Gadgetory

hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer more secure and fully private click now to learn more the Linksys wrt54g router which loses claims and i believe them is the top-selling router all of all time earned its legendary status by being a solid piece of hardware with great support from the open-source community who built firmwares for it that performed better were more stable and added features that especially at the time were only available on expensive commercial grade routers now we have finally got its spiritual successor the wrt 1900 a C in our hands but making a video about it right now puts me in a bit of an awkward position two months ago I could have gotten on the hype train and said oMG Linksys is going back to their roots it's super powerful hardware they're going to collaborate with the open-source communities could be awesome and by two months from now links this might have completely smoothed out their relationship with the makers of popular third-party firmwares like open wrt and dd-wrt and that message might be completely valid again but right now is an in-between stage where the hardware is available but none of the big aftermarket firmware guys have announced any kind of timeline for support for this router with most of the communication from these communities being fairly critical of links this is collaborative effort so far and they're using by Marvel Wireless chipset rather than a more widely supported Broadcom chipset but there's good news if you ask Linksys there's a ton of work being done behind the scenes to get support rolled out in a timely manner so stay tuned for the time being though all I can say is what you're getting now when you buy what is one of the most expensive consumer routers on the market physically the unit is a real throwback to the old wrt series with a black and blue look and stackable design that will look very familiar to fans of the old wrt54g on the bottom we find tons of installation holes and rubber feet that include wall mounting support a nice touch the front is mostly taken up by the usual indicator LEDs for connectivity and activity on the sides we find two of the four included antenna which are not internal or permanently attached a baffling trend that plagued us for a couple of years and now thankfully seems to be going away so you can easily upgrade these if you want moving around to the back we've got five gigabit ethernet ports one of which is designated for when a WPS button a power switch a power and jack a thankfully easy to reach Hardware reset button huge thumbs up there and a couple of storage ports that appear to be labeled similarly to internal SATA connectors as ports zero to three except that there are only two of them further investigation reveals that the right one is a USB 2.0 / eSATA combo port labeled USB one and the left one is a USB 3 superspeed port labeled USB 2 funnily enough for all the marketing around Wireless speeds and all the cryptic labeling of these ports these are actually one of the biggest differentiating points for this router and they're capable of throughput in the 60 to 70 megabyte per second range on eSATA and USB 3 numbers that put this router cleanly in the mix with dedicated nas hardware in terms of drive performance finally on the back to more removable antennas bring our total to 4 although I should be noted that the router supports three spatial streams so only the most optimal of these three will function at any given time finally on the top we find shiny prominent Linksys branding I guess they're happy to be out from under the Cisco umbrella and more ventilation holes over a temperature controlled cooling fan that didn't even turn on throughout my testing but will ramp up under extremely heavy load and the largest heatsink I have ever seen on a router I mean seriously that is one big ol hunk of metal down there feature wise things are a little bit light for a premium router with no VPN support and fairly limited options in terms of parental and advanced wireless controls but Linksys does support both a wireless repeater mode and bridge mode although I wasn't able to test these since I've only got one of these at the moment the software setup process is pretty straightforward overall Linksys includes a password on the Wi-Fi out-of-the-box thank you by the way and both their easy setup wizard and advanced UI will be very familiar if you've used any links this last couple of generations smart routers it's pretty snappy but a feature that I was sad to see missing from my older EA 4200 nan I would connect router is the ability to apply almost all changes without restarting the hardware that was freaking awesome for a trial-and-error network configuration guy like me but I suspect for most people it's not really that big of an issue now on to performance well unfortunately I can't replicate the assortment of routers used for comparative analysis and the well-established test procedures that Tim Higgins at small net builder comm used for his review of this router which you should definitely check out by the way it's linked in the video description what I can do is run it through the paces by testing both 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz speeds on my Dell XPS 12 with an upgraded Intel 31 60 AC wireless network card to give you guys an idea of how satisfying the experiences overall the router was installed on one side of the main floor of a three-story house and my 4 test locations were right next to it with no obstructions about 10 feet away directly upstairs through the floor upstairs on the other side of the house in the land showroom and finally through to exterior walls in the garage where it's really nice to have decent Wi-Fi connectivity for like if you're working on a project or something you want to have a movie to watch or whatever the case may be for the measurements I used i per with the following arguments which gave me consistent results but I would definitely be open to suggestions about how to improve our results in the future I'd also love to hear from you guys if you'd like us to do more wireless networking videos we really haven't done almost anything ever and if we did then we might have actually something to compare against in the future so post your thoughts in the forum 5 linked in the video description if you'd like to see more of this category from us or if you just can't be bothered so conclusion time the wrt54g was revolutionary because it delivered stable and for the time very powerful hardware with a user flashable firmware it captured the hearts of the modding and enthusiast communities with a variety of third-party firmware is available for it that enabled features that at the time could not be found in routers at that price point and that's the big gap I see in the new strategy the 54 G was very competitively priced I mean I mentioned the price twice just now which drove widespread adoption which if there's anything I've learned about the open-source community it's that they want their work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible drove that open-source development that created a pretty amazing positive feedback loop as that open-source development drove more sales of the router and I think that's something that without that inexpensive factor is going to be challenging for something so expensive to achieve especially with competitors like the Zeus rtac 68 you and Netgear are 7,000 available for so much less with similar performance albeit without the impressively beefy build quality so that's where we sit right now is the WR T 1900 a C a capable platform that given adequate support could compete for your hard-earned money the answer is yes but whatever links this might wish it is going to have to relearn that legendary status because their competitors have had over a decade to catch up to the concept of great hardware with support for open firmware and there are plenty of other great options for modders many of which are ready to go now and not waiting on future firmware changes so I want to hear from you guys in the comments is it too little too late for the wrt 1900 a C or do you think this is just the tip of the iceberg and Linksys is going to build on what a little bird might have told me already is a very successful product hmm anyway guys thank you very much for watching my team and I worked hard on this video we hope you enjoyed it if you did please like and share it if you didn't please dislike it and leave a comment with your thoughts we do take constructive criticism very seriously also linked in the video description is a support link so you can buy t-shirts give us a monthly contribution or use our affiliate code when you buy stuff all these are good things and again thanks for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe to honest tech tips from our unboxings reviews and other computer videos