Linksys WRT1200AC Dual-Band and Wi-Fi Wireless Router with Gigabit and USB 3.0 Ports and eSATA

Very fast, handles 23 wireless devices with ease, easy to setup, and has enough range to cover a 1300sqrft house and most of the street. I bought this to replace a D-Link DIR-810L router, which was dropping wifi connections and slowed to a crawl. My 30Mbps internet dropped down to .2Mbps, and no amount of resetting/rebooting/re-flashing firmware would fix the problem. I even replaced my modem to make sure that it was not just a crappy Xfinity Modem doing this to me. After reading several positive reviews of this product, and already being a fan of Linksys from past experience, I ordered this lovely router on friday. I learned that amazon apparently delivers on sundays in my city, as my shiny new WRT1200AC was on my doorstep before noon on sunday. Seeing as how my internet had been borderline unusable for almost a week, to the point where I had to order this over my LTE, you can understand why that made my day. The router was shipped in a standard amazon box, with about 20 of those giant bubble wrap things covering every angle of the router packaging. So it's no surprise that the router box had no dents or scratches, in fact it looks like it was taken directly from the factory. The plastic wrap didn't have so much as a fingerprint on it. The setup was probably the easiest of any router I have every used. Just screw on the included antennas, reboot your modem, plug the router into the modem with the included ethernet cable, and plug in the power cord for the router. That's the only physical setup needed, then you just join the network that the router comes preset with, and you are already online. I changed my SSID and password simply for security (and so I wouldn't have to type a new password into 23 different devices). From the time I opened the box and started plugging cables in, to the time I had customized my own network settings and could browse the web was 27 minutes flat. I have six computers (two Macs, four PC's), five iPhones, three Xbox 360's, three Apple TV's, two iPad's, two iPod's, a Blu-ray player, and an Xbox One all running through wifi. Not one device has dropped connection, and I can game stream from my Xbox One to my MacBook Pro (running windows 10 through parallels) on the "Very High" quality setting with no noticeable lag. (across my house and in my garage) I can do LAN file transfers between my computers at 103MBps over wifi. (Megabytes, not megabits) System link with three Xbox 360's playing Halo and Call of Duty work flawlessly. (even while using four wireless controllers per console) The Linksys WRT1200AC handles 23 devices connected wirelessly with ease, I have no problems with anything now. The D-Link router had issues with multiple Xbox consoles running, and obviously keeping a solid connection to the internet. The design is also a plus, while still being a running joke in the family, as it looks like a baby spaceship to most of us. The only thing I can complain about is that it seems like the USB ports for hosting hard drive as a NAS do not work with enclosures. I tried plugging in an old hard drive attached to a SATA to USB enclosure just to see if the feature worked, and my router locked up until I unplugged it and rebooted the router. However, plugging in a portable Western Digital USB3 hard drive worked perfectly. So it may just be some driver incompatibility issue with my enclosure. Running since sunday morning with 23 devices continuously connected to it, it hasn't dropped once and is still cool to the touch. Make sure you have enough space for where you are putting this router though, it's much bigger than it looks. The Linksys WRT1200AC takes up the same size as an Xfinity Modem/Router combo on it's side. Overall, a fantastic router with a great design and extremely long range. I am once again able to take full advantage of my internet speeds and use every device in my house at once.

I can't say enough good things about this router. Ever since I heard about it online, I really always lusted over this piece of machinery. My last router would routinely restart and just crash on a daily basis. I got so sick and tired of it, that I shelled out for this beauty! This is more machine than most people could ever need as routers go - (not from the software end, but the hardware in this is beastly). The software is par or even subpar. One thing to note is, if you use adblock, be sure to disable it while administrating the router through the web, because some of the features will either not work or partially work. Also, being a web developer and software engineer (as well as a trained IT router tech guy), I am not 'super' taken with the browser based administration... many of the menu's are not intuitive and most likely might scare off novices rather than help them. It takes many simple concepts, and sort of confuses them. I am sure you can flash this with a better open source solution, but i'm far too lazy to do that, and with minimal menu navigation, you can set it up well enough for nearly all basic useful tasks. But that hardware though --- my goodness... that is what makes this router so AMAZING! I have notebook laptops with worse specs than this router. For something as a simple switch/router goes this is like bringing a bazooka to a water balloon fight. Heat has not been an issue (even during summer), and I have not had to restart it even once in the months I have had it (which should not be impressive --- but this is a huge change from my last failing router). For me, this purchases was made to spite my old router, and frankly, it was a wonderful choice. Most people won't need this, and you most likely wont notice crazy gains on network performance or wifi... but... I can sleep well knowing that my router can beat up your router. ;P

