Bonus review: WUSB 6100M
The final part of the Linksys MU-MIMO trifecta is the WUSB600, a small USB dongle, providing MU-MIMO support for computers that don’t currently have a MU-MIMO Wi-Fi device installed, since MU-MIMO is still pretty new with the EA9500 being one of the first routers to market that supports it, the odds of your Wi-Fi card having support for this are likely slim, so the WUSB600 is vital to get your money’s worth from the EA9500. Due to the nature of the device this review is going to be shorter than the others and will also briefly talk about the full suite of MU-MIMO products being shipped by Linksys in terms of their own ecosystem.
The WUSB6000 ships in what is frankly a ridiculous box considering the size of the unit, though this also allows Linksys to supply a driver disk, still I feel smaller packaging for a device of this type is preferable, since generally most computers can either connect via older Wi-Fi hardware or Ethernet to obtain the drivers from the Linksys site if they are required. The device itself is fairly nondescript, small black USB dongle with white light to indicate connectivity on the top of it.
Simple installation, no messing required
Installation is as simple as just plugging the device into a USB3.0 port and in most cases you should be good to go. Currently only Windows is supported by the drivers, but no doubt OS X support will be coming down the line. The only time I ran into any real issues with this hardware was on a laptop provided by my day job, which needed me to manually install the drivers – likely caused by our IT departments security policies. But other than this slight hiccup there is little to say in terms of issues regarding setting up this device.
I think it’s fair to say, between the three products shipped, the EA9500, the RE7000 and the WUSB600; Linksys are aiming for all out performance and devices that can be pushed, hard. They’ve achieved this in droves. day to day use of the trifecta on my daily driver devices gives rock solid, fast and stable performance. While you will pay a premium for this, it’s a premium that I can safely say I would be happy to spring for if I were in the market for this kind of performance.
Overall thoughts on the Trifecta
Overall this is a very solid eco system, whose components are perfect compliments to each other, set up and configuration is reasonably simple in all cases, either simply being plug and play or using push button setups, the only slightly more complex configuration was for the EA9500, but this is to be expected due to the nature of the device the wide variety of connection methods offered by ISPs around the world.
Linksys RE7000
109.99
Pros
- Great looking bit of kit that just vanishes into the background
- Fast, reliable connectivity
- Fairly feature rich fo a device of this type
Cons
- Slightly more expensive than alternatives on the market