Customer Ratings & Reviews

This review covers the MR8300 and one Velop Wi-Fi extender. I have mixed feelings about rating this product. On the one hand, it performs extremely well. On the other hand, using the Linksys App for setup and administration is not as good as it could be. For the reasons stated below, I will rate it a 5 for performance and coverage; and, only a 3 for set up and administration. Splitting the difference, I will rate it a 4. Setup: Whenever I add a new device to the network, I typically will reboot my modem and then install the router (connect CAT cable and turn it on). However, the directions you receive will direct you to install the Linksys App and follow the instructions. In the interest of doing what you are likely to do, I followed the instructions exactly. Of course you need a smartphone for this. The phone (Android 9 if that matters) connected to the router fine using Bluetooth but then I got stuck on the router connecting to the internet step. I tried starting from the beginning doing exactly the instructions on the App. And failed again and again at the same step. I then deviated to follow what I normally do with a new router. I exited the App. I disconnected the power for the router. I rebooted my modem. Once my modem was back online and functioning correctly, I connected the CAT cable from the modem to the router and powered up the router. I then started up the App and waited for the router. This allowed me to connect to the internet and then you are asked to create a Linksys account using the App. One thing the setup also does is there is one name for your 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz bands. As I wanted to test each separately, I had to use the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi website to complete this set up with a different name for each. So on my computer I entered 192.168.1.1 in the browser (see image). There is a “Continue to Linksys Smart Wi-Fi” option near the bottom of the page. Select this link and login to your Linksys account (you created it in the App when setting up your router). Your browser should tell you that you are NOT SECURE. I did not like this as this is the site for my router. I completed the remaining changes I like for my router using this website. Performance: I tested both the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz radios for the router using 6 different locations. It is very cold where I live so I did not check the maximum range outdoors. Here is the information for each location: Location A: On the desk with the router. Location B: Out of the line of sight of the router about 26 feet away in a different room with one wall in the way. Location C: Within the line of sight of the router but 42 feet away in a different room. Location D: On a different floor almost directly below the router about 15 feet away. Location E: On a different floor on the opposite side of the house about 45 feet away. There are many obstructions in the way. Location F: On the same floor as the router in a garage with many obstructions in the way about 50 feet away. I also put the Velop extender on the top floor for some tests. I have 150 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up for my service using cable internet. I typically speed test around 180/6 up/down. I do not quite understand why but the use of the Velop range extender did not make much of a difference on my tested speeds. I would need to play with this Velop more to understand why. Each location tested at 6 Mbps up. Here are the download results for each location: Location A: 2.4G 87 Mbps, 5G 180 Mbps – fast as expected. Location B: 2.4G 94 Mbps, 5G 180 Mbps – the difference could just be traffic related. Location C: 2.4G 86 Mbps, 5G 180 Mbps – I am used to seeing a 5G drop-off at this distance. This surprised me. Location D: 2.4G 96 Mbps, 5G 180 Mbps – sending the signal through the floor had no impact. Location E: 2.4G 84 Mbps, 5G 180 Mbps – Much faster than I expected. I typically get a marginal 5G coverage at this location. Adding the Velop on the same floor made a small difference for the 2.4G coverage. Location F: 2.4G 75 Mbps, 5Ghz 176 Mbps – Again the 5G signal and speed is very strong. Conclusion: The setup and administration functions direct you to the use of an App. This did not allow for all of the functions I wanted. This resulted in using the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi web page which is not secure per the browser (Chrome and Firefox). For many people, this may not be a concern. If you are a tweaker, you will not like this. Also, no DD-WRT or Tomato support for this router. Once it is set up, the performance exceeded my expectations. You should be able to have this in a 2,000 sq. ft. multi-level home and it will cover it all. So like many things in life, it has its advantages and disadvantages.

This triband works great and has amazing range. It was hard to setup because of my type of service and the customer support was non existent. Yet stay with it and you will figure it out and you will be happy. Will set up a mesh system soon to increase bandwidth in bedroom.

Already recommended to a few friends! Ease of Use is no joke. App allows easy Bandwidth Distributions up to three devices without going into the Advance Settings of the Modem. Extremely transparent App Usage.

Mine got hacked into!!! Don’t buy!! I bought at Best Buy new but the sticker was removed on the box. I should have returned it!! Not sure if that’s how it happened. I do not own a Samsung phone or any Samsung products. Also, not sure what the Google connection means.

