When you’re shopping for a new router for your home network you basically get to choose from two buckets of designs: large, black spidery boxes, or cute, white domes. The D-Link AX3200 falls squarely into the former category, with a glossy black plastic casing, a transformer-esque grill for heat dispersal, and four raised antennas. Like most routers, it looks like an insect stuck on its back.

Which is to say, that the AX3200 is the kind of router that you hide in the study, not the kind that you pretend is a piece of modern art on the mantelpiece. 

But you’d also argue that the best routers look like this, too. Crowd favourites from D-Link, ASUS and Netgear all share this aesthetic, and the antennas are an important feature, especially if you live in a house with famously poor WiFi coverage. And all said, the AX3200 is also a bit smaller than most similar products, so it is easily hidden.

The D-Link AX3200 is a dual-band router, meaning it offers two concurrent frequency bands for sending and receiving data on, with the option to create separate networks on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, or to combine them on a single network and let the router decide which devices use which band. This router gets its title from the fact that its hardware can handle throughput up to 3200mbps (or 3.2Gbps) with 400mbps on the 2.4Ghz band and 2400 on the 5Ghz band. 

We found that the software smarts did a great job of putting heavy-duty downloaders, like laptops, TVs and gaming consoles, on the 5GHz band, and splitting out lower use devices to the 2.4GHz frequency.

Throughout our testing, the AX3200 has performed extremely well. D-Link promises up to 8 simultaneous streams, though I’ll admit I only have 6 devices to stream to simultaneously at home. Regardless, it definitely keeps up.

With large file downloads, like video games to an Xbox, I regularly saw speeds in excess of the 100Mbps limit on my account (thanks Aussie Broadband!).

One of the key selling points of the AX3200 is the ability to create a mesh network using it as the primary router and connecting compatible D-Link routers and extenders. I tested this with a D-Link DAP-X1860 WiFi extender (both are part of the D-Link EXO AX device range) and it all linked together nicely. Once set up, the network utilises beam forming tech so that your devices switch between the different routers as you move from room to room.

Interestingly, the various smart devices in my home worked better with this mesh network than with many other mesh systems I’ve tested recently. In my review of the Eero Pro 6 system, I briefly discussed the difficulties I’ve had using a Google Chromecast with Google TV on mesh networks, with beam forming appearing to be the root of the problems. I had no trouble with the network I set up using these devices - everything played nicely.

However, I did have trouble adding an older D-Link device into the mix. I have a D-Link COVR AX1870 router from a previous test, and though I followed all instructions to the letter, I couldn’t successfully add it to the network through the D-Link app. In fact, it ended up mucking up something in the network settings and I needed to factory reset the AX3200 and the WiFi extender and start over.