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- First reviewFebruary 23, 2016
- Last reviewJuly 29, 2018
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- First answerOctober 10, 2016
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Your household wants to play, stream and work online all at once. With this Linksys router, you can do it all without buffering or other interruptions. Use the Smart Wi-Fi app to get started, control, and monitor your home network from anywhere.
Customer Rating
4
Solid, easy-to-configure router
on February 23, 2016
Posted by: wrbluepearl
from Upstate NY
BLUF: The Linksys EA7500 is a quality home wireless router, featuring excellent routing throughput and WiFi speeds.
I have a difficult WiFi situation at home, which has led to me taking fairly extreme steps to get good wireless performance everywhere in my house. Living in a densely-populated area, I can see more than a dozen 2.4GHz wireless networks in my living room. As a result, 5GHz performance is very important to me, since there is significantly less interference from the neighbors in that band. For this review, I specifically measured the routing and wireless performance of the EA7500 with ioperf under Ubuntu 14.04. I used a SuperMicro Xeon E3 server, with Intel gigabit Ethernet, connected to the EA7500 through a Netgear unmanaged gigabit switch. As a client, I used an Apple MacBook Air with Broadcom 802.11ac wireless support.
Routing performance, from LAN->WAN, is excellent. I was able to saturate the gigabit connection from the wired LAN ports of the router to the WAN port, so the EA7500 will support the fastest Internet connections available for the foreseeable future.
Wireless performance, over 802.11ac, in the 5GHz band with 80MHz channels, was likewise excellent. With the laptop in the same room as the router, I was able to achieve 800 Mbps speeds, simultaneously, for both upload and download. (Due to the nature of the wireless medium, a router rated for 1600Mbps can only deliver 1/2 of that in each direction - so 800Mbps in each direction means you're getting all of the speed that you bought with this router.) In the next room (through a sheetrock wall), I was able to achieve about 50% of the maximum speed, about 400-500Mbps (or still fast enough to saturate Time Warner's fastest 300Mbps Internet service, assuming you can get it where you live). Through a plaster wall, as opposed to sheetrock wall, speeds dropped to about 45% of maximum. At a distance of about 40ft, through several plaster walls and on the next floor above, my computer still showed signal from the router, but the speed dropped to zero. This is an extremely difficult test; given that many commercial grade access points can't reach this location, I'm not at all unhappy with the performance. The EA7500's speed results were very consistent across multiple tests, typically within a 10% band. For comparison, other routers I have tested have had a nearly 50% variation in test results.
So basically, the EA7500, in a modern, sheetrock house, should be able to achieve about 300Mbps on 5GHz anywhere in a house up to about 40ft x 40ft, as long as everything is on the same floor. First-to-second floor performance dropped off considerably, so if you have a large house with multiple floors, you may want to consider locating a router on each floor. (5GHz is considerably more touchy about going through walls than 2.4GHz, but offers many more channels for the router to work with, meaning you're more likely to find a channel without interference.)
Configuration of the EA7500 is mostly straightforward. The router comes with a pre-set WiFi password on a sticker on the bottom and WPA2 Personal enabled, excellent design choices for a consumer router. Wireless Protected Setup (WPS) is also supported if your devices are compatible (i.e., not from Apple). When you first connect to the router over the local network, it forces you to change the administration password - also good practice. The configuration screens are easy to follow, and configurations are applied quickly, typically taking only a few seconds. (This is a pleasant contrast to many consumer routers, which force you to wait through a 2-3 minute full reboot every time you change a setting.) My only real complaint with the configuration settings is that Linksys pushes the user very hard to sign up for their cloud management service, which allows you to remotely access the router's settings and data stored on attached USB drives. While I "get" how this is a useful feature, it may introduce security concerns many users aren't prepared to address (for example, absolutely under no circumstances should you reuse a password from another account when you sign up with Linksys' cloud service). Guest networks on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz have become a standard feature of wireless routers; the EA7500 supports both.
Finally, some routers now have an "access point" mode, intended for use in situations where you already have another router installed. This allows you to add a second WiFI access point to your house to address coverage issues. Unfortunately, this unit does not have it, and it was a little painful to get it configured as just an access point - not impossible, just finicky.
Less than two months after release, the EA7500 has received a firmware update that improved support for automatic channel selection and other bug fixes.
In conclusion, the EA7500 accomplishes its goals of excellent wired routing performance, WIFI throughput (with quadruple-bonded channels in the 5GHz band allowing for impressive wireless speeds), and straightforward setup.
