Linksys Reveals its Fastest Wireless AC Router Yet

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

This router pushed Wireless N to the max, offering speeds up to 600 Mbps.

On Friday Belkin-owned networking company Linksys launched its fastest wireless router yet, the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi AC1900 Router. The company claims this device offers Wireless N speeds on the 5 GHz band at 600 Mbps, the fastest this wireless spec can push, and up to 1300 Mbps Wireless AC speeds on the same band. That's plenty fast for both specs, but the premium speed comes with a premium price: $249 USD.

"Beamforming technology helps to deliver better network range and faster Wi-Fi speeds in the home," the company said. "Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers with beamforming technology are designed to precisely adjust, steer and monitor the direction and shape of the Wi-Fi signals for better performance."

The device comes packed with four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one Gigabit WAN port, one USB 2.0 port and one USB 3.0 port, the latter of which would be ideal for streaming large media files over the network when using a USB 3.0 external hard drive. The USB 2.0 port would be best utilized for sharing music, documents and photos.

The company said the device uses a dual-core processor clocked at 800 MHz for maximum performance, and backs the router's "enhanced" web interface that can be accessed by iOS/Android apps for tablets and smartphones, and PC-based browsers. The router can even be set up using mobile devices; simply connect to the router and then follow the simple set-up wizard.

"Our products are not only extremely fast, they are also easy to install and control through the innovative Linksys Smart Wi-Fi platform," said Mike Chen, Senior Director Home Networking at Belkin. "With your Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Account and App you can get access anywhere and anytime to media stored on a connected USB storage device or change settings of the router -- all from the palm of your hand."

Other features offered with the new router include DLNA certified media streaming (server), wireless WPA/WPA2 encryption and an SPI firewall, guest access, parental controls, device quality of service (QoS), and simple-tap setup supporting NFC devices. The three external dipole antennae are removable for maximum flexibility.

The new router will be available next month for $249 USD. However, Linksys is now offering a dual-band Wireless AC adapter for $69 offering speeds up to 867 Mbps Wireless AC speeds on the 5 GHz band and up to 300 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band.

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Kevin Parrish
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15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JOSHSKORN
    Just one problem: It's Linksys.
    Reply
  • smeezekitty
    Average users generally don't have anywhere near 600Kbps so this seems like it would be mostly useless.
    Reply
  • joytech22
    @smeezekitty - it isn't going to be used just for browsing the internet, more to do with WLAN and WAN transfer rates for streaming from home storage for example.
    Reply
  • lpedraja2002
    11504161 said:
    Linksys is a disposable router brand for home consumers. Compromised firmware + inadequate hardware. Why waste $250 dollars on junk?

    The thing is that these days one can't trust the word of the fellow user since everyone has an awful experience against all brands. For instance you say Linksys is junk. I say Netgear is a POS, since I bought a Netgear N900 and it was worthless with horrible QoS and it reboots constantly and just yesterday I disconnected it and plugged back my old D-Link Dir-655. To me D-Link is a reliable brand, to others its junk and so on, so on.

    Best solution is just to stress the shit out of any router you buy and return ASAP if it doesn't meet expectations.
    Reply
  • nitrium
    "With your Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Account and App you can get access anywhere and anytime to media stored on a connected USB storage device or change settings of the router -- all from the palm of your hand."

    That sounds an awful lot to me like saying that allowing the NSA access to ALL your data is actually a feature.
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    11504551 said:
    11504161 said:
    Linksys is a disposable router brand for home consumers. Compromised firmware + inadequate hardware. Why waste $250 dollars on junk?

    The thing is that these days one can't trust the word of the fellow user since everyone has an awful experience against all brands. For instance you say Linksys is junk. I say Netgear is a POS, since I bought a Netgear N900 and it was worthless with horrible QoS and it reboots constantly and just yesterday I disconnected it and plugged back my old D-Link Dir-655. To me D-Link is a reliable brand, to others its junk and so on, so on.

    Best solution is just to stress the shit out of any router you buy and return ASAP if it doesn't meet expectations.

    Bingo. Everyone hates something and, on the internet, there's some loud mouthed person to hate everything. Whatever brand of hard drive you buy? Garbage. Graphics card? Whatever one you pick, the other is better. Brand of PC? Died a week after they got it. Flash memory stick? Got ten writes then stopped working.

    There are some good products out there. So many people blaming the whole brand for them being the unlucky ones to get a lemon is as bad as the people who will praise products out of blind loyalty whether it's good or not. Both ruin the reliability of user experience on a product.
    Reply
  • darknate
    Sounds just like an Asus router and they've been doing that for years.
    Nothing new here.
    Reply
  • gpfear
    All companies have good and bad designs. The N series from linksys were poor, but the WRT-54G which I am still using is rock solid.
    Reply
  • razor512
    This should be good,it is a reference implementation of the SOC and wifi radio, meaning if linksys fails epically with the firmware. there will be a wide selection of 3rd party firmware.

    When ever linksys does a reference design the router usually becomes regarded as a really good and stable router.

    Their only successful non reference router was the WRT54g (V4 and lower, and GL)

    Asus has been sticking mostly with reference implementations (essentially using all of the recommended parts and designs from broadcom, and thus they can use drivers from broadcom

    From the description it seems to be the same technical design as the Asus RT-AC68U


    Which uses this CPU http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireless-LAN/802.11-Wireless-LAN-Solutions/BCM4707-4708-4709

    and 2 BCM4360's
    Reply
  • TeraMedia
    Linksys quality declined substantially after the WRT54Gs. I have one of those, and also an RVS4000.

    The '4000 has had poor firmware updates, has been buggy, and generally hasn't behaved at the "appliance" level that I would have liked. I haven't used the VPN features, but have heard about issues with those as well. Ever since Linksys got bought by Cisco, it's been on a decline.

    Linksys is a business that Cisco wanted to sell. That should tell you a lot about how much they were willing to invest in R&D.
    Reply