Works great with all my devices and my smart home devices as well. It’s more powerful then what I need it for, but it gets the job done. It’s perfect for my Ring devices.

---SETUP--- The setup of this Linksys Router was fast. After connecting the router, you wait for a blinking light to turn purple (around 1 minute or less). While you’re doing that, download the Linksys APP to you mobile device and the app will search for your router. Follow the onscreen prompts to set up the router. The app itself will ask you if you want to add more nodes to extend the WiFi around your home. ---FEATURES--- The key feature router is that you can easily add multiple nodes to extend your WiFi network across your home and have them work without having to change networks or enter a new password. It also has 4 ethernet ports for a more direct connection. ---PERFORMANCE--- The performance of this router is excellent. The router that it replaced didn’t reach all the way to my kitchen area but this new router, before the node was added, gave me some coverage in my kitchen. Adding the node just one room away gave me the extra coverage to my kitchen allowing me to use WiFi devices in a location I previously couldn’t. ---EXPECTATIONS--- The product meets my expectations. Installing the nodes was incredibly simple and hassle-free. I had 3 other nodes from the original Linksys Velop system (3 white towers) and those work with this system as well, allowing me to increase my coverage even further. I can’t imagine having a large home and not owning these extension nodes. ---VALUE--- The price for the router in terms of value is comfortable enough to add on at least one node to have wider coverage in your home. ---APPROVAL--- I highly recommend this product for people that have a large home with areas of that home receiving poor WiFi signal. This router will allow you to add nodes and provide extra coverage at your own pace, whether that is over time or all at once.

So far I have nine devices hooked up to it handles it very well no slow time.

This is an absolutely horrible router. I pay for 500MBPS and the router can detect it in my pictures... However, IN THE SAME ROOM my computer wirelessly connected to this router is getting 15 MBPS using 802.11a... 802.11a is a wireless protocol from 1999. You know the best part? YOU CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING ON THIS ROUTER. It is completely dumbed down for ease of use, but the issue is there is no possible way to troubleshoot this issue. I can't force the 5GHZ channel to run in 802.11ac. It just does whatever it wants since it runs as "Mixed" and that's all you can select. Literally buy any OTHER router. This one is absolute trash. Linksys support just told me it's my cable provider and not the router, even though the fact they remoted into my computer was eating up my bandwidth so it was only displaying 120 MBPS. This same computer ran on a Netgear Orbi satellite wirelessly with about 4 walls between the router and satellite and I was getting 150-200 MBPS easily. DO NOT BUY THIS ROUTER!

Adding 100+Mbps upload and download to my att internet WiFi !!!!

When it comes to replacing my home network WiFi router, I usually only do it when I absolutely have to. I personally just like to grind it through years of use until it dies or it becomes a bottleneck for my networking needs. In our household of five, with phones, tablets, computers, printers, and a smart TV - there are 14 devices begging for bandwidth. Setup I'm pleased to say that the installation and configuration of the Linksys AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi Router was the easiest I have ever come across. You won't have to call your techie friends to help you with it. 1) The very first step was to download the Linksys App to my phone. It is available for Apple and Android phones. The App guided me the rest of the way. It uses Bluetooth for scanning for the Router. Once found, the App asked me to connect power and Ethernet cable. 2) I connected the Router to power and plugged in the Ethernet cable from our internet modem. The App found the Router and automatically installed the latest Linksys updates. 3) Once the updates were done, the App asked for a new WiFi name and password. Yes, it was that easy. However, even though I used the same WiFi name as our old Router, we still needed to reset the WiFi connection on all of our devices. Performance With so many devices in my household, the old WiFi router would continue to have issues and would need resetting regularly. With the Linksys AC2200 and the tri-band mesh feature, we no longer have problems with throughput and connections. During peak times of the evening, when everyone is on their devices, and we're watching streaming 4K TV, there is no lag or grainy graphics on the TV. The Router automatically routes our devices to the best WiFi bands per device. Configuration Options While the Router is very easy to set up, there are a wealth of options available for security, band configurations, guest access, scheduled internet blocking, passthrough IP addressing, and allocation of individual bands to specific devices. You can even set priorities for particular devices, such as giving the TV priority. (Ha, take that, gamers!) Or if console gaming is your priority, you can allocate primary bandwidth for your gaming. Velop Intelligent Mesh Extender With five people, 14 devices, and a split level home, we also added the Linksys Velop Intelligent Mesh extender. We situated the Router at one end of the house and plugged in the extender at the middle of the house. This greatly improved the signal quality to the far opposite end of the house. Setup and configuration were effortless with the Linksys App. Summary Overall, my household and I are happy with the Linksys AC2200 Mesh Router and the Velop extender. The time saved by not having to do regular troubleshooting and resets makes it well worth the investment in these two devices. I highly recommend this configuration for any large household with many devices.