My Best Buy number: 2011053853
What's great about it: Good routing performance, good wireless speed
What's not so great: No access point mode, aggressive push for their cloud service
I would recommend this to a friend!
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The Shark Genius Steam Pocket Mop System is our most advanced floor cleaning system ever. Featuring both a Steam Mop and a Spray Pocket mop, the Genius system is the right solution for all your cleaning needs. Harness the power of steam to sanitize 99.9% of household bacteria*. (Sanitization studies were conducted under controlled test conditions. Household conditions and results may vary.)
What is the water tank capacity?
It appears to be about 16oz. It's enough to clean about 800 square feet during our use.
7 years, 3 months ago
by
wrbluepearl
The Shark Genius Steam Pocket Mop System is our most advanced floor cleaning system ever. Featuring both a Steam Mop and a Spray Pocket mop, the Genius system is the right solution for all your cleaning needs. Harness the power of steam to sanitize 99.9% of household bacteria*. (Sanitization studies were conducted under controlled test conditions. Household conditions and results may vary.)
Is this for upholstery cleaning. Have shark lift away vacume.love it !
No, this is for cleaning hard-surface floors (hardwood, tile, linoleum). It has no vacuum functionality.
7 years, 3 months ago
by
wrbluepearl
Orbi Whole Home WiFi System delivers up to 3.0Gbps high-performance WiFi. Sleek, modern design with high-gain internal antennas for up to 5,000 square feet of coverage. FastLane3 Technology creates a dedicated Tri-Band WiFi for seamless 4K streaming and gaming everywhere in your home. Keep a single WiFi name for uninterrupted connections as you move from room-to-room. Circle Smart Parental Controls runs on Orbi Routers for a smart way for families to manage content and time online, on any connected device. Provide internet access to guests without sharing your personal network password. Orbi is ready right out of the box and compatible with your ISP. Just use the Orbi app to get started with better WiFi, everywhere in minutes.
I have a house built in 1930 and it is 1000 sq. ft. up and 1000 sq. ft. basement. I have 2 wifi extenders because of the solid brick and plaster walls to pick up better signal in dead areas. I currently have a Netgear 55 router. Would this work better?
This may work better, simply because the Orbi uses a separate radio for communication between the router and the extenders, instead of having to use the same radio to talk to phones/tablets/laptops and to the extender. My house is 150yrs old and has plaster walls, and the Orbi has no trouble getting signal from the base unit to the extender.
7 years, 6 months ago
by
wrbluepearl
Orbi Whole Home WiFi System delivers up to 3.0Gbps high-performance WiFi. Sleek, modern design with high-gain internal antennas for up to 5,000 square feet of coverage. FastLane3 Technology creates a dedicated Tri-Band WiFi for seamless 4K streaming and gaming everywhere in your home. Keep a single WiFi name for uninterrupted connections as you move from room-to-room. Circle Smart Parental Controls runs on Orbi Routers for a smart way for families to manage content and time online, on any connected device. Provide internet access to guests without sharing your personal network password. Orbi is ready right out of the box and compatible with your ISP. Just use the Orbi app to get started with better WiFi, everywhere in minutes.
I live somewhat in the country and most internet providers do not come out here to my house. Will Orbi be able to replace DSL?
The Orbi gives you wireless access to your existing Internet service - it would work with your DSL, not take its place.
7 years, 6 months ago
by
wrbluepearl
Orbi Whole Home WiFi System delivers up to 3.0Gbps high-performance WiFi. Sleek, modern design with high-gain internal antennas for up to 5,000 square feet of coverage. FastLane3 Technology creates a dedicated Tri-Band WiFi for seamless 4K streaming and gaming everywhere in your home. Keep a single WiFi name for uninterrupted connections as you move from room-to-room. Circle Smart Parental Controls runs on Orbi Routers for a smart way for families to manage content and time online, on any connected device. Provide internet access to guests without sharing your personal network password. Orbi is ready right out of the box and compatible with your ISP. Just use the Orbi app to get started with better WiFi, everywhere in minutes.
Why do I need to turn off the fios wireless radio? I want to use the orbi on floors 1 & 2 and use the fios wifi in the basement. I have 75/75 Mbps service and how much degradation will result from using orbi as an access point?
I suspect that Netgear recommends turning off the FIOS radio to reduce interference in the 2.4GHz band, due to the limited number of channels available for WiFi there. Based on my own experiences, I doubt you will see any degradation in performance with the Orbi - I'm typically seeing WiFI connection speeds north of 200mbps everywhere in my house, and the extender-to-base station channel is supposed to be good for 800mbps.
7 years, 6 months ago
by
wrbluepearl