D-Link D501: 30-second review

Connectivity for travellers is never consistent and can be a real challenge if you need to move large amounts of data to and from your remote system.

For those who operate in major global cities and across much of Europe, the answer has been to use 5G mobile networks, which provide broadband-level performance for suitably capable phones and laptops.

The D-Link 501 is a USB device designed to attach to a laptop or tablet that doesn’t have a 5G modem installed, which can easily add that technology without even a driver.

Simply insert a suitable mobile SIM card into the D501, connect it via the provided USB cable, and you can access 4x4 MIMO 5G comms.

The caveat is that this is a Sub-6 GHz connection only, with no mmWave support, unlike what is common in the USA. Therefore, it doesn’t have the highest 5G connection speeds, but those it can achieve are still better than 4G.

Another snag is that it isn’t especially cheap, at around six times what you might pay for a similar device that connects to 4G services.

And, the final elephant in this room is that adding a 5G modem to a modern business laptop generally costs less than this device. A typical overhead for a Dell laptop to get an unbuilt 5G modem is $200, though they only offer this feature on models like the Dell Pro Max and Dell Precision 3590. The D-Link D501 can be added to any machine with a USB-C port, including tablets and other devices, so it could be shared between devices or even people.

As I’ll talk about later in this review, there is an aspect to this device and any 5G dongle or hotspot, and that’s the variability of the service it uses. For those who aren’t near a good 5G environment, there is little point in spending this much on a mobile network modem. Conversely, if you work somewhere with good 5G coverage, it could offer a significant improvement over 4G LTE.

It’s hard to assess whether this is one of the best 5G modems, since so few devices are available.

D-Link D501: price and availability

• How much does it cost? £236/€323
• When is it out? Available now in Europe
• Where can you get it? Via D-Link resellers

From what I understand, and this might change, the D501 is available across Europe, including the UK, Norway and Germany. The cost in the UK is £241 via Amazon.co.uk, and it’s €323 in Germany.

It isn’t sold outside these regions, and certainly not in the USA.

Even if someone imported one to America, there's a significant technical obstacle. The D501's 5G bands are n1/3/5/7/8/20/28/38/40/41/71/75/76/77/78 D-Link. Cross-referencing with US carrier deployments, this is where things get telling: the key US mid-band frequencies are n77 (used by AT&T and Verizon) and n41 (T-Mobile).

Whilst n41, n71, and n77/78 are on the spec sheet, notable US-specific bands such as n2, n12, n25, n30, n66, and n70, all widely used by US carriers for both 5G and LTE, are entirely absent. This means even an imported unit would have very patchy support on US networks.

Alternatives include the Netgear M6, which offers Wi-Fi sharing, but it’s currently £549.99 on Amazon.co.uk and $433 at Amazon.com.

Another Wi-Fi sharing choice is made ironically by D-Link, the DWR-978, a 5G NR AC2600 Wi-Fi mobile hotspot. That only quotes a speed of 1.6Gbps, but it's cheaper at £144.99.

TP-Link makes the Archer NX210, an AX1800 spec 5G Router that costs around £190.

These examples make the D501 seem on the pricey side, but if you look at 4G LTE modems that do a similar job, those cost between £25 and £40.

And, I’m not talking about unknown brands. A classic example is the D-Link DWM-222W 4G LTE AX300 Wi-Fi 6 USB Adapter, capable of up to 150 Mbps downloads, which sells for only £40.80.

You should conclude that the portability of the D501 comes at a premium over less elegant devices, or those that only support 4G LTE.

• Value score: 3/5

D-Link D501: Specs

D-Link D501: design

• Simple but elegant
• Highly portable
• USB-C

The D501 is built around one clear design objective: to easily disappear into a bag. At 95 x 41 x 22.5 mm, it is genuinely pocket-sized, and the foldable antenna tucks flat when not in use. It comes with a 20cm USB-C cable, which avoids the issue of a directly inserted USB device that destroys the port it's connected to if something unfortunate occurs.

The single-LED status indicator keeps things simple: blue for 5G, green for 4G/LTE, red for no service or error. There is no screen, no buttons and no physical controls.

Everything routes through a browser interface for any configuration beyond basic SIM insertion. Build quality is consistent with D-Link's Taiwan manufacturing standard and is solid enough for the price. It draws power entirely from the host USB-C port, so there is no charging or other preparation to manage.

The beauty of this design is that it's entirely driverless, allowing it to operate across the widest possible range of systems. It might have been a nice touch if D-Link had included a USB-C to USB-A adapter, but these are pennies for you to add to the package.

While you are buying that extra, you might also want to find a small carry pouch to keep the D501, USB-C cable, adapter and the Quick Start paperwork. Although the paperwork is so short in content, you could probably leave that at home.

Based purely on how simple and elegant this device is, I’ve scored it highly for Design, because how easy it is to deploy and use makes it much more likely to be adopted.

Design score: 4.5/5

D-Link D501: In use

• No drivers
• Web interface
• Performance expectations

Those who designed the D501 did so, realising that the majority of people deploying this equipment aren’t likely to be IT professionals. The non-technical user is likely to appreciate that there is no driver to install, and if the SIM is already installed, it's merely a matter of plugging the D501 to get it working.

