I bought my house 14 years ago, long before the idea of the smart home was on the horizon. So no part of my house is wired for Internet. Instead, like many others, I rely heavily on Wi-Fi performance for virtually all of my Internet-connected peripherals.
That said, I have about 30 Internet of Things (IoT) devices running on the 2.4GHz band, and about a dozen or so running on the 5GHz band. On top of that, I run multiple streams of music from Tidal, and UHD videos from Netflix and Amazon Prime. I need a reliable Wi-Fi router that can serve my entire house from the second floor where the modem resides all the way down to my basement where my home theatre is located.
I'm currently using a D-Link AC5300 tri-band gigabit router, which I find to be overkill and overpriced at $500 for what I need. My house is only around 1,800 square feet in size, so I don't need a Wi-Fi router to transmit a 2.4GHz signal further than I'd require. But hey, it comes in red, my favourite colour. So when I was introduced to the Linksys 3200ACM Wi-Fi router priced at around $200 at Staples, I was intrigued.
Specifications
As far as specs go, this is a very impressive router. It features tri-stream 160, which doubles bandwidth from 80MHz to 160MHz on all spatial streams. It has a 1.8GHz dual-core CPU, which promotes simultaneous high-speed data processing. The router is open-source ready and can easily be configured using the browser-based dashboard.
It includes the latest wireless-AC technology for streaming and gaming on multiple devices. There is simultaneous dual-band connectivity (2.4 and 5GHz) to help avoid interference. A USB 3.0 port allows you to share files across your network. Plus the Ethernet ports are Gigabit capable for faster transfer and better connectivity - a perfect companion for my Rogers Gigabit package (which sadly comes with an abysmal Wi-Fi router that doesn't afford access to the 5GHz band beyond 15 steps away from it, and 2.4GHz band that can't pass more than 40Mbps download speed.)
Set-up
Set-up was extremely easy. The unit comes with a quick start guide that provides four simple steps to get your Wi-Fi network up and running. The set-up process took about five minutes. The next step is to access the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi instructions by visiting LinksysSmartWiFi.com on your computer. This step includes the router update. I would strongly recommend that you give permission to the router to update automatically. For power users who want to use open-source custom firmware, the automatic update, needless to say, should always be turned off.
Performance
When it came to speed testing the Wi-Fi signal, I used speedtest.net. Speedtest's options give the user a clear view of the network speed and what you are truly getting. Below are the results of the speed tests. From the screen grab, you can see that the Wi-Fi speed is extremely high, something that can't be achieved even by Rogers' best of the best Wi-Fi router/modem combo. This is by no means anywhere as good as the aforementioned D-Link router, but at the same time, the D-Link router costs more than double and takes more than double the footprint of this device.
Conclusion
Is this the best router on the market? Of course not. But deluding yourself into thinking you can get the best router on the market for around $200 is ridiculous. Even my $500 D-Link router is still not the best on the market. However, the Linksys 3200ACM will meet the needs of the average user: its Wi-Fi signal reach is immense, and even the 5GHz band penetrates from one end of the second floor of my house to the other end basement with very minimal signal strength loss, something that most Wi-Fi routers fail to do, particularly at that price. It also fills the void created by the extremely poor performance of the Rogers Wi-Fi router/modem combos. For $200, this is perhaps the best value Wi-Fi router at the time of this writing.
Top and bottom photos by David Susilo