Customer Ratings & Reviews

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program First off, this router is *HUGE*, and fairly formidable-looking with the external antennas attached. Surprisingly, there's still an external power brick instead of an internal power supply. Physical setup was easy, although I ended up using it vertically because I didn't have enough space to put it flat. I attempted to do the initial router configuration on my iPhone, but I was I was directed to download the Smart Wi-Fi app from the Apple app store. Configuration via smartphones is apparently not supported. I was able to access the router’s web interface from my iPad and computer. The app provides a subset of functionality and configuration compared to the web interface, and seems fairly unnecessary. The iPad interface in the app is just an upscaled version of the phone interface, and doesn't provide any additional configuration options. Replaced my current router with this one, and configured it with the same SSID and password. The 20+ devices in our house were all able to connect to it without changing anything else. The dual bands help balance traffic between the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz device, providing consistently fast speeds, regardless of what everyone’s doing on the network at any given moment. The range isn't quite as good as the AC1600 router that I replaced, but I'd already planned on adding an extender because we didn’t have good coverage with that one anyway. I connected an AC1200 extender fairly quickly & easily, and now all of our devices can connect to each other and the Internet from anywhere in our house. We started experiencing occasional device dropouts after the most recent firmware update. Everything reconnects within ~30-60 seconds, but it can be annoying. I haven't tested file sharing with the USB/eSATA ports, primarily because we already have two dedicated NAS devices on our networks. All-in-all, it's a well-designed and well-made router, with all of the functionality, device support, and throughput that we need. I’m hopeful that the next firmware update will fix the sporadic connection dropouts.

Couldn't get it connected for nothing. Tried many times. Instructions not clear enough :(

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program. I wouldn't blink an eye to pay full price for this router though. It is the easiest router I have ever set up and it out performs my every expectation. Set up is so ridiculously simple you could get a child to do it. The mobile app helps you keep track of the system and service from anywhere. Its fast and very user friendly. The range is outstanding. Anyone can use this router and get the full benefits from it. I highly recommend it! I am seriously in love with it.

Was told by salesman that this would have Wi-Fi reach second floor. It didn't.

Wanted to upgrade my E3200, big (costly) mistake always losing the signal.

Was trying to replace 4th AirPort Extreme. This router did not perform as well.

Lynksys redirect to customer support to set up Smart Wi-FI is erractic.Had to return (after trying)Two different routers.There are so many adjustments inherent to your service provider Usung SmartWiFi-app was nice to tweak,but support and application is erratic.Here one day, just spinning with no acess next day.

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program. The router has performed rock solid since it was setup. I have had no issues with the hardware or software aspects. Performance has been great and without performing formal scientific tests it seems to definitely outperform the NETGEAR R8000 I replaced it with. Speed and range seem to be better from the Linksys, I have not performed any formal tests, but general usage has showed consistently better performance over the Netgear. I have approximately 20 devices connected at any given time, including Mac and PC Laptops and Desktops, a QNAP, multiple ipads, multiple iphones and android devices, smart devices including WeMo, and others. Speaking of iPhone and Android devices, there are apps from Linksys for this router and while they may not be the most intuitive they do work well. They also have/support remote access to the router via Linksys Smart WiFi, and it works. Setup was easy, no more difficult than any other basic router. In my case I needed to assign a few DHCP Reservations for specific hardware, but overall things were very easy and took less than 15 minutes. One feature I liked was that I was able to have the same SSID for both networks and let devices connect to whichever frequency they find. I have not seen any negative effects from using this setup and will not change it unless I find it to be problematic. Another feature I like is the fact that the antennas are removable and if needed you could use different antennas.