My family had poor WIFI before our Best Buy purchase.

Linksys' Velop line of mesh routers have been a popular choice for people struggling with WiFi dead zones in their homes. The MR8300 gives you the look of a traditional router with the benefit of working with the Velop mesh system. -= Who should buy this router? =- First off, you don't want to use this router by itself. To fully take advantage of this router, you'll need at least one of the Velop nodes. This allows you to the expand the WiFi coverage as needed. You can think of a mesh system as placing multiple routers around your home to blanket it in WiFi coverage. While the best place for your router is a central location in your home, who actually places their router there? Usually, you need to connect your router near a cable or phone line jack, which is typically located on an exterior wall of your home, which limits the coverage in your home since half of your WiFi signal is going outside. -= Setup =- The setup process is very easy as you only need your smartphone and the Linksys app. Thanks to Bluetooth technology built into the Velop system, the app automatically detects the router and your internet connection, and then configures it with the network name and password that you want. This sure beats the setup of traditional WiFi routers, which usually involved connecting to a temporary WiFi network, configuring it, then disconnecting and reconnecting to the new WiFi network. And it's definitely better than installing a program from a CD-ROM disc (anyone remember that?!). If you have an existing router in your home (perhaps your internet provider gave you a combo modem-and-router-in-one), the MR8300 can be placed into "bridge mode" which allows you to use your existing router with the range-extending antennas of the MR8300 and any associated Velop nodes. -= Performance =- The MR8300 broadcast 3 bands: - a 2.4Ghz band that most WiFi devices use - a 5Ghz band that newer smartphones and streaming boxes use - an additional 5Ghz band dedicated to connecting the mesh system together Typically, if your device supports 5Ghz, you'll want to use that because it's faster. However, the 5Ghz band doesn't go through walls or travel as far as the 2.4Ghz band does, so having a mesh system that gives you multiple 5Ghz spots throughout your home can improve WiFi performance. My internet service maxes out at 100 Mbps and I was happy to find that I was able to hit that speed in the far corner of my home where it would previously only reach about 30-40 Mbps with my old router. I only needed one additional Velop node to get coverage throughout my whole home. With the Linksys app, you are able to monitor which of your devices are connecting to which node. Although I have a node setup in my home office with my Mac, I've found that my Mac will skip over it from time to time and connect to the MR8300 router on the opposite end of the house. I've noticed my other devices occasionally doing the same thing: connecting to the node located furthest away from them. It baffles me, but all my devices seem to be performing fine regardless. -= Features =- Oddly, the USB 3.0 port on the back of the router is currently non-functional and is reserved for "future expansion". I imagine it will function like the USB ports on other Linksys routers and will allow you to plug in a USB flash drive and hard drive for use as network storage, but at this time (February 2019), it doesn't do anything. Power users will appreciate features such as port-forwarding and MAC address filters, which can be administered through the Linksys app. More features are also available on the web interface to the router, but oddly some things can only be done in the app (such as setting up and viewing nodes) while others can only be done in the web interface (such as creating separate names for the 2.4 and 5Ghz networks). -= Overall =- With about 40 devices on my network, the MR8300 has performed very well and has definitely improved areas of my home where the WiFi was lacking with my last router. One of the major benefits of the Velop system is that you can expand it as you go by adding nodes individually to your mesh network. The MR8300 is a great starting point, but remember that it will work best if you purchase a Velop node to go along with it.

