Wireless routers have come a long way in the past couple of years. Driving the point home is the fact that Linksys is dubbing its new $200 Max Stream EA8300 router an "entry level" model for the masses.
To the company's credit, there are a growing number of consumer routers on the market that cost $350 and higher. That includes the Linksys Max Stream EA9500, a higher end tri-band model that is $150 more expensive than the EA8300.
The pitch here is that the EA8300 gets users into tri-band territory at a cheaper (not cheap) price. It's an AC2200 model with speeds of up to 867Mbps on each of the two 5GHz bands and up to 400Mbps on the 2.4GHz band. You can't actually combine all three channels into a single connection, but if you add up those speeds, you arrive at 2,134Mbps, which Linksys rounds up to AC2200.
MU-MIMO Wave 2 is supported, allowing for simultaneous 4K streaming on multiple devices at the same time. It also supports things like Beamforming and seamless roaming between rooms when used with a Linksys RE7000 range extender.
As with most modern routers, there are four LAN ports on the back for wired networking. There's also a single USB 3.0 port for connecting external devices, such as a storage drive or printer.
You can purchase the Linksys Max Stream EA8300 today direct from Linksys or at Amazon or Best Buy. More widespread availability is expected next month.
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