This review is for those looking to use OpenWRT instead of the Linksys Firmware. STOCK FIRMWARE: My only Linksys firmware comments are: 802.11ac works great with 500Mbit real world throughput, the default password is "admin", and you do not need to sign up for "Linksys Smart Wi-Fi": Below the login box, there's a tiny link that says "Local router login". Use that instead of the Smart Wi-Fi login. BACKGROUND: If you want a performant 802.11ac OpenWRT router, your choices are limited. You can get an Atheros MIPS based product, but the CPU performance is years out of date. The Broadcom options won't work with OpenWRT. You could go full x86. Or finally, there are some new ARM options with non-Broadcom chipsets, like this WRT1200AC with its Marvell chipset. OPENWRT: I installed OpenWRT Chaos Calmer 15.05rc3 (mvebu-armada-385-linksys-caiman) with no problems. Both 2.4ghz and 5ghz work great. PERFORMANCE: This device gives my entire home great connectivity, 5ghz 802.11ac has 400Mbit+ real world performance, down to 300Mbit at 25 feet. My 802.11n experience is 50MBit in 2.4ghz, 130-180MBit in 5ghz, real world performance. Sending 30Mbit of SQM QOS WAN->LAN uses 3% CPU. Contrast this to 50% on a device like the Archer C7. Using OpenVPN, 30Mbit traffic takes only 20% of the CPU. This traffic rate is not even achievable on a lower class device like the Archer C7. The WRT1200AC seems to draw about 7 watts of power. Using the USB 3.0 interface, I was able to pull about 700Mbit from an external disk. This device may "only" have a 2x2 802.11ac radio, but real world performance seemed to match the 3x3 radio in the Archer C7 (client was a MacBook Pro with 3x3 radio) BUILD QUALITY: The WRT1200AC is very well built with quality materials and has a solid feel. It has a heatsink on the SoC and a large area of copper under the wireless chips. BAD: The included ethernet cable is not twisted pair, it is flat. The included power supply seems strangely cheap. I suspect the power supply will fail long before the router does. OVERALL: A mighty impressive router, almost the dream: dual core ARM with 512MB RAM, dual wifi bands, many gigabit ports, USB 3.0, SATA, and it can run OpenWRT. You'll love it!

So, the only reason I am giving this 4 stars is due to the occasional muddled mess that is the UI, it's a bit on the confusing side, while I bought it as a home router, I would not recommend it as such unless you know what you're doing in regards to router and switch setup. If I called the Web GUI bad for this router I would be lying but at the same time I would say that first time users of this product should follow it's setup instructions. It is an amazing router let down only by the fact that in a household setting, you may not be able to use both the 2.4GHz and the 5.0GHz bands. This is because few devices have 5GHz receptors. Overall I'd say it's a 4 star rating leaning to a 4.5 because as a technician it was a lot of fun to setup and maintain, I like it a lot and intend to use it as necessary, plus the extra features are really nice. As a customer and owner of this product I withhold my right to review it as I see fit, and will post an updated review if I feel this review is biased, this is because I do not believe in static reviews, and I also believe that amazon requesting me to review this product less than one week after it arrives is a bit on the ridiculous side.