I got this Linksys router to upgrade from an old router from another brand that I’ve had for probably close to 7 years now. I had a Linksys router back in my college days (nearly 15 years ago) and I remember how rock-solid dependable it was. Like that one back then, this one has been dependable so far as well. However, the biggest surprise so far has been the ease of use and setup of this router. I added a node to go in our bedroom as it’s on the other side of our house from our router. With our previous setup, we would occasionally have drop-outs in our part of the house which was disappointing because we have an Fire Stick, an Echo, and a few other devices that depend on the connection. Adding a node in our bedroom has solved every one of those issues and the connections are noticeably faster; especially our Fire Stick. Adding to the convenience, Linksys had the foresight to come up with an app to help with setup, use and administration that is actually a really good app and works well. Being able to keep tabs on my network even while I’m away from home is a really neat feature. If I have a guest or a family member over and need to address an issue, I could potentially do so without even having to have them explain to me what’s happening. That’s pretty cool. The app doesn’t allow you to do a lot of “deep” administration things and I’d prefer to be able to select which network (5GHz vs. 2.4GHz) that individual devices use but it seems the router tries to determine this for you instead. The capability might be able to be accessed through a web browser on the network but I’ve not tried this yet as it’s not a make or break issue for me. I really enjoy the ability to rename specific devices on the network rather than having to sort through MAC and IP addresses. I know this isn’t a unique feature but again, the app makes changing all of these things fairly effortless and can be done from anywhere as long as the device is already connected to the network. Connecting devices was extremely simple. Essentially, I’ve found the most appealing part of this router so far to be the Linksys app rather than the router itself. That’s something I definitely did not expect at all. If you’re considering this router I’d say absolutely go for it. You won’t be disappointed. Add nodes if you have problematic coverage areas in your setup, they are fantastic.

1. You must use the mobile app to create an account before you can access the browser control settings. 2. randomly drops wifi connection, screws up my mobile gaming. 3. consistently low download speeds on both wifi and ethernet, getting between 10-20 Mbps. Every once in a while it can get 100-120 Mbps. My Comcast Xfinity data plan is up to 400 Mbps. 4. the browser control setting keeps "timing out" when I'm trying to adjust the settings. I've tried adjusting all the different settings on the mobile app and on the browser control settings to no avail.

Got our first Velop nodes about two years ago, but because we have the main internet connection in the basement, we were using another standard router and connected the Velop via ethernet, in bridge mode. With the MR8300, it can now be all integrated. The router itself is somewhat hefty, with four external antennas, four LAN ports, the internet (Ethernet) port and USB 3.0. It also has a power switch. While this can just as well work as a stand-alone Wi-Fi router, this can actually act as the central unit of a Velop mesh system. This is no ordinary router. It's a 3 band (two 5 GHz radios + one 2.4 GHz -- Linksys calls this Tri-Band AC2200). Velop systems try very hard to make things as simple as possible. While the initial install can be done like a traditional router connecting a laptop to it, the best way is to install the Linksys app (iOS or Android), and go through the guided setup from the phone, which will initially use Bluetooth to set everything up. Once it's setup, Bluetooth is no longer used. Because this is a mesh system, one of the 5 GHz radios is then dedicated to connect to other Velop nodes, when set up, so then the more nodes the more dense the mesh radio (more stable) and because the channel is dedicated for the mesh, it doesn't degrade the speed when connecting to other nodes. Our internet is 100/100 and got full bandwidth from one of the two satellite units, so the mesh system works as promised. When we got our first Velop systems two years ago, the software was very limited, but over time Linksys kept on updating it, improving the app, adding functionality. The router itself is very simple, it even has one single light on top (which coincidentally is like any other Velop system) to provide status. The phone app can control most settings either locally or optionally, remotely via the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi service (This is optional). Entering the router from a desktop shows more detailed settings for most users. For advanced configuration mode, there is a somewhat hidden mode, clicking on the CA at the bottom left that enables setting most everything on the router, for someone who understands what they're doing. Otherwise the standard mode is great for keeping things simple. This router can be set up as either stand-alone, part of a mesh router; in router mode (standard) or in bridge mode, when someone is stuck being forced to use a router provided by the cable company. There is also Amazon Alexa integration to turn on or off guest networks, or read the access credentials. The Alexa skill is currently unpublished and Linksys promises it will expand it. I found it after some googling on a 3rd party skill listing, while Linksys is promoting that the Alexa skill is available. Adding additional nodes is simpler using the phone app, because it will use Bluetooth with the phone to assist in initial pairing. Once a mesh node is set, everything is administered from the main node, so changing the Wi-Fi password in a single place sets the whole house. Additionally, blocking content to specific devices is done from the master node.

