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 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.

Original review of 1-16-16:I used to be a big Linksys fan but my last two router purchases have not fared well. In the old days of wireless I bought a very reliable WRT54G which I kept for years. Based on that purchase I bought a WRT160n which also proved to be reliable. I then purchased an EA4500 (dual bands, faster speeds) and while the older Linksys were very good, the EA4500 turned out to be unusable. Bluetooth which also operates on the 2.4 GHz band badly conflicted with this router even when set to a width of 20 MHz. The EA4500 was a loss of $130 as it was too late to return. And then I purchased a WRT1200AC, I gave Linksys the benefit of the doubt based on my two earlier units and assumed that the EA4500 was just an anomaly, a mistake on my part.The WRT1200AC worked ok initially but then it started to drop Wi-Fi speeds on both bands requiring regular rebooting (sometimes several times a day). The issue was thoroughly tested. It was not the ISP as wired connections remained stable. It was not traffic/channel congestion as I live far from the city and can hardly see any other Wi-Fi signals. When I do see them (with a Net Analyzer) their strengths are at a minimum, usually at -85 to -90 RSSI so a non-issue for me. In fact my router is the only one that shows up on the 5 GHz band, no other 5 GHz routers around, but the speed issue developed with the 5 band as well so it was not congestion. I can go into great detail here but in summary I spent hours on the phone with Linksys, hours on their Customer Support Forum, and hours trying possible configurations on both bands regarding channels, widths, network mode, security, etc. all to no avail. IMO there is an issue with this model which shows up on some units and not on others. If you go to the Linksys Customer Forum website, or even their main sales website, you will find many others complaining of the same issue with both the WRT1200AC and its brother, the WRT1900AC. Both degrade download speeds down to 1-2 Mbps and the only solution is to reboot the router, nothing else works. This occurred with all my devices so it was not the computer. Besides, I still have the old reliable WRT160n and speeds do not degrade with it at all.My unit came with the latest firmware, version 1.0.4.167471, but to make sure there was no FW corruption I downloaded a fresh copy of the FW from the Linksys site, reset the router to factory settings and re-flashed the FW. I then reconfigured the router from scratch, not from backup, but this did not help either as the issue persisted. And in reference to the review below (when sorted by date) I tried channels 1, 6, and 11, not Auto as I know that Auto is not a good choice. That "solution" did not work for my unit.Update of 1/31/16: Since none of the above helped, I called Linksys and requested a warranty replacement - received the replacement on 1/23/16 and unfortunately it lasted 5 days before the same issue developed again, dropping Wi-Fi speeds requiring regular reboots. Today I rebooted the router at about 8 am and by 10 am the 5 GHz band had dropped to 2.1 Mbps so another reboot was required. I have ordered a new router, different brand - we will see...Update of 2/14/16: My replacement router, a TP-Link Archer C9, has been online since 2/1/16 -- so far so good, stable performance with no reboots and solid speeds. The TP-Link has about the same range on the 2.4 GHz band as the Linksys but slightly less range on the 5 GHz band. The Linksys had an excellent range on both bands, it is unfortunate that the Wi-Fi speeds were not stable. I hope this is fixed with a future firmware or a future Version 2 hardware. I was told by Customer Service that they are working on this issue for the WRT1900AC and the 1900ACS but not for the 1200AC. So my recommendation is to stay away from these routers until these issues are resolved.On a good note, their Customer Service staff was very courteous and professional. Contrast that with Netgear which has a bad reputation for gouging users after 90 days even though their so called warranty is 1 year. They might as well offer a 90 day warranty since they charge customers for calls after 90 days - not so at Linksys so kudos to Linksys on this.