button, power connection and a power button. There are no external antennas, with four (plus one for Channel Monitoring) hidden away inside the plastic casing. This is a huge plus for those looking for a quality Wi-Fi mesh setup that doesn’t leave their home looking like an office!
Each of the three included mesh nodes is identical, which means it doesn’t matter which one is used as the primary device. Simply pick one and get started.
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System – Set Up
Configuring
I have reviewed several D-Link products over the past few years and each time I am impressed by the ease with which they can be set up. D-Link appear to be intent on delivering products that can be accessed by just about everyone, even those with minimum technical experience. The instructions are visual and explicit, with the EAGLE PRO AI app providing step-by-step, simple instructions to follow. The single, multicolour status light on each M32 unit provides a clear indication of when the unit is ready for the next step of the process, and its subtle white light is a quick ongoing indicator that it is properly connected and functioning.
An obvious impact of the ease-of-use user interface of the EAGLE PRO AI app is that power users may find fewer advanced options than they may like. There is an Advanced Mode that takes you to the web interface. This is still very user-friendly and easy to navigate and does provide a much broader range of options for configuring the network.
I am a reasonably technically minded person, but I also don’t feel the need to spend hours-upon-hours tinkering with my home network. For me, the simplicity of the app-based setup is great – with one exception. I did dive into the advanced options and set the security mode to a higher standard, as it appears to default to WPA2-Personal. Changing to WPA3 is a great idea if you are using newer devices that support it, but keep in mind that some (particularly older) devices don’t.
After the first D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 device is configured, adding the additional units to create the mesh network is a breeze. Again, the instructions are clear and easy to follow. The app walks you through the process step-by-step, including telling you when to turn on the power and what to do with network settings. Follow the instructions carefully (including completing the process within close proximity of the first device) and you should be up and running in a matter of minutes!
The only slight quirk that I encountered in this process was that the app appeared to restart each time I reached the final step. This made me think that the configuration process might have failed, but on re-entering the app I found the new access point to be registered and configured. The status light on top had also changed to white – a clear indication that it is configured and working.
The final piece of the puzzle is positioning your new wireless access points in a way in that maximises the coverage on offer. I have written before about the difficulties I sometimes have in my full brick/concrete slab home, particularly with achieving a quality and consistent signal upstairs. With the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32, I found that some tweaking the position of each access point, and the direction they faced, enabled me to achieve a solid mesh network that provides coverage across the home.
There is also the option of using the “Internet” port on the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 system for establishing a wired Gigabit backhaul, which is a great option to have.
Connecting Devices
Once the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System is configured, connecting devices is a straightforward experience. All of the phones and computers in the house found the new network and connected quickly on the first attempt (except for the time I made a mistake with the password). Of course, the ease of this task is largely dependent on the interface of the device that is connecting – I found it extremely difficult to locate the correct menu for Wi-Fi settings with my robot vacuum cleaner, for example.
The other issue that may arise is if you have changed your security settings to WPA3 only. Older devices simply won’t find the network, as I discovered with my JBL Link View smart display. In this instance, you will have to decide whether it is time to update devices to those that support the latest standard, or to reduce your security to support both WPA2 and WPA3.
Changing devices over to a new Wi-Fi network can be a boring task, so you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. Fortunately, there is a good reason. The latest Wi-Fi 6 standard used by the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 system supports up to 4 times greater network capacity than Wi-Fi 5. It uses 8×8 uplink/downlink, MU-MIMO, OFDMA and BSS Colouring to handle more devices on the network with greater efficiency (if that all looks like a big jumble of meaningless letters to you, I will explain it in more detail below).
With more and more devices demanding a slice of my home wireless network, I had certainly noticed a few performance issues on my previous Wi-Fi 5 mesh setup. Upstairs, the performance had become inconsistent and video calls had begun to suffer more and more dropouts. Downstairs, a multitude of devices from televisions to the robot vacuum and even the fridge had begun to compete with my phone and computer for bandwidth, resulting in my phone sometimes dropping off the Wi-Fi network and onto 4G during data-intensive use.
Each D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 provides two Gigabit Ethernet ports. These provide fast and reliable wired connections almost instantly, without the need for any configuration. I plugged my desktop PC and my Synology NAS directly into the second M32 device and they appeared on the network within seconds. Occasionally, I did notice a slight lag with devices reconnecting to the wireless network, but once the connection was established it remained solid.