The Linksys MR8300 Max-Stream AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi Router (what a long name, huh?) is a standalone router whose purpose is geared towards expandability. It's not the most powerful, it doesn't use the lastest Wi-Fi standards, and it doesn't allow the highest bandwidth. It does offer simple expandability to eliminate any deadspots and give strong coverage for large homes or businesses. It's designed to handle dozens of seperate connections over a wide area. The design is fairly ho-hum, and with it's 4 antennas the unit is a bit bulky, and it will take a fair amount of space. You'll find 4 Ethernet ports and 1 WAN port on the back along with a single USB 3.0 port. One other item you’ll find in the back is a red reset button. For some reason, Linksys this button highly accessible. The typical position of this buttin is recessed on most routers so that people don't inadvertantly push it, having to use a pin or needle to use the button. And while it’s bright red color should prevent people from accidentally pressing it, there will always be that one person who indadvertently (or maybe curiously) pushes it -- wiping away the current network settings and restoring the MR8300's out of the box settings. It also makes the router a little less suitable to be placed in a public place. The router can be setup by following along the Linksys app. You basically just install the app, connect the equipment, and then give your network a name and password. Simple. After your network is configured, the app continues to be useful because it allows you to monitor your network. For example, it might tell you that 10 devices are connected, and let you know how much current bandwidth is being used. You’ll be able to access guest controls, parental controls, and device prioritization (QoS). The app allows you to manage as many as 50-guests, and create separate wireless networks specifically for those guests. Linksys includes automatic firmware upgrades for the router. Whenever there’s a new update, you won’t have to head to their website and search for it. In fact, you won’t even have to remember to update your equipment at all. By itself the MR8300 covered most of my 2500 sq. foot home, but there were a couple of low signal spots - low enough for instance my smart sprinkler system control located downstairs and on the opposite side of the house from the Linksys would not connect. Since the router supports Mesh WiFi technology, I simply added a Velop Mesh WiFi node to expand the coverage, and it literally took a couple of minutes to do so using the Linksys app. The MR8300 had 2 goals in mind - easy setup and management, and easy expandability. It does this well. From its installation to the execution of your network on a daily basis, everything was made simple. Adding a node and expanding the coverage of the network was simple as well. While it's not branded as a gaming router or entertainment router, it handles those tasks just fine. It doesn't use the latest AX standard, which most people simply don't need. Still, its a limitation that’s worth noting. All this makes Linksys MR8300 Max-Stream AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi Router a good choice for a mid-level router that will see high bandwidth usage - especially if you have a large area that needs coverage or you need the ability to easily expand the WiFi coverage of your network.

The setup utility destroys customization options. You're forced to download the Linksys app to set up the router, and there is no option for setting it up as an access point connected to a router by ethernet. If you try to enter the IP address of the router, it blocks you, displaying a page that tells you to download the app. This product goes too far in the direction of creating an easy user experience, and severely limits its functionality. Im going to try to return it.

Last year I replaced my router with a Linksys Velop Mesh router which so far has been a solid performer. WiFi speeds and coverage has been excellent. This year my internet was upgraded to a fiber gigabit connection. I wanted to take advantage of those speeds as much I could with wired connections for my 4k Tv and game consoles. The only thing lacking from the Velop router was the lack of gigabit ethernet ports. With this model, I still retain all the good features from the Velop Mesh technology but with 4-gigabit ethernet ports. Setup was quick and easy with the Linksys app. The Linksys app allows you to make some adjustments and see connected devices. It also offers a built-in speed test to help with troubleshooting slows speeds. Wifi coverage has been good without any nodes connected to it. Since this model has more a traditional wifi router look the signal output is much stronger thanks to the 4 antennas that stand out. Both Wired and WiFi speeds have been excellent. Of course, wired speeds will be faster compared to WiFi speeds. Games like the Resident Evil 2 one-shot demo (25gb in size) took less than 5 mins to download on my PS4 Pro via wired. Wifi Speeds are fast even with multiple devices on at the same time. The router does a very good job of distributing WiFi bandwidth throughout the multiple devices connected. You also have an option to enable a guest network to keep devices from seeing your local area networks like network drives or wireless printer. It performs well just as a standalone router but with the flexibility of adding nodes to remedy dead spots locations. It’s a router that can be easily be adapted to a bigger place if you happen to move. It’s pricey but well worth it for how well it performs and the features it brings to the table.

