Linksys EA9500 Max-Stream AC5400 MU-MIMO Gigabit router: A new wireless kingpin

A new flagship

Flagship products are always interesting and exciting because they represent the best efforts from the company. And at CES 2016 earlier this year, Linksys introduced their new flagship EA9500 Max-Stream AC5400 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router (a veritable mouthful, so we will just refer to it as the EA9500 from here on).

This router combines the very latest and best of home networking technologies, and we were eager to get our hands on it. However, we were made to wait as Linksys decided to tease us by releasing its products gradually. And just over a month ago, they introduced the EA9500’s little brother, the EA7500, one of the few AC1900 class routers that supports MU-MIMO. So how much more advanced in the EA9500 and what new features does it have? Glad you asked, let us tell you.

The Linksys EA9500

Let’s clear some things up first, because it may be confusing to some that the Linksys EA9500 is dubbed as an AC5400 router. The specifications of this new router are in fact identical to earlier AC5300 class routers, like the ASUS RT-AC5300 and Netgear Nighthawk X8, that we have reviewed. In fact, these routers all rely on Broadcom’s 5G XStream platform for their wireless capabilities. The reason the Linksys EA9500 is dubbed as an AC5400 router is because they decided to go with Broadcom’s classification official rating. Broadcom refers to its chipset as being capable of 5.4Gbps. In fact, TP-Link’s new Archer C5400 router will also follow it Linksys’ footsteps and have an AC5400 rating. So when you see AC5400 and AC5300, just remember that they refer to the same class of routers.

Now back to the Linksys EA9500 router and the first thing you will notice is that it is huge. It’s over 30cm wide and nearly 7cm thick, and tips the scales at 1.7kg. Few routers will be able to match it for mass. It also has 8 external non-removable antennas. According to Linksys, non-removable antennas were used to improve MU-MIMO performance. Non-removable antennas provide a fixed antenna gain, allowing the router to better calculate and maintaining beamforming signals. Removable antennas, on the other hand, can result in the antenna gain being inconsistent, which in turn can make it harder for the router to maintain transmission to its client device. 

In terms of design, the Linksys EA9500 does not deviate too much from other models in Linksys’ stable. Like Linksys’ other routers, the EA9500 router comes decked entirely in black and features a simple design that makes it look like a huge black brick. The top panel, however, is filled with vents to keep the router’s internals cool and there’s a very cool-looking LED system status indicator panel with an illuminated Linksys logo that shows the status of the router. There are 8 indicators on the panel and they are used to tell if Wi-Fi is operational and if there are MU-MIMO devices connected. Unfortunately, these indicators do not tell if the Gigabit Ethernet ports are working.

To the right of the router, users will be able to find two buttons: one for turning the Wi-Fi on or off, and another for WPS setup. This is pretty standard stuff for most high-end routers, but we would prefer an additional button that turns the LED status indictors off too since they can be quite distracting at night, especially if you sleep in the same room as your router.

Behind the router is where users will find a pleasant surprise. There’s still a single Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, but instead of the usual four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, Linksys has decided to outfit the EA9500 router with a whopping 8 Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports. This is a much welcomed feature, considering the amount of connected devices we have today. This means that you can connect your router to, say, your TV, set-top box, console, NAS, and still have ports to spare. Our only gripe is that these LAN ports do not support port aggregation. There's also a USB 3.0 and a USB 2.0 port for connecting to printers and external storage devices for print and file sharing.

As mentioned earlier, the Linksys EA9500 router relies on Broadcom’s 5G XStream platform for its wireless capabilities and so it has mostly the same innards as other AC5300, AC5400 class routers. This means that powering the EA9500 router is a 1.4GHz dual-core Broadcom BCM4709 processor and three BCM4366 radios. These radios are 4x4 stream and also MU-MIMO capable (read all about this technology in our older Linksys router review where it first debuted). Speaking of MU-MIMO, the EA9500 router is, at the time of writing, the only router in the AC5300 class that supports MU-MIMO right out of the box. Other AC5300 class will or might eventually get MU-MIMO support via firmware updates, but the EA9500 is currently the only one that supports MU-MIMO as is.

Rated speeds are therefore as follows: 1000Mbps on its 2.4GHz band and 2167Mbps each on its two 5GHz bands. Add them all up and you get 5334Mbps. 

The EA9500 router also features Linksys’ Smart Wi-Fi user interface and software stack. We have mentioned previously that this is arguably the most user-friendly setup interface in the market and that has not changed. If you have used any other Linksys Smart Wi-Fi router before, you’ll know what to expect. For those unfamiliar with Smart Wi-Fi, it offers a good balance of ease of use and control, and offers features such as traffic monitoring, QoS, parental control, cloud storage and more.

A lot of thought has gone into the design and an example would be Linksys’ QoS management system, which gives users the option to prioritize connections based on devices as opposed to simply just specifying applications and the ports they use. This is both easier and considerably more practical for most users, and is something that we are seeing rival router companies beginning to implement in their own setup user interfaces.

Linksys' Smart Wi-Fi also lets you remotely control and access your router. This can be done in two ways: via the Smart Wi-Fi app that is available for free on both iOS and Android, or online through the Smart Wi-Fi portal. Both will let you remotely control and edit your router settings, change passwords, enable Parental Control, view IP cameras and even access content on external storage devices connected to the router. This can be useful especially if you need to troubleshoot your home network or even change its security settings while you are away.

Linksys also recently updated the Smart Wi-Fi app, and thanks to its refreshed interface, it's now easier to use than ever. Plus, it also gets a few new nifty features, such as offline notification, which sends you a notification on your mobile device should your router lose its connection to the Internet.

