D-Link wins '2009 Red Dot Product Design Award'

Red Dot belongs to the world's leading design award organizations and has honored D-Link's DIR-685 all-in-one 802.11n storage router with this prestigious award. Created with convenience and functionality in mind, the router is a stylish enhancement for any modern home.

Harrison Albert, Regional Sales Director at D-Link Middle East, said:

"This award demonstrates both our expertise in developing high-performance networking solutions and our ability to create smart product designs that enhance home environments. We invested plenty of time and efforts in designing the DIR-685 for a compact and chic appearance."

The DIR-685 represents the central control unit for digital homes. The integrated 802.11n wireless LAN provides a fast Internet connection to wireless computers and smooth streaming of music/video from stored media on the network to a TV and stereo equipment. Without any cumbersome cables or protruding antennas, the DIR-685 can share disk space wirelessly among family members and download personal documents from the Internet.

The router's multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) antenna technology ensures that wireless data transfers are fast and reach all wireless devices in the home. One unique feature is its user-friendly interface on a 3.2-inch LCD screen that displays the status of connected devices graphically. The home router can also be set up to display digital photos, streaming video, weather forecasts and other Internet content in up to 1.6 million colors.

Furthermore, the Wi-Fi router provides network attached storage (NAS) and SharePort technology to share printers and scanners. The DIR-685 comes with a 4-port 10/100/1000 Gigabit switch to connect multiple wired devices such as computers, media layers and game consoles for fast file transfer and lag-free online gaming. An optional 2.5 inch hard drive with up to 500GB of disk space can be installed in the router to provide network storage.

Moreover, the DIR-685 uses D-Link Green technology to help conserve energy. This proprietary technology automatically recognizes port activity and cable length in order to adjust power usage by consolidating multiple functions in a single device instead of many separate products. In idle mode, the power to the LCD screen is automatically shut off.

The Red Dot Design Award, along with the iF Design Award, is one of the world's most prestigious industrial design awards. This year, Red Dot selected the DIR-685 from 3,231 entries submitted by 1,400 contestants from 49 countries, indicating the extremely high quality of the D-Link product.

Earlier this year, D-Link won the 2009 iF (International Forum) Product Design Award for a network camera - the first in the product line to receive such an honor. The Red Dot Design Award for the DIR-685 further confirms D-Link's excellence in product design.

D-Link's award-winning products will be presented in a special exhibition entitled "Design on Stage" for four weeks, starting from June 30 to July 26 at the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, Germany. As a recipient of this award, the D-Link DIR-685 will also will be displayed in the Red Dot Online Exhibition from July 1, 2009 - for about one year. The DIR-685 storage router is scheduled to be on the market by the end of April. D-Link will announce the suggested retail price soon.