There is a web interface for those with more technical knowledge to manually configure the device, but for most deployments, this shouldn’t be necessary.

For most users, a basic overview of how to recognise a laptop connected by Wi-Fi (or wired LAN) over one using the mobile network is all that’s required.

I’m based in the UK, so that colors my view of this device and how it works with the typical services that are available to UK customers.

That said, the D501 covers a wide range of Sub-6 GHz 5G and 4G LTE bands, making it broadly compatible with UK and European carrier infrastructure. The key 5G bands used by major UK carriers are all present:

These include Primary 5G on n78 for EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three, and also B20 and B3 LTE on most networks.

The inclusion of n71 (600 MHz) in the hardware is notable for US market users on T-Mobile, and n28 (700 MHz) extends rural 5G reach in markets where lower-band 5G is deployed. The absence of mmWave (FR2) bands is the only meaningful gap, limiting the device to sub-6 GHz 5G.

The lack of mmWave could be a deal-breaker for some, but what it does offer is sufficient for the vast majority of real-world use cases, as mmWave coverage remains geographically sparse.

Connection stability is the D501's most important untested variable. The theoretical specification is strong as 4x4 MIMO provides both throughput headroom and resilience against signal variation compared to simpler 2x2 designs. The USB 3.1 interface eliminates the connection bottleneck present in older USB 2.0 dongles.

I’ve seen some customers report intermittent disconnections with certain carriers, but I didn’t experience that at all with O2 (GiffGaff) in the UK.

Why this might be happening, I’m unsure. But it certainly seems to be carrier-related, and it might require a firmware update from D-Link to resolve this issue. I checked, and a later firmware was available than the one that came on the D501, so I installed that.

I’m not a huge fan of web interfaces that don’t check for you, and this one had the tools to install new firmware but no way to find out whether the current version had been superseded. I’ve seen this lots with modems and routers, and I don’t care for it.

The firmware did improve my throughput, so it was worth installing.

In terms of data transfer performance, my 5G service isn’t great, although it did connect, which is more than my phone typically achieves with the same SIM.

It’s also worth noting that doing this inside a building doesn’t help, and for those in a hotel, it might be helpful to get a USB extension and place the dongle outside, either near a window or, ideally, on a balcony.

Needless to say, using 5G, I got nowhere near the quoted performance levels, but I can’t blame that on D-Link. As an experiment, I tried switching to 4G LTE, but it didn’t show any improvement and was, in fact, slower than NR5G-NSA, which the D501 automatically connected to.

Going outside did make a massive difference, although I was still only achieving around 30Mbps up and down. Inside, the results were at best around 40% of that level.

As frustrating as this all was, the connection was at least solid and usable.

Do I think this hardware could achieve 3.4Gbps? No, not even if it was right next to the mast, because you wouldn’t have exclusive access to the frequencies, even then. I’m sure it could get 500 Mbps in ideal conditions, but 300 Mbps would be a reasonable expectation if you live or work near a mobile mast that supports 5G. For the MIMO aspect of this device to function properly, you can’t be on the edge of a 5G area, as I am.

To put this into perspective, the O2 network I use offers an average UK-wide 5G speed of only 80.1 Mbps, and the maximum you can expect is around 320 Mbps. If I were with Vodafone, then I might see 545Mbps, and allegedly on Three, that could be over 900Mbps, but that’s as good as it gets in the UK. So forget 3.4Gbps, it’s not happening with this technology in the UK.

The takeaway here is not that the D501 is a good or bad 5G modem. It's that, unlike a wired network, the performance isn’t predictable, other than it will invariably be less than the theoretical limits promoted by the makers.

• In Use: 4/5

D-Link D501: Final verdict

The discussion here is less about the D501 and more about what alternatives exist if you don’t use this device. The obvious one is to buy a cheap 5G phone and connect it to the laptop via a USB-C cable or Wi-Fi sharing. If phones had USB 3.1 specification USB-C ports, then this would be the best choice, but almost all of them use only USB 2.0 on the charging/data port.

Using Wi-Fi would work, but again, most phones are limited to dual-channel at best connections, and that’s not remotely the throughput that 5G can offer.

There are some 5G hotspots that will work, including the D-Link F530 and Netgear M6, but these cost more than the D501, and because they share the same Wi-Fi 6 channel, there is extra latency and potential wireless interference.

There are plenty of 4G hotspots and dongles, and they are much, much cheaper. However, the majority are only capable of 150 Mbps, which is dramatically less than the D501's theoretical 3.4 Gbps. It comes down to whether you just need a connection or want the headline-level connectivity that 5G promises.

It’s also worth noting that if you get a D501 and a good connection, you might eat through an entire month of data allowance in just a few minutes if you’re not careful.

Therefore, the device's cost might be a minor expense in this exercise compared to the 5G SIM contract you will need to make best use of it. Also, research which carriers offer the best 5G performance, since some are distinctly better than others.

Those things accepted, this hardware provides a seamless connection to the 5G network for anyone with a modern laptop, and the cost of that, for many businesses supporting a mobile sales team, might be one they are willing to eat.

But don’t expect miracles, because some geographic locations just aren’t 5G-friendly.

Should I buy a D-Link D501?

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