Linksys EA6900 review

The Linksys EA6900 is an AC1900 wireless router, which means it should be one of the fastest routers available. It has a theoretical maximum throughput of 1300Mbit/s when using 5GHz 802.11ac and its wireless chipset also supports the Turbo QAM standard, which can theoretically bring 2.4GHz 802.11n performance up to 600Mbit/s.

The router has three replaceable antennas, a Gigabit WAN port, four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one USB3 and one USB port. These are all at the back, as are a hard power switch and a WPS button. Like most AC routers, it’s a bit chunky.

We were pleased to find that the wireless network comes with a pre-set password, so there’s no chance of anyone getting on to your network while you’re in the process of setting the router up. It’s worth noting that, by default, both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless networks have the same SSID: if you want to make it clear which one a user is connecting to, you’ll want to rename one or both.

The web interface includes a smart setup wizard, which automatically searches for firmware updates and allows you to change the default admin and Wi-Fi passwords. You can create a Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Account, which enables the router’s optional remote administration features.

The web interface is clear, and excellent QoS settings let you easily prioritise the likes of Netflix

The router’s features include a wireless guest network and basic parental controls that let you define when a specific device on your network is allowed online, as well as allowing you to add a simple blacklist of undesirable sites for that device. A QoS media prioritization tool not only lets you assign priority to selected applications, but also lets you select specific machines, so the living room Netflix connection need never be slowed just because someone’s playing online games. If you connect a USB drive, you can set it up as an FTP server, network share or DLNA media server; you can also use one of the router’s USB ports to connect a USB printer and share it across your network.

The reason to buy an 802.11ac router is because you need a fast and stable Wi-Fi connection. Unfortunately, the EA6900’s performance was rather poor compared to that of most of its AC rivals when we tested it with both our usual laptop’s integrated wireless chipset and the Linksys WUSB6300 wireless adaptor, which is expensive at £40.

At 2.4 GHz, neither the laptop’s adaptor nor the maker’s own could maintain a connection to the router in our 20m test, which was disappointing, even though our test environment suffers from a lot of 2.4GHz interference. Speeds at 1m and 10m were good and, with the laptop’s own adaptor, we saw transfer speeds of 37.3Mbit/s at 1m and 33.6Mbit/s at 10m, while the Linksys adaptor managed an excellent 87Mbit/s at 1m and 83.9Mbit/s at 10m.

We anticipated better performance at 5GHz. Our laptop’s wireless 5GHz 802.11n adaptor failed to maintain a connection with the router at 20m but managed speeds of 61.5Mbit/s at 1m and 57.3Mbit/s at 10m. Unsurprisingly, we saw the best results using the 802.11ac WUSB6300 at 5GHz, although its transfer speeds of 83.9Mbit/s at 1m, 78.8Mbit/s at 10m and just 8.3Mbit/s at 20m were poor compared to other AC routers. Its score in our 20m test using the Asus PCE-AC68 PCI-E adaptor was a decent 54.5Mbit/s, though.

Although the router has lots of features, the high cost of the matching WUSB6300 wireless adaptor and mediocre performance in our wireless transfer speed tests means that we’d rather save some money and use the BT Home Hub 5 instead.