I've been using the Linksys MR8300 Max-Stream AC2200 Tri Band Router for the last 10 days. The MR8300 is the next gen version of Linksys’s well like EA8300 router. I recently tried out the Linksys Velop Dual band system (Model WHW0103 – also available at Best Buy), and Velop Tri-Band system (Model WHW0303P – also available at Best Buy), so I am familiar with some of Linksys’s current mesh offerings. I decided to see what their more traditional router setup had to offer. So far, I have been happy with the performance of Max Stream router. My house is 1700 sqft split between 2 stories, and an attached garage. I have gone through and performed a couple of network benchmarks and random tests to see how the MR8300 performs, and how it stacks up to the Dual and Tri-band Velop systems. The MR8300 Max-Stream AC2200 This is an AC2200 router (2 bands of 867Mbps @ 5Ghz, 1 band of 400 Mbps @ 2.4Ghz) with simultaneous tri-band radios and MU-MIMO. MU-MIMO allows multiple WiFi users to communicate with the router simultaneously without taking the performance hit - this is the latest and greatest router technology until 802.11ax gets fully released in 2019. There are 4 adjustable antennas with 6 amplifiers (2 per band I’d assume), as well as 4 gigabit LAN ports, and 1 WAN port. There is also a USB 3.0 port to be used for a networked printer or a storage solution. A single ethernet cable (cat 5e) is included. The router sports the same processor (quad core 716Mhz) as the Tri-Band Velop node, but has a sixteenth of the flash memory (256Mb vs 4Gb). Setup, just like I experienced with the Velop systems, is pretty easy. You need an Android or IOS device to download the Linksys app to do the setup. The app utilizes Bluetooth to speed up the setup process. I logged in to my Linksys account to add the router system, and then I logged into the new Wi-Fi as instructed by the app. However, I ran into a bootloop in the app with the error message “your cloud session has expired.” I tried removing the disconnecting from the Wi-Fi, cycling my Bluetooth, resetting the app, and restarting my phone. All failed to remove the bootloop. It wasn’t until I hit the reset on the router and restarted the process did I get through it. Once it started working the router was setup very quickly. Just like with the Velop systems, when in doubt just reset the router and start again. Max Stream Tri-Band vs Velop Tri-Band (Single) The biggest difference between the 2 Tri band offerings from Linksys, that I have used, is the number of antennas (4 vs 6), Flash storage, and the ports offered in the Max Stream. The Velop node required me to connect a gigabit switch directly off the router. The Max Stream, on the other hand, has enough LAN ports to handle all of the main branches of my network. It also has the USB port, which comes in handy to a lot of folks. Wi-Fi speed wise, there shouldn’t be much difference between the Max Stream and the Velop since they operate at the same speeds. Like the with the Velop, I hit 106 Mbps at 5 ft with the Max Stream. I checked the speed of the router from the same locations as I did with the Velop. For the Velop the lowest speed I obtained inside was 45Mbps, and down to 24 in my garage. At first with the Max Stream saw 42, and 24. I fiddled with the orientation of the antenna a little bit, and got a bit of a speed boost – 48, and 26. With a little more tweaking I might be able to find a better antenna orientation, but for now I’m happy with the little extra boost over the fixed antennas of the Velop. Performance I wanted to test the performance of the Max Stream in the same way I tested my Velop system. I booted up LAN Speed test from Totusoft and performed some dummy file transfers between my computers. My transfers went between 2 computers with NVME ssd drives. The PC's were connected wirelessly to the router, each at 15 ft. I achieved 136 Mbps Up and 244 down (pretty similar to the Velop). With a single file transfer between 2 connected devices, I found there was little difference between the performance of the Max Stream and the Velop Tri Band. Like with the Velop I tried to load up my network with as much traffic as possible. I figured the decreased flash memory of the Max Stream might prove to be a bottleneck. I had music streaming on my Sonos, Netflix on my Xbox and 2 Roku’s (1080p), Netflix on a laptop (4K), Youtube on a Chromebook (1080p), Hulu on my PC (1080p), and a Steam Download. For both systems I had QoS rules in place to prioritize traffic to the laptop, Xbox, and PC. On the Velop Tri-band system none of my video streams experienced any buffering or stuttering, but the Steam download speed was knocked down – 39 Mbps (106Mbps with no traffic). With the Max Stream I again did not experience any stuttering or buffering. However, the Steam download was hovering around 35Mbps – a 10% drop in the Steam download speed. The decreased memory appears to have bottlenecked