Now this is a router! First i would like to start by saying i absolutely love this router. Its WIFI range is great, its dual band so i have choices and i can set up a guest network with the click of my mouse. It has a friendly User interface that allows everyday users to make changes as they see fit. It also allows for media prioritization by simply dragging your computer, or any device to the top of the list or to a separate list. This will ensure that no matter how many devices are connected your chosen device will always get what bandwidth it needs. Now The IMPORTANT part. Some people including myself have found that the speed coming out of the router to the devices was not as advertised from my Cable company. Directly from the Modem i received 100 MB down but the moment i used the router i was getting only 30. I even used the Built in speed test app in the router. After hours of hunting for the problem i discovered the culprit. The router comes pre programmed to Cap the at 30 MB. HAVE NO FEAR, the solution is simple. 1: Log in to you router at 192.168.1.1 (assuming you did not change it.) 2: Click the media prioritization tab on the left. 3: Click setting (see attached picture) 4: Change the number. to whatever your max limit is. 0 may be unlimited though i have not tried this i just raised mine from 30000 to 120000 Enjoy the router!

I had to replace my older wifi router that was failing and, after looking at the mostly positive reviews on this, I decided to give it a try. And it involved trying and trying and trying. The router looks pretty typical with expected features. I don't require a lot of options, but I really need stability to satisfy my family. After I unpacked it and plugged every thing in, I did some basic configurations (set the wifi name and passwords to the same as my previous router so I didn't have to configure everything else in the house again) and updated the bios. Everything seemed to be fine after the update, so I checked several devices around the house and all looked good. For a while... After about a 1/2 day, things started slowing down noticeably for both wifi devices and the computers plugged in via the LAN ports. Doing a speed test, I noticed LAN speed was down to 2 or 3 Mbps (I have 80 Mbps service). I switched a cable directly to provider router and got 85 Mbps from there. Switched the cable back, and slow as heck. I bounced the router and speeds returned to normal. The next morning, wifi devices were timing out completely. Same problems with the router (wireless and LAN), so I bounced again. I did a lot of research and found that Linksys strongly recommends a factory reset after each bios update. I checked my calendar to make sure I didn't fall back in time to 1995 or something, but, no, this was 2015 and Linksys still requires factory resets after bios updates. So I did the factory reset (which meant I needed to reconfigure wireless again), and the LAN ports stayed steady. However, this did nothing to fix the decaying wireless performance over time. I talked to Linksys a couple of times (receiving completely unhelpful advice), did a ton more research on the web and tried about a dozen different groups of configurations all to no avail. I still needed to reboot the router once or twice a day to keep my wife and kids from trying to hurt me. To protect myself, I ordered a better router D-Link (which has been running for nearly 3 days without reboot, without a factory reset after updating the bios, and has had no performance issues...I'm getting faster performance 2 floors up and across the house than the Linksys was providing sitting right in front of it) and will be returning this pile of junk. Since I got the better router, my wife and kids have returned to normal...so the zombie apocalypse has been avoided in my household.

I previously had a $39 TP-link router that worked excellently, but I wanted to get a router that could handle working with OpenVPN so that all traffic in my household could go through a VPN when I wanted it to. The TP-link router I had didn't have the memory or processor power to handle this. This Linksys modem is really awesome. Here's why I like it: - It supports DD-WRT open firmware which has a lot more capabilities than existing stock firmware - it has DUAL partitions. You can have one partition with DD-WRT and the other with the stock Linksys firmware. If you prefer to just stick with Linksys firmware, it uses both partitions (newest firmware load in one partition, older on in another). This allows you to recover in case you mess up during an upgrade. Pretty slick. - it is fairly easy to switch between the two partitions with some telnet commands if you're running DD-WRT, or through the GUI if you're using standard Linksys firmware. Loading the DD-WRT firmware isn't the easiest thing in terms of knowing which version to load, and the setup is a little more complicated, but I was able to get everything setup. I also setup the VPN with my existing VPN supplier (PIA) and it works perfectly. I'm extremely happy with this router! I didn't think it would make a difference, but my download speed is a little faster with this router (using normal speed tests that I run often enough to know it wasn't a anomaly). When I have it going through the VPN, it does drop in speed, but it isn't that significant. I've had this running for a couple weeks now, and 0 issues. The Wi-Fi coverage seems excellent too, much better than my previous router.

