So finding the perfect home Wi-Fi router has been like a search for the Holy Grail, and it hasn’t exactly ended with Cisco’s latest product – the Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Dual Band N Router.
Cisco describes it as the industry’s highest performing home router – “made exclusively for today’s multi-use, multimedia homes that include Internet TVs, game consoles, smartphones, iPads, eReaders, multiple computers and VoIP devices”.
I have just about all of those and recently bought a comparable high-end Netgear product – the WNDR3700 dual-band Wi-Fi gigabit router – to try to improve performance on my heavily-laden system.
Signal strengths did improve somewhat on my previous $30 Wi-Fi b/g router and speeds did seem a little faster. But I have suffered some hard-to-trace dropouts at times when internet connectivity suddenly disappears and I find it difficult to get a connection at all on one of its two bands.
Cisco’s $180 E4200 is also a dual-band gigabit router, which means its N-class Wi-Fi operates on two different bandwidths rather than one and its four hard-wire ethernet ports on the back can pass data at gigabit-per-second speeds to a connected PC or other device.
It represents a new sleeker design for Linksys routers, although it is one that rules out switching it to a vertical position, which has proved to be a space-saving feature for me in the Netgear product.
Set up was very straightforward with the included CD, which instructed me to connect the cables to the right places and choose a name and password for the Wi-Fi network.
The Cisco Connect software also provided clear instructions on how to add devices to the network, set up guest access and impose parental controls, such as blocking websites and setting time limits for my children to access the web on their laptops.
Advanced settings were hidden away but still accessible, with the software being pretty much the same in this top-end router as in the starter Valet routers introduced last year.
Given that this is aimed more at the advanced user, I would have appreciated it being bundled with Cisco’s Network Magic software, which provides a graphical representation of a network setup and has several useful tools. However, I was able independently to download and install a free version of Network Magic.
Cisco says by using both internal and external amplifiers for its chipsets and with six antennae inside, signal strength will be boosted across greater distances in the home. It claims the E4200 is capable of 450Mb/s on its 5Ghz band and 300Mb/s on the 2.4Ghz one.
To me that means web pages loading in a flash and games and video streaming smoothly without interruption, which I have yet to see with any Wi-Fi router.
I only received my review unit on the day the product was launched this week and so have had little time to test it to date. But testing signal strengths around the home with an iPhone app I have found them to be about the same as for the Netgear product.
The Netflix movie streaming service launched at the same pace as the Netgear and played smoothly on my Apple TV. However, an HD music video on YouTube, which had played flawlessly on my hard-wired PC, appeared jerky on a MacBook Air connected to Wi-Fi two rooms away from the router, and the picture froze several times.
Like the Netgear product, the Linksys has a useful extra feature of a USB port that allows external storage to be added to the network and its content easily shared. Its media server software allows movies, music and photos stored this way to be shared around the home.
In summary, the E4200 is a nicely designed router with easy setup and several useful features, such as separate guest access and the ability to add external storage.
But, based on my brief experience with it, it is still not the ultimate solution for fast, stable wireless connectivity around the home and consumers could probably achieve similar results with less expensive models.
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