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System – Specifications
The D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System packs a whole lot of goodness into its understated design. Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 (AX) delivers combined speeds up to 3200 Mbps across the 2.4GHz (800 Mbps) and 5GHz (2402 Mbps) frequencies. As stated above, each access point contains a total of five antennas – four internal antennas that support simultaneous spatial streaming for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and a fifth internal antenna dedicated to Channel Monitoring.
That Channel Monitoring removes the need for users to analyse the current networks and attempt to assign a channel with the least congestion. For those of us in higher density living where multiple homes cast multiple Wi-Fi networks, that is an excellent addition. Again, it speaks to D-Link’s commitment to delivering a user-friendly and hands-off experience that just works. Sure, there are those who like to fine-tune their own setup, who won’t like having less control over this element of their network, but for the vast majority of us it is a good thing.
According to the D-Link website, the 3 Mesh Router M32 system is capable of covering up to 740 square metres with seamless Wi-Fi. Of course, that is a best-case figure, and the real-world user experience can be significantly impacted by a whole range of environmental conditions. My house is certainly less than 740m2, but I still need to use all three D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 access points to achieve good coverage upstairs and down. That being said, the coverage is good, and I can move from room to room seamlessly. For those who haven’t experienced the joys of seamless movement around the house that a quality mesh Wi-Fi system offers, the difference over Wi-Fi from a standard router can be significant!
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is another technology packed into the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 system. This enables more users at once, with small packets transmitted together, as opposed to queuing up. When combined with the bi-directional Multi-user, Multiple input, multiple-output (Mu-MIMO), the result is better efficiency of upstream and downstream transmissions. This is why the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 system is so much better at juggling the ever-increasing number of devices attached to my home network.
Other clever technological advances help to fine-tune the Wi-Fi experience of the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Mesh System. Beamforming technology focuses the signal in the direction of devices, while target Wake Time (TWT) technology can help to save device battery life and reduce network congestion.
As mentioned above, WPA3 security standards provide enhanced protection over WPA2. However, whether or not you activate it will be a matter of personal preference, as it may stop older or less-capable devices from connecting. WPA2 was activated by default on my test unit, which still provides a degree of security while enabling a wider range of devices to connect.
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System – User Experience
The D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System was fast and easy to set up, which has given me plenty of time to get on with the task of testing it out. Basically, this has involved me transferring all of my devices onto the new network, using it as normal and running a few speed tests at various points around the house.
After a little bit of playing around with the positioning of the access points, I have achieved a stable connection throughout the home. It did take a few attempts, with the solidly built nature of my home and slightly awkward positioning of power points limiting the options for placing the three M32 devices. The two downstairs devices formed a solid mesh connection no matter where I positioned the second device, but the upstairs was a bit more sensitive. My initial attempts formed a connection, but it wasn’t entirely reliable, and the upstairs node sometimes dropped off the mesh. Obviously, this wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t take too long to fine-tune the positions of the devices in a way that has created a stable connection without any further dropouts.
It is worth taking the time to get this part right, because the user experience can vary greatly just by tweaking positions and directions. Speed test results (over a Superloop NBN 50 FTTC connection) hovered between 20-30Mbps on the furthest node when the mesh positioning wasn’t optimised. Even worse, the signal dropped completely more than once and a couple of times the status light flashed orange to signify that the node had completely disconnected from the network.
After tweaking the positioning, however, the result has been very different. The upstairs node has consistently delivered a solid connection. Even better, Speed test results are fast and consistent, regularly coming in at around the maximum 52Mbps download and 19Mbps upload on offer by my ISP. Even in rooms where an access point isn’t directly located (separated by two brick walls), results of between 40-50Mbps download and 18.5Mbps upload are common and very pleasing.
I tested the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System in real-world conditions over a week. This included times when two adults were working from home and the two children were at home for much of the time. Video calls and cloud-based documents jostled with television and music streaming as well as general browsing, file downloading and social media scrolling. Mostly, these activities were spread across the access points, although there were times when several devices where concentrated on a single access node.
Throughout the testing of the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System demonstrated excellent performance, provided the nodes were properly positioned. The network wasn’t fazed by either the number of devices connected overall, or by having a significant number of devices attached to a single access point. I ran several simultaneous 4K videos on devices connected to the same access point without any issue, with the 50 Mbps of my NBN connection ultimately being the limiting factor. No matter what I threw at the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System, it was able to handle it.
D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System – Final Thoughts
The new D-Link EAGLE PRO AI M32 AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System is exactly what I have come to expect from D-Link – a user-friendly, no fuss home network solution. The EAGLE PRO AI M32 packs some of the latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology, making it a worthy contender for any home currently struggling with either Wi-Fi range issues or an overloaded, congested network.