As much as I like the hardware, the software kills this router and Belkin (aka Linksys' parent company) doesn't really care about updating the software for exploits. Last update for the WRT1200AC was in June 2015. Same for the WRT1900AC. Since then, other router manufacturers (Netgear, Asus, and Synology RT-series) have pushed consistently scheduled updates as bugs are reported and fixed. Belkin/Linksys will do the same with the WRT1900ACS and WRT3200 models as they did to the WRT1200 and WRT1900AC. You'll get a few updates initially for stability, but good luck getting any a few months after the hardware has been out. I've donated this router to family members, but it's only used as an access point behind a security appliance because of the software. Conclusion: Stay away from Linksys if you value security and timely security updates. Until Linksys/Belkin start pushing updates for general stability and security fixes, look at other router vendors like ASUS, TP-Link, Netgear, Synology, Apple or Google (Google OnHub or Google Wifi). Pros: Linksys WRT hardware is nice. Very slick with a modern take on the older 54g series that made these blue routers from Linksys famous. Hardware is pretty powerful. Easily able to saturate my 200mbps line on wireless at 5GHz (but has cons; read below). 2.4GHz is stable in my rural area. Cons: Software is horrible in terms of stability. The software is rarely updated for security bug fixes when other manufacturers are keeping their software up to date for stability and fixes for security flaws. 5GHz band is very very very flaky! Needs to be restarted almost weekly when it goes down and there is no reboot scheduler like some other routers out there.

Tardo muchisimo en llegar cerca de dos meses, pero creo que fue algún error en el sistema de Amazon y Bancomer, respecto al router, tengo una conexion con Axtel Extremo de 50Mbs, anteriormente tenia un router AC que solo me daba 30 Mbs por alambrico y cerca de 25 Mbs por inhalambrico y en la noche al haber muchos dispositivos conectados había intermitencia. Pues bien con este router todo ha mejorado para bien, en inhalambrico y alambrico me da los 50 Mbs y ya no hay intermitencia cuando hay muchos dispositivos conectados. La interfaz para configurar el router es muy sencilla e intuitiva. Lo que también mejoró enormemente fue la cobertura en la banda de 5 GHz y la de 2.4 GHz llega a la calle sin problema.

Compré este router debido al éxito de sus antecesores (WRT54g) y linksys volvió a cumplir. El router a es muy rápido, con un buen rango de señal (bandas 2.4gHz tiene muy buena cobertura, sin embargo, 5gHz llegá a tener un rango un poco limitado a mi gusto), buen throughput (2.4gHz/ standard N @ 280 Mbps en mis pruebas) y lo mejor de todo es que es totalmente compatible con DD-WRT/Open-WRT. El firmware original es simple e intuitivo para usuarios promedio pero puede ser un poco frustrante para usuarios experimentados que busquen una configuración más profunda. Tengan en cuenta que es un router de tamaño grande con grandes agujeros de ventilación que permiten la entrada de polvo muy fácil, por lo que la ubicación y limpieza constante es necesaria para mantener su buen funcionamiento.

La instalación es sencilla para ponerlo como principal o como secundario se actualiza automáticamente la interfaz es clara y sencilla no requiere muchas configuraciones y es casi automatismo la configuración La calidad del producto es increible y el funcionamiento es de lo mejor auque podria mejorar el alcanze mejorando las antenas de vienen de fabrica por unas de mejor ganancia

Buen producto, la configuración es rápida con la app y mejoró notablemente la velocidad del módem de Telmex. Lo malo es que en ocasiones hay que reiniciarlo ya que no funciona el internet.

lo recomiendo ampliamente, es una muy buena opcion a precio economico, hace su funcion muy bien, tiene muy buen alcance el WIFI, su configuracion es amigable, puedes bloquear accesos a sitios web especificos por maquina, muy buena opcion