Not much better than the one we replaced, it really did not improve our wifi

This router was recommend by a Best Buy associate because we were looking for a better wifi connection for all out devices inside and out side. This was not much of an improvement for the price we paid ($220) versus the older ($80) version we had before. Not very impressed with its performance

It can handle gaming and connection of up to 5 devices

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program. This router is definitely the best router I have ever used. I have been using Linksys for over 15 years. The strenght of the signal is ridiculous. With the router that my cable company provided, my signal drops a few feet after I leave my apartment. With this Linksys router, I was able to get a signal in my car outside of my apartment complex. If I had to estimate distance, My car was probably close to 150-200 ft away. The signal was not full strength, but it was pretty good. There were about 50 other wifi signals in the area and there was really no interference with any of them. I have Verizon FIOS as my ISP and pay for 75/75 mbps speeds. On their router I usually get 40-50mbps on wifi, with this one I was getting 65-75 mbps. I only get those speeds on my provided router if I am wired by ethernet. All that being said, the setup was pretty straight forward but it took me about 7 times trying to finally get the router to pickup my internet service from my cabke modem. Not sure what the problem was, but it was a bit frustrating. Setting up the wifi portion of it was super easy. Highly recommend this router for anyone looking for great distance and better signal wall penetration.

For some reason I keep getting kicked off of the router

(If you do buy this device make sure to get the best buy protection. If not you will h*** with getting linksys to own up to their warranty) I normally dont write these, but i felt for this product I do. Yesterday afternoon I came home to no wireless internet. I was thinking maybe i just need to reset the router. Same thing. The router just stopped broadcasting itself. Today I took the time reach out Linksys. I was thinking this is an easy fix since the router is still in warranty. Boy, was I wrong. I spent 3 hours online with tech support going over the same troubleshooting i had did early. Long story short the device is still not working. I am just going to buy the new google router or apple airport extreme.

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program but my review below is completely my own and unbiased. The Linksys EA8500 AC2600 Dual-Band Gigabit Router may be big and ugly but it has an amazing range and has helped me reach upload and download speeds promised by my Internet provider. My previous Apple Time Capsule had terrible range and was very slow, particularly on the 2.4 Gz band. The Quick Start Guide that's included is not very helpful. I was very frustrated setting it up at first because typing linksyssmartwifi.com into my browser didn't work. I then read the online manual (only manual is provided on a CD and I don't have an optical drive) and found out that typing 192.168.1.1 works and from there the set up was very easy. I've been using it for several weeks with no issues, no drop outs. The range is excellent and speed is very good even when the whole family is online with their laptops, smartphones, TVs etc. The only cons are the provided documentation and a very short Ethernet cable. There are a few tweaks to be worked out (ie. speed test only works if my adblock software is turned off), it's pretty big and ugly (looks like it's waiting to become airborne) and the free smartphone app hasn't proven to be very useful, but as a work horse router it does its job well.

I router failed within two weeks and returned the unit to Best Buy and replaced it with another unit. The second unit is working, but had to reset the router twice. It seems to be working now, but performance seems to be spotty.

I received this product for free as part of Belkin's Friends + Family Program. I previously had a Netgear brand router and Netgear brand extender; both of which I purchased at Best Buy. I had to have a $90.00 extender with my old router because the router signal would not reach the rear of our home at all. In using this new Linksys router, I found it was the easiest router to install right out of the box. It would have taken less than 5 minutes except I wanted to rename the router and assign it a WPA password. The Linksys router gave me a signal at the rear of my house where the Netgear 1 I had before did not. However, the signal was only 1 bar on my computer (which was weak). I did get a signal on my Smart TV and overall had few issues. On occasion the signal did drop from the router. After reconnecting it it seemed to work fine again. If I could move the router a bit more into our house, I know the signal would be better and stronger. However, Charter installed my modem, right in the very front of our house and I have to connect it to the router; which limits how far I can move the router. I will look into a longer cable to see if it improves. However, overall this Lynksys router is doing a good job with all our devices in our home and I am very happy with it.

Ok wireless router. Sales person helped picked one out and it wasn't that great. Seems to cut out all the time. To bad I can't return it to get a better one. She acted liked she knew what she was talking about.

I came into the store for a modem and they up sold me a modem/router. It cost me double for it. Needless to say I returned it and bought the modem I needed elsewhere.

I was having some issues with my previous modem/router (provided by ATT) - don't think it could keep up with the network traffic in my home. Went and bought this router the other day and I am extremely satisfied. The set up process was extremely easy and went very smoothly. Prior to setting this router up I ran a speedtest on my connection and had a 17Mbps download speed. After installing this router I ran another speed test and my connection jumped to 28Mbps. I am no longer experiencing the network crashes that were occurring before. I would highly recommend this router. Keep in mind that I have only had it for a few days so this review is based on my experience these past few days.