Customer Ratings & Reviews

Product was as described I'm a very satisfied customer great quality router with lots of settings adjustments and controls.

Purchased to replace old netgear to take advantage of 1gb speed. Was super fast when next to it. But it wouldn’t reach across the 1400sq’ house. Return and got the ASUS rog.

Comes in a super cool box, works like a charm, the only problem with this is that after the first firmware update, the internet light and the web GUI showed no internet. BUT I was getting advertised speeds so *shrug*

The Linksys - WRT32X AC3200 Dual-Band Wi-Fi Gaming Router with Killer Prioritization Engine was very easy and very fast to install and setup. It only took about 5 minutes – I used their included tri-fold instruction brochure to guide me. Their packaging was both great looking and functional. The WRT32X comes in near the high-end price routers and has features to justify that price. One of the most notable features is Rivet Network's Killer Prioritization Engine (KPE) that will elegantly analyze and prioritize your data for both gaming and video streaming. “Killer” wireless 1535 card prioritization is designed to work with several of the new gaming laptops to decrease ping times, lower latency and reduce lag increasing responsiveness automatically. Using a “Killer” enhanced laptop with the WRT32X, it seemed about twice as fast as using a non-killer enhanced router. Killer's Control Center software lets users prioritize data packets by app and services, optimizing packet grouping for game or video streams, over background tasks, file downloads, or other less important functions. Dual Core, 1.8GHz Processor, Advanced Ethernet Switching, Tri-Stream 160, MU-MIMO, DFS Certified, Beamforming, and Optimized Packet Aggregation make for a great router experience. It is a superb gaming router – highly configurable / customizable but should also function well as a primary router for any household.

Pretty expensive for average performance. It works well just not what I’d expect for $300. My 3 year old Asus U87C has farther range. Good features but ultimately I returned this unit.

This router worked well for 12 months and then immediately started having issues. When this was sold to me i was told there was only a one year warranty available and now i know why. during the 13th month this router started to drop connection and failed to connect to the internet. After chatting with Linksys the only way to even troubleshoot the issue is to pay a minimum of $30 which may or may not resolve the issue.

Finally found a router for a solid WiFi connection in every room, including the basement and driveway!

I got this router To add some range to my home the router is really not that fast and the range isn't great it's kind of complicated to set up but so I had to return it

Router was recommended by a technician who works for my internet provider. Very happy with this router.

So, this router was one of my more proud purchases in a long time. From the moment you open the box you're welcomed with a sleek, attractive, state of the art piece of equipment that you know is built to last a long time. Hooking it up as well as the setup page was flawless. The range and speed on this device are incredible. It blows any other router that I've ever used out of the water. Until suddenly, about a month or so after I got it, it started to drop connections randomly. Through some troubleshooting and careful observations, I realized it only occurred when my android phone was connected. The only way to fix the issue was to power cycle it and that would only last a few hours to a day before it went back out again. I'm sure many know, but this is a very common issue. Reviews everywhere had the same issues and it became such an issue that Linksys began to give out free routers. I too was one of the people to receive a router and I have to say for that, I commend their customer service tremendously. I haven't had any issues with the new router. (Which is the Velop 2 pack and I heavily recommend it). Unfortunately, it's now been months and the WRT32X still does not function correctly. I read that the problem was fixed, so I hooked it back up, downloaded and installed all of the latest updates and it ran for a few hours again.. Until it didn't. Same problem persists. Although I enjoy the new router given to us, it is a bit of a pain to think about the money spent on said item and now it's just a dust collecting paper-weight. I hope to one day see the issue resolved and be able to use it.

Let's get the superficial stuff out of the way first--this is one mean-looking router. Sure, the way it looks doesn't affect performance, but it sure does look good sitting next to...just about anything. Now, for the stuff that really matters. First this is a router. It does what routers do for everyday internet and local access, albeit considerably faster and with much better coverage than the average router. However, if you are a gamer and you always seem to be just a split second away from getting the upper hand on your gaming buddies, there are 2 possibilities. 1) You just aren't very good a gaming and you'll just have to live with it, or 2) there is so much traffic on your router that latency is allowing your friends to trounce you. While there's not much you can do about scenario 1, for scenario 2 there is a solution--the Linksys WRT32X. This router lets you prioritize gaming traffic, and sets it up automatically if you have a killer Ethernet port or wireless adapter. Otherwise, prioritization can be set up manually. Truthfully, you will only notice a difference in speed if there is other traffic on your network. For example, if someone else is streaming video while your in a desperate struggle to save the world from tyranny and chaos. If you live a solitary, lonely life with nobody else in the house, you probably don't need the Linksys WRT32X. For the rest of us, the extra speed and low latency it provides through prioritization is a definite edge. Now, for the cons. There's really only one. If you get a Linksys WRT32X you no longer have an excuse for being bad at gaming.

