- Wireless speed up to 1200 Mbps
- 4 x Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 2 x High Gain Antennas
- WPS: Easy security setup
- Easy setup: No CD require
Yes, Yes, YES... Harmony in My Home
07/28/2016
This review is from: LINKSYS RE6500HG Dual Band Wireless AC Range Extender
Pros:
I was in the Apple ecosystem until I moved to Android about 2 years ago. I have a home with a built in audio system (speakers in each room) and we used an Apple Airport Express to stream music from our devices. When I went to the dark side (light side?) my wife stayed with Apple. Android does not work with Apple's proprietary Airport Express unless you root the device and install some unofficial Android apps. I did this on my cheap Android tablet, but didn't dare do it on my $$$$ smart phone. So, for streaming music I had to use my wife's Apple devices or my rooted tablet.
And then came the Linksys RE6500HG. I've had five other range extenders, but all were quite lacking. For starters, some didn't support 5GHz, and none of them supported 802.11ac. The RE6500HG does both. The Airport Express we had could also be used to connect a single wired-only device wirelessly to a network. The RE6500HG can connect four wired devices. The Airport Express can be used by Apple devices. The RE6500HG can be used by Apple, Android, PCs, and probably anything else that can play from a DLNA source. The device shows up on the Apple devices in the same place the Airport Express was found, making the transition for my tech-challenged wife seamless. Everybody in the household can stream audio regardless of device now. On both PC and Android devices, I use JRiver's JRemote app to stream music from my media server.
Oh yeah, and it extends your wireless network too.
Cons:
I do have a few nits to pick on the device. For one, there is no way to update the time and date on the device. I figured it might eventually pull the time from the internet, but after a week it still says it's January 1970. This isn't a problem unless you have logging turned on and want to match time/date stamps to certain events.
Next, it is slow to boot. On power up, it takes nearly 2 minutes to get to a useful state.
And finally, it is advertised as an extender and it does extend a wireless network. However, I have a very nice router that puts out a very good signal and found I was only seeing this extender with a better signal in the same room it is installed in. Perhaps if paired with a router with a weaker starting signal it would provides a better benefit. I'm primarily using it for it's streaming capabilities, it doesn't matter to me.
Overall Review:
After initial setup, I searched for firmware updates. There were two available at the time of this writing and the upgrade must be done sequentially. In other words, you must apply firmware update #1 before update #2 and can't just skip to the latest firmware.
Set up was very easy. The IP address was initially 192.168.1.1 (which is the same as my router) but after initial set up it pulled a new DHCP IP address from my router to fit in with all of the other devices on the same subnet. Everything works great. For households with mixed Android and Apple gear, it's perfect.
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