Test setup

Our routine test setup includes a desktop PC, the reviewed router, and a laptop to simulate a wireless home network. The desktop system takes on the role of a host machine, while the router acts as a gateway. And lastly, an external Wireless 802.11ac adapter attached to the notebook is used to fulfill the role of a wireless remote client. The router is locked down in N-only mode for the 2.4GHz band, and 802.11ac for the 5GHz band, mainly to prevent the use of varying 802.11 standards. Typically, a channel bandwidth of 40MHz is selected where applicable, while 80MHz is used for the 5GHz AC band.

We'll be using Netgear's A6200 802.11ac USB adapter for our throughput tests to reduce the number of variables involved. The Netgear A6200 USB adapter supports up to two spatial streams for a maximum data transfer rate of 867Mbps - the maximum for USB adapters currently. Hence, if your system has a more advanced wireless chipset that supports three spatial streams, you can expect even higher speeds.

To evaluate, we will be using a mix of synthetic benchmarks and real-world testing. The synthetic benchmark we are using is called LAN Speed Test. As for real-world testing, we will be measuring the routers’ speeds in transferring a 1GB zip file. We will do multiple tests at different distances to simulate use around a typical home. For the 5GHz band, we also measured how performance is affected if two clients are connected and uploading and downloading data at the same time. Here are the test distances we used and what they represent.

• 2m - Right beside the router.
• 5m - In the adjacent room.
• 13m - In the room opposite.
• 17m - To simulate extreme distances

An important thing to note is that we will be phasing out 2.4GHz testing from our benchmarks. For one, 802.11ac is now being widely supported by most if not all mobile devices. If your device supports 802.11ac, it makes absolutely no sense to connect to the router via the slower and more congested 2.4GHz band. Speaking of congestion, our test environment currently has no less than 19 different 2.4GHz networks being broadcasted. The amount of noise and interference makes it very difficult for us to properly evaluate 2.4GHz performance. As such, we'll only be presenting performance from the 5GHz band.

Performance Analysis

We had high hopes for Linksys’ new flagship router and the EA9500 did not disappoint. Uplink and downlink numbers on the LAN Speed Test benchmark were amongst the highest we have ever recorded, and it even maintained its performance pretty well at our farther test ranges. Overall, we consider it to be marginally quicker than the other two competing AC-5300 routers that we have tested on this test - the ASUS RT-AC5300 and Netgear Nighthawk X8.

 

The EA9500 router’s file transfer speeds were equally impressive too. The EA9500 notched up the highest file transfer speeds we’ve ever recorded at 2, 5 and 13 meters. And although its performance dropped considerably at our farthest test range of 17 meters, it was still significantly quicker than other comparable routers at this extreme range.

In our performance load test, where we downloaded data simultaneously using two notebooks from our host computer, the EA9500 router managed brilliantly thanks to its tri-band capability. By allocating each device its own 5GHz band, the EA9500 managed to maintain very high transfer speeds of nearly 250Mbps. From this graph, we can also see that tri-band routers have the edge in this test as they were the only routers to consistently manage above 160Mbps. For dual-band routers who have to half their bandwidth, they would typically only record speeds of around 70 - 80Mbps in this test, as both client devices were logged onto the same band.

A fast, powerful router for enthusiasts

As Linksys’ new flagship router, the EA9500 does not disappoint on the performance front. Both uplink and downlink speeds are very high and more than a match for its rivals in this high-end rarefied segment of the router market. File transfer speeds, in particular, were very impressive, and the EA9500 could sustain relatively high speeds even at our farther test ranges of 13 and 17 meters.

And on the features front, we have few complaints. Linksys’ Smart Wi-Fi user interface remains to be one of the easiest to navigate and use, and we appreciate that Linksys has decided to outfit their latest flagship with 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The additional ports would certainly be welcomed by enthusiasts and will allow users to connect even more devices to this router and take advantage of its superb performance. 

In addition, it’s also the only router in its class to support MU-MIMO. However, like we mentioned in our review of the Linksys EA7500 router, the benefits of MU-MIMO are not as drastic as we had hoped. It does provide a modest improvement in performance (by around 20% to 30%, depending on the load), but it isn’t what we would call a game-changer. That said, it's still early days yet and there's still a lot of optimization that can be done for the technology to direct signals more accurately and efficiently to MU-MIMO compatible devices.

The one feature that we would have liked to see on the EA9500 router is support for port aggregation. With 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports, allocating two ports to support port aggregation would allow enthusiasts with high-end NAS systems to enjoy even faster connectivity, without affecting usage too much. ASUS’ competing RT-AC5300 router supports port aggregation, but it only has four Gigabit Ethernet ports, which might be too much of a sacrifice for some users. The Netgear Nighthawk X8’s implementation is much better as it has 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports, with two supporting port aggregation.

As Linksys’ new flagship router, the EA9500 router doesn’t come cheap. In fact, at S$539, the EA9500 router is easily one of the most expensive routers in the market today. However, considering the loads of features it has, its ease of use, and its performance, we feel that the EA9500 router's high price is suitably justified.

Fortunately, there’s some good deals that can still be had for this router at Hachi.tech and Challenger. Members will be able to purchase the EA9500 router at S$499 and also receive a free Linksys AC600 USB MU-MIMO adapter worth S$129. And if you are a Singtel customer, simply show your Singtel bill at Challenger and you can get S$100 off the retail price of the router, bringing it down to a much more attractive S$439. But bear in mind that this Singtel promo does not come with the free USB adapter. Hurry though, these offers are only while stocks last.

To recap the offers:

• Hachi.tech and Challenger (members only) - S$499 (comes with free AC600 USB MU-MIMO adapter)
• Singtel customers (redeem at Challenger) - S$439 (no USB adapter)

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