I bought this to use alongside a Netgear DM200 modem which I will talk about in a separate review. The Linksys WRT32X gets a lot of mixed reviews. It would seem to have a lot of good reviews on many tech sites, but actual customer reviews seem very mixed on Amazon. From my experience I was replacing a BT Smart Home Hub 6 which I had been using for my BT Infinity connection. The BT Hub 6 has been a reasonable performer but far from stellar. I had been experiencing a lot of connection drops and lacklustre wifi performance of late and decided that it just had to go. So my quest for a reasonably priced high performance router began.
I stumbled upon the WRT32X whilst searching Amazon and immediately like it looks along with the greatly discounted price. On reading reviews it seemed a mix bag with most of the negatives criticizing the router firmware as just too basic and the positive ones hailing it as great when flashed with custom firmware OpenWRT being one mentioned a lot. I decided to take a risk and ordered it along with a modem as if you don’t already know this is a wifi router only and needs a separate modem to work.
After setting up the modem I connected the Linksys WRT32X to the modem via its internet port and started the router up. The setup of the router can be performed either via a network cable straight into the router or by wifi using a temporary ssid and password that the router has from the factory. Setup was about 1o minutes only because I initially had one setting which I need to input alongside my PPOE login details and that was the VLAN ID.
After this the router connected to my ISP and immediately started to download the latest firmware and update itself. After this I was able to login to the router and take a look at the settings. A lot of the more interesting settings are under Advanced settings but it’s all fairly rudimentary stuff. I’m not a router expert but most of my needs were met by stock firmware so I decided to not bother with flashing any custom firmware. The setting I was most interested in was device prioritization as I wanted my gaming machines at the top of the list. This was done quickly and saved to the routers settings. The ability to get better performance with Killer enabled laptops and PC’s is of no use to me as I have no such compatible devices in my house.
Prior to my upgrade I would have got speed test results in the low 40 Mbps and latency was anywhere between 40 – 60 ms. My speeds were now 69 Mbps and latency was below 30 ms. This all seemed a bit too good to be true so I launched Origin on my gaming rig and started to download a game. Whilst viewing the router dashboard and watching my actual download speed from Origin I was amazed. Where I was before getting downloads at anywhere between 2 - 4 Mbs my download was hovering around 7.5 Mbs almost double. The throughput on the router dashboard was maxed and was showing 69 – 70 Mbps so this all looks in line with my download speed.
With all the wireless devices from phones, tablets and Amazon Echo devices in my house at times the multiple connections can be up to 20 devices or more at a time and this router does not miss a beat. If you can’t already tell I am very pleased with this router and modem combo and would not hesitate in recommending it to a person like myself who just wants something that you plug in and works with a minimum of setup shenanigans.
| Brand | Linksys |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 24.5 x 19.3 x 5.1 cm; 798 Grams |
| Item model number | WRT32X-UK |
| Manufacturer | Linksys |
| Connectivity Type | Wi-Fi |
| Wireless Type | 5 GHz Radio Frequency |
| Number of Ethernet Ports | 4 |
| Operating System | Windows |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 798 g |
