Capable of filling large homes or offices with Wi-Fi coverage, this router is ideal if your home is filled with people streaming and gaming all at the same time. The eight antennas, beamforming and MU-MIMO support ensure that buffering and lag is kept a minimum – even if you are using the wireless network. Through the QoS or ’media prioritisation’ feature, you can assign bandwidth to certain devices or applications, to further reduce the chance of interruptions. At the core of the router is a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, which provides you with fast file transfers and the ability to send multiple data streams at one time, for faster Wi-Fi speeds to more devices. You can also attach this router to a pre-existing one to use it as an access point or network bridge.

This powerful router has tri-band capabilities, giving it the ability to emit three Wi-Fi signals simultaneously – one 2.4GHz and two 5GHz. You can use the two higher speed 5GHz bands for high-bandwidth applications like video conferencing, movie streaming or gaming without causing a drop in performance and reducing interference. Combined, these three independent Wi-Fi bands can deliver extremely fast transfer speeds of up to 5.3Gbps, which is made up of 1Gbps for 2.4GHz and 2.165Gbps for both 5GHz signals.

Beamforming focuses the Wi-Fi signals to each connected device, providing you with increased signal strength and coverage. Through the use of MU-MIMO technology, each device is treated as if it has its own dedicated router. This way, everyone can enjoy the Wi-Fi connection without interruption or buffering. In particular this router can deliver Wi-Fi to four devices at the same time, thanks to its 4x4 configuration, for stronger, faster performance.

You can connect devices that you want to have direct and stable access to your network, such as game consoles or computers, to one of the four 10/100/1000 Gigabit ports. With the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, you can even plug in an external storage device to share or quickly transfer its content. You can also share devices such as printers across your Wi-Fi network with these ports. This makes the router act almost like a server, where connected devices can gain access to the files stored on the external device or use the printer, without having to be directly connected.

You can set up and manage your network through the intuitive Linksys Smart Wi-Fi web interface. This gives you the ability to see connected devices, set up and manage guest access and parental controls, manage network traffic and update the firmware without needing to install any software on your computer. The accompanying Linksys Smart Wi-Fi app provides all of these features, so you can manage your network while you’re out and about.