the traffic, but not to a significant enough degree to rule out other reasons for the slow down. This amount of traffic may not seem like that much to some households, but this was the most I could put up with just my consuming data. Households with several users could easily match this much traffic, or more on a day to day basis. From what I can tell though, the Max Stream should be able to handle it fairly well. I didn’t have a chance to test the USB port. My network NAS drive has been offline due to a failing hard drive, so I couldn’t test this feature. Reliability Like with all routers, uptime is a necessity. If you have to constantly reset or reconnect your router or whatever, then it becomes a hassle. In the 10 days I have ran the Max Stream I have had perfect uptime. I done hard shutdowns to simulate a power outage. The router takes about 30-45 seconds to fully come back online, which is pretty quick in my experience. Compatibility with Velop The Max Stream contains the same AI Mesh technology as the Velop system. Using the Max Stream as the primary router, you can add additional Velop nodes to expand you Wi-Fi network. I currently have the Max Stream (as primary) so I can eliminate a gigabit switch from my network. Using the app I added several additional nodes around my house – dual and tri-band. With the Max Stream in the basement I added my Tri-Band Velop node to my main floor, and my dual band tower nodes were left in positions where they be used as wireless backhauls. I also have a couple of plug in nodes from my Tri Band kit they I need to find suitable locations for. One will be located in my garage once the weather warms up a bit (operational range is 32° to 104°), and the other I’m not sure. Overall, adding these nodes with the Max Stream as primary was incredibly easy. The Linksys app walks you right through process, and your expanded mesh network is up and running in no time. Interface I said this in my reviews of the Velop systems - the app interface is pretty slick and simple to navigate. This is no longer the router configuration of the old days. Some networking pros may not like the simplicity, but most folks just want their router to work without much effort needed. If you do want that old school interface you can still access the router GUI through your PC browser. Enter 192.168.1.1 into your browser URL (I had to access from Microsoft Edge instead of Firefox). From here it’s a little easier to navigate more advanced features of the router (port forwarding, DHCP reservation, etc). For initial login the password is located on the serial label on the underside of the router. I didn’t particularly care for the web browser layout though. Locations for port forwarding and the MAC/DHCP lists are kind of buried under ambiguous main tabs. Overall, I am very happy with the performance of the Max Stream. It addressed my biggest gripe with the Velop nodes – lack of additional LAN ports. Its speed is fairly comparable to its Velop counterparts. If needed, Velop nodes can be added to the Max Stream at any time if you require better coverage – I am doing this with my extra Dual and Tri - Band nodes to have a node in (almost) every room (and garage in during the nicer months when the temps fall within the operating range). So, if you have a small-medium size house in need of better Wi-Fi coverage, or are looking to build a mesh system yourself - the MR8300 is worth the look.

So, I am capable of reading instructions well and applying tech principles in usage. However, I am not a tech guru. I have a large 2 story home with a basement and had previously been using an older Linksys router and a Velop system. In all honesty, I would have trouble, from time to time, connecting and maintaining Wi-Fi connectivity in certain areas of the home. I would often have to wait to connect my HP laptop/tablet in the far west corner of my 2nd story. The setup was easy, just follow the Setup Guide. If you have not done so already, download the Linksys app, disconnect the old, plug in the new, and then connect. As a matter of fact, there was a postcard sized paper with a toll free number that is operational 7 days a week from 8 am to 8 pm PST to help with any assistance; I wonder if this will remain open once the early release period has abated. I love that in my case, they included an additional Mesh Wi-Fi extender that is the white rectangular box featured on the left side of the attached photo. I put this mesh (repeater) in my home office located at the far west side of the 2nd story. Just plug this box into a power source and then install the additional Mesh Wi-Fi extender as prompted by the app. I do pay a higher monthly fee for more bandwidth with my internet provider. Bottom line, I want to be able to run all my wireless devices and not have them stop and stall. I have only had this working for a short time so I cannot vouch for long term use, but so far so good.