Linksys EA6500 Wireless AC Router Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,123 words · ~5 min read
0:05
buy a qualifying Intel product and get entered in the Intel Dynamic ticket
0:09
giveaway for a chance to win great prizes visit Intel gaming promo.com to
0:13
learn more welcome to what'll be a pretty quick and straight forward unboxing of the lynus ea6500 this is
0:19
what they're calling a Smart Wi-Fi router and it runs at ac750 so it's dual
0:24
band which means 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and
0:27
remember when they spec these maximum throughputs they're actually stacking
0:31
the total combined throughput on the multiple bands and across multiple
0:36
Technologies so it's actually ac300 or 1.3 gbit and
0:41
n450 now they're also calling it a Smart Wi-Fi router which basically means it's
0:45
got a bunch of different features including y Smart Wi-Fi the ability to
0:49
utilize apps to customize your Wi-Fi home get anywhere access to your network
0:53
enable intelligent media prioritization so some of these features are great some
0:56
of them are not necessarily as great the ea4 500 with what they called at that
1:01
time uh Cisco Cloud connect was um I I
1:05
didn't end up using those features and I instead used the more barebones firmware
1:09
but what I liked about the ea4500 is it was extremely fast extremely powerful
1:13
and didn't rely any fancy configurations in order to really get awesome
1:18
performance out of it compared to some of the other routers that we tried so we
1:21
actually have quite a few of those deployed so why are we upgrading to the
1:25
ea6500 you might ask and the answer is pretty straightforward so number one is
1:30
that it uses Wireless AC so if you have any devices that are able to leverage AC
1:35
for example I have an HTC1 you will
1:38
potentially see some speed benefit there number two is the fact that it's
1:42
simultaneous dual band so 2.4 and 5 GHz
1:45
means that you have the potential for maximum range as well as maximum
1:49
throughput and we have some content coming very soon on NVIDIA Shield which
1:54
relies on a very strong Wireless signal in order to stream HD video which is
1:59
essentially your game so in order to stream HD games from your computer to
2:03
your handheld device so we wanted something that was really beefy enough
2:07
so we asked lynxis to go ahead and send one of these over to us in terms of
2:11
accessories you get a huge power brick I
2:14
mean this thing's uh this I mean I guess this is in line with what I already knew
2:18
about AC and if you look at any of the actually decent AC add-in cards such as
2:24
the one from ASUS which has a massive heat sink on it and like antennas that
2:28
come out like this um this is not power
2:32
sipping hardware and so we're not and then the kind of implementation in here
2:36
is not the same as what you might find in a phone so don't expect to see 1.3
2:41
gigabit throughput to your phone but it is a significant improvement over
2:45
Wireless nend we also get an Ethernet cable as well as a setup CD and last but
2:50
not least we get the router itself which has that same kind of not like the older
2:55
UFO shape where they were super glossy but it has the same kind of shape as the
2:58
ea4500 except that it is significantly larger
3:03
and has more ventilation which is also in line with that larger power adapter
3:07
so we find ventilation holes here along the bottom where we expect air to be
3:11
passively drawn in there's four rubber feet here here here and here as well and
3:15
this was missing from the ea4500 glad to see they added this uh wall mounts right
3:20
here so you can go ahead and put a couple Nails on the wall and hang it off that then all along the sides of the
3:25
device side front and other side
3:29
there goes the Box uh we find more ventilation holes and then again in the
3:33
top here here and here on the back we find what lynis is calling and this
3:38
should really be a cardinal sin uh rebranding WPS I think they're calling
3:43
it simple tap technology TM for easy setup that is a WPS button right there
3:48
so it allows you to without entering any security Keys connect this to other
3:52
devices you've also got an integrated five port switch four of which are
3:56
normal ports and one of which is intended as a Wan Port so that's where
3:59
you'll plug your Broadband modem into and then you've got a couple of USB
4:03
ports for storage so if you don't have something like a dedicated Nas you can
4:07
add storage to this simply by plugging things in there there's often support
4:11
for things like printers as well a hardware reset button as well as power
4:15
input so the last things that I should probably mention about this are the high
4:19
powerered amplifier for ultimate range remember guys 5 GHz routers do not
4:23
necessarily have the same kind of range as 2.4 GHz routers it is inherently a
4:29
shorter range technology but what's good about it is there's less potential for
4:32
interference whether it's from your cordless phone or whether it's from
4:36
other wireless networks around you from people who haven't upgraded to 5 GHz or
4:41
microwaves or whatever else so you might get more effective range out of it and
4:46
then they also have lots of parental controls and I personally find their firmware easy to use but not just easy
4:51
to use but quicker to use because you don't have to reboot your router in
4:55
order to apply any changes which is something that maybe people using
4:58
aftermarket firmwares take for granted but for people who don't want to go down
5:01
that route when I compare this to something like dink's latest and
5:04
greatest AC router which requires a 300C
5:07
cool down when you upgrade the firmware and I think a 100 or 90 second cool down
5:11
when you apply any changes this is much faster when you're trying to diagnose uh
5:16
any kind of random Network issue thank you for checking out my unboxing and
5:19
first look at the lynxis ea6500 don't forget to subscribe to L tchp from
5:23
unboxings reviews and other computer videos let me know what you think about this video in the comments do like the
5:28
video and do share it if you think there anyone who would benefit