Evaluating any “gaming” hardware for PCs can be tricky. There’s a lot of products marketed exclusively at gamers which are basically just consumer level hardware with extra LEDs and more aggressive case styling. On the other extreme, you have products that are basically enterprise level solutions tweaked to essentially specialize in a few specific areas. I’m pleased to say that the Linksys WRT32X is more of the latter than the former, but there are some caveats that you may want to know about all the same. Most of this has to do with the “Killer Networking Engine” integrated into it, a first for a router. For those of you unaware, Killer networking offers an alternative to the standard Windows TCP/IP stack, essentially performing client-side quality of service filtering to improve latency for gaming. In theory, this should offer massive gains in transmission speed. In practice, when doing quality of service at the client you’re often just racing to reach a bottleneck further down the line. As a result, real world gains provided by the tech are limited compared to what they could get in a lab, and only get more limited if you have more than one of the things on the same network. What this router brings to the table is a way to carry forward that same prioritization being done on the client, which I will say does address the problem of multiple devices using Killer networking hardware interfering with one another and the potential bottleneck at the router quite well. The bottleneck is now the greater internet, but improving two legs of the transit does get you into the realm of noticeable improvements. But this leaves us with two questions. Is there a good router underneath the gaming enhancements? And does having these enhancements offer any advantages outside of gaming? So, to begin with, I should note that for all intents and purposes they appear to have built the WRT32X on top of their existing WRT3200ACM – which means it’s blurring the line between consumer and enterprise grade hardware. This is ludicrous overkill for most users, but there are times that overkill is nice. In addition to all the usual bells and whistles that come with a router in its class it offers the option to replace the factory provided software with the open source WRT platform should you want to get crunchy. It also has built in support for tri-band tech first unveiled last year to produce an extreme speed channel for bandwidth hungry devices that, to the best of my knowledge, probably won’t start appearing on the market for another year yet. This thing is an absolute beast on paper, and in my tests I found that it’s just as powerful in practice. Setup is largely automated and very painless – all in all it took me less than 10 minutes to replace my existing router with this one. Once you’re past that, the interface is very simple and functional, though I’ll admit there are just a few areas where I’d be willing to make do with a less streamlined look in exchange for more information being available at a glance. This is minor though, and for people like me who like to manually configure everything they can everything you need is still there, just hidden behind a few layers of menus. I’m also very pleased with the ability to assign three priority levels to devices on the network, as most routers I’ve worked with have only offered two. As far as range and performance goes, I had no issues using both the 2.4 and 5ghz bands throughout my home and even out into the lawn and the underground garage. And it had no issues whatsoever load balancing the 20+ WiFi devices I’ve got in my home. Which brings us to the second question: what does having a Killer Networking Engine do for you? Well, to start, here’s what it won’t do: It won’t speed up your downloads. It won’t speed up your local file transfers. It won’t find you any more bandwidth from your modem. It won’t make Netflix look any better. If your main motivation for buying this is on that list, look elsewhere. This tech is optimized for speeding up the transfer of small packets used for online gaming – not bulk file transfers or every day internet browsing. And while my tests didn’t produce results anywhere near what they advertise on the box even when it was paired with the Killer NICs that it’s optimized for, I can’t deny that there is a measurable improvement here. I was lucky enough to be able to compare the WRT32X to a WRT3200ACM, basically an identical router just without the Killer Networking Engine installed, and confirmed that I was consistently seeing an improvement in the 20% range for gaming traffic with machines using a standard NIC. With a Killer NIC, albeit a slightly older one, the improvement bumped up closer to 30%. Now, keep in mind that we’re still talking in terms of a few milliseconds of difference here. Far less times than it takes most people to blink. It’s not something that’s going to matter for most games, and the nature of online play means that you likely will never be able to say for certain if the router ever helped you or not. But at the same time there definitely do exist people for whom a few milliseconds can make a critical and very real difference in playing a game. Gamers who routinely take part in high-level ranked or tournament play for real time strategy games, shooters, or MOBAs can tell you that oftentimes, it all comes down to reflex. And having equipment that increases the odds that the packet reporting your actions will reach the server first does bestow a real advantage. For that specific use case, I really don’t think there’s anything else on the market that can compare to this, though I imagine that other similar equipment will follow given the growing popularity of e-sports. So while there is a list of caveats a mile long, I do have to recommend this router for those who are looking to squeeze every last bit of gaming performance out of their network.

