If you want the fastest router around, and price is no object, I have the router for you. Meet the Linksys MAX-STREAM AC5400 Router:
This is a tri-band router with a combined Wi-Fi bandwidth of up to 5.3 Gbps per second. Specifically, it has two 5GHz bands, each with a 2.16 Gbps. Its 2.4GHz band tops out at 1 Gbps. The router supports Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), which is a technology designed to efficiently handle Wi-Fi bandwidth in homes with lots of clients. Each client can connect to the router at its highest speed without adversely affecting the speeds of others. All of this is run by a dual core 1.4 GHz dual core processor to keep things speedy. It has 8 antennas. Presumably to allow all this cool stuff to happen. The side effect is that this router takes up a lot of real estate. Thus you might have issues finding a place to put this router. It’s also very heavy as it weighs in at a hefty 3 pounds and has a lot of ventilation which is needed as it does get hot. That’s a sign that the router well built. It also has one other feature:
It has EIGHT gigabit Ethernet ports. Most routers typically have four or as little as three in the case of Apple Airport routers. Eight ports allows you to plug in all your devices over Ethernet without needing a switch. That’s great news for people like me who have a lot of devices that run over Ethernet or someone like a hard core gamer who finds that they are best able to pwn the competition by having their computers plugged in via Ethernet. You also get a USB 3 and USB 2 port for printers and storage devices.
One thing that has changed is that Linksys was smart enough to change the power plug away from a space hogging brick to a simple plug that doesn’t occupy a lot of space. What hasn’t changed is the ease of setup via Linksys Smart WiFi. Using that I had it setup and fully up to date from a firmware perspective in minutes. Linksys Smart WiFi also allows you to fully configure aspects such as parental controls, media priority, and block HTTPS sites which is a unique feature. Another unique feature that I found was that you can block sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can do all of this over a webpage, or over apps for the iOS and Android platforms. Keep in mind that the router will be connected to the Linksys servers at all times.
The real question is, how fast is this router? It is insanely fast based on my testing. I got a sustained WiFi speed of nearly 700Mbps in my testing which makes this the fastest router I have ever tested by a massive margin. I also did a speed test using speedof.me which measures how fast your Internet is and found that it recorded a 1 Mbps increase in my download speed versus my previous router over WiFi. I was dubious of the result so I switched routers back and forth several times and confirmed the result was due to the AC5400 router. That was an unexpected bonus as far as I was concerned. Clearly this router is the one that you want to get if you want to get the fastest performance possible.
Downsides? Price is the only one. It’s $499 Canadian which is not a low price. But this is not your average router. It is one of the fastest, and most feature filled routers available. If you need the fastest router around for games, video streaming, or you need a router with a lot of Ethernet ports, the Max-Stream AC5400 from Linksys is the router to get. Trust me on this one, you will not be disappointed with it.