One of the least thought out routers, I have ever used in short the 5ghz band is great with a strong stable signal, but the 2.4ghz bad is horrible I'm only achieving half my internet speed on on the 2.4ghz band and so far there has been no fix for it. There's no excuse for this high-end of router to be out perform my a six year old router on the 2.4ghz band. I'm hoping that Linksys can eventually fix this problem. Unless you only need amazing 5ghz band performance stay away from this router.

This router is excellent; it provides a great WiFi signal in all parts of my house.

Perfect! Exactly what I was looking for!!!!!!!!!!!

It cots a lot, but is worth it, great signal for a gaming and work zone.

This is a good gigabit Wi-Fi router. I don’t have any complaints.

This WRT32X router is phenomenal! It's easy to setup, and the GUI is easy to navigate. There are a few small issues I have with the WRT32X. One is that it's not controllable from the Linksys app. Another is that there are no parental controls. This being primarily a gaming router, I can sort of understand the absence of these features. Also there are issues with some games, Black Ops 3 in particular, where you must manually forward ports for this game to get an open NAT. These issues could easily be fixed with firmware updates. I've been in contact with Linksys about the port forwarding issue, so they are aware of it. WiFi range is fantastic in my 1000 sq/ft house. All of the Linksys routers I've used in the past have been really good for gaming, and this one is no different. I get a steady consistent ping in multiplayer games, which is a huge deal in FPS type games.

Glad I bought this nice my other one was small. The other one was smaller

I wasn't 100% sold on the Killer Prioritization Engine, however after using this router the network shaping it does changed my mind. This router appears to be the same as the WRT3200ACM that Linksys already released and is a fairly solid router, however on top of the router they added a network prioritization engine that is aimed at gamers and I think they did a good job, at least with the tests I've been able to do. **Setup** Straight forward and easy. Set it up and plug it in. Attach your computer to the network, wired or wireless, and then follow the setup. It gets you setup securely out of the box with little hassle (though you can skip the OOBE if you wish). Nice to see the newer routers out of the box check for firmware updates. Once it is on and connected it will run a speed test. It uses this to understand how much Internet Connection you have to it can make sure your games/high priority devices function without impacting anything. After that I went through the other options on the screen. I must admit the interface like the sleek black of the box (instead of the Blue of the normal WRT routers) is to the point and nice. This also was the first router I've come across where for DNS instead of being ISP/Custom they also had OpenDNS (which I use) and Google listed, so you can point DNS quickly on your network to someone besides your ISP if you want. After spending a lot less time tweaking then I normally do, since the interface is well laid out I got to testing. Also note this isn't a smart router from Linksys so no cloud app setup, but I've never been a fan of that so the fact it was missing from this router was a huge plus. **Usage** Since I have a WRT3200 router (which this one will be replacing) already I knew what to expect in performance. In the basics of coverage and throughput it was fairly spot on. I don't have any Killer enabled devices so I don't know if by default it would have improved performance or not. But it is nice to see the engine isn't impacting performance. In fact wireless coverage and throughput matched. Using the same USB 3.0 hard drive connected to the router, I was able to copy files at the speed of USB 3.0 over wireless. From my standpoint I can stick storage on that device and it will act like local storage. So all is good there. Now for the real test. I booted up Overwatch on my desktop and ran through a 2 matches, on the old WRT3200ACM and WRT32X, and watched Ping times while I had my son play. I also made it a bit unfair for the WRT32X, since I played that wireless from my desktop, instead of wired like I am normally. In that test they matched performance. But note this was an unfair test and the fact that WRT32X matched performance over wireless which tends to be a slower in the latency department was impressive. So I wired my desktop and ran one more match, and the pings where better. This is while my wife and other children streamed and I saw a definite improvement in ping time playing Overwatch. The priority engine seems to be doing its thing in my tests and I am impressed. No one in the house has noticed the switch, which is a good thing and I can manage and set devices I want to higher priority. They made it simple to manage and the great thing is if I find this too simple or not meeting my needs being a WRT Device allows me to flash and modify with numerous Open Source Firmware allowing for endless customizations. **Cons** This only has four LAN Ports. They are Gigabit, but if you need more than four this may not be the device for you. To get the full Killer Benefit you need Killer NICs in your laptops and desktops. If your device didn't come with it, no chance of buying a USB addon to get it and unlock the full benefit of the router. However if you don't have Killer NIC's don't worry like I said I noticed a definite improvement out of the box in general on gaming. **Summary** Overall if you need a router and like to game this may be the one for you. I find the coverage excellent for my multi-story house, with excellent throughput and the added benefit of QoS prioritization that seems to help us gamers. You are not going to go wrong with this Router, and being a WRT router it can be flashed with Open Source Firmware to change what you don't like.