My review of the just released (9/21) Linksys WRT32X "Killer" Gaming Router
Hey all, I just got this router from Best Buy to review and thought I would share with everyone...it's a lengthy read 
I've been looking for a wireless AC router capable of providing better coverage for my large house and one that would provide me with low ping times for my gaming. I am a heavy gamer who plays games on the PC, PS4 Pro and Xbox One so the demands on a router for low latency and fast speed are high. I also have a lot of devices, over 20, that run concurrently on my router so I need one that can manage all of those devices and never slow down. My current router prior was an ASUS Wireless N RT-N66U and although I had no issues with it in games whatsoever the coverage for my large, nearly 3000 square foot house was a real, problematic issue. I wanted to move to something that provided far better wi-fi coverage, could give me great ping times and would play nicely with all of my gaming systems. That led me to the WRT32X by Linksys...
When I received the Linksys WRT32X the first thing that impressed me was the sheer size and weight of it. Compared to my old router, and well just about any router I've ever owned, it was utterly huge and built like a tank. Be aware of the size if you plan to mount this somewhere prominent because it will take up significant space. Wisely Linksys has put mounting options for nails, screws or whatever on the bottom of each of the four feet on the router to make wall mounting easy. Once you screw the four large antenna in (which is quite easy) and attach the wall mount (small block) to your surge protector the router is ready to roll. The router aesthetically is quite beautiful but yet a subdued beautiful with mostly blacks and grey tones. It's not garish with a bunch of red stripes, crazy lights or anything. It has moderately bright blue lights but in a nice design decision all of those lights can be turned off with a simple selection in the router interface. This is particularly nice for those who have their router in a home theater setting and have to look for ways to obscure those bright lights from ruining their home theater experience. This option to turn off the lights I think is a theme throughout the router in that Linksys tried to take complaints from previous routers and correct those mistakes for the WRT32X.
But before we go on I must say that I was also impressed with the packaging and presentation of the router when you are unboxing it. The way that it was packaged reminded me a lot of a high end Apple products. Using an easy open flip up box to display a lot of foam and padding to protect the router, very simple and subtle inserts and just how it was overall packaged presented it as a work of art. So on that front I was quite impressed with the unboxing of the WRT32X. Yes, this is an expensive router but when you open the box and start unpacking it you feel like it's a very top end product you are unboxing. You definitely feel like you are getting your moneys worth upon the initial impression. So major kudos to Linksys for "first sight: points. Note that, like Apple products, the WRT32X comes with minimal instructions and minimal physical assembly leaving most of that to online assistance and, well common sense on how to hook up something that is (supposed to be) easy to get going. Included in the box is just a heavy cardboard 2 folded quick start guide with pictures, some warranty information and a small, white note thanking you for your purchase and giving you a number to Linksys technical support should you run into any problems.
Setting up a new router for many techies is a mixture of dread and utter excitement at tweaking it to your specifications. So with great trepidation, and excitedness, I began the process. First up was doing multiple speed and latency tests with my current Asus router to get a baseline. And of course in doing so I made a note of coverage areas and where the Asus router was failing. Even with two extenders the Asus struggled to cover the far side of my home, especially on the lower levels (my router is mounted in a second story gaming room). I wavered between 1 to 2 bars of wireless coverage according to my iPhone 6 Plus in that area and my hope was the new Linksys would be able to provide a solid 3 bar experience. After doing multiple wireless tests with my phone and iPad I also of course did some PC tests utilizing a wired connection to my newly built i7700K PC. Now that I had a baseline of speed, latency and coverage I began the process of disconnecting my old router and replacing it with the Linksys.
After the WRT32X was hooked up I plugged in the power supply and the unit did not come on. This is because the WRT32X actually has what I believe ALL routers should have and that is a dedicated power switch on the back. Not a button but an actual small switch that turns clearly on or off. Some routers require a reset to be done by pulling the power cord and that is the worst. Having a button that is a toggle is slightly better but having an actual dedicated switch (like what is on a PC power supply) that turns on and off is clearly the best and for that I appreciate Linksys putting that on this router. Upon turning the router on I went back to my wired PC and pointed my browser to 192.168.1.1. There is another website link you can go to such as mylinksysrouter or something but I am old school and I remember 192.168.1.1 and thus that is what I used.
The browser immediately brought up an interface from Linksys and it greeted me with a "congratulations on using the Linksys WRT32X, let's begin..." setup message. Please note that in the instructions you can skip this guided setup and go right to the user interface to do manual setup but I figured I'd give the guided setup a try and I'm glad I did because it's short, it's direct, to the point and it covers all the bases you'd cover doing a manual setup using the interface anyways. No reason to be old school here, use the guided setup. Basically during the setup it's going to first, check for a firmware update and download it automatically if it finds one. Mine checked and did find a firmware update, installed it on its own and rebooted the router. This is really nice and doesn't require you to exert effort to find a website, download a file, load it, etc (also of note is that every night the router will automatically check for firmware updates, automatically download those and install them on its own as well.) Next, the setup guide will ask you what you want your admin interface password to be, to ensure that you do not leave your router open to someone who may try the default password. After that it will simply ask you to name your wi-fi network. The Linksys combines the 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks into one and will automatically determine which network your wireless device can utilize best. For this feature I am quite thankful as I have wanted this ability in a router for a long time. No more manually switching from your 2.4ghz network to your 5ghz network because you now are in better range. Then back over to the 2.4ghz network when you're having issues in another area of your house. Just a note though, if you do want two entirely separate wi-fi networks you have the option upon setting up your network to separate them.
Once into the actual router admin interface I was surprised to see the most elegant and usable interfaces. All pertinent information is clearly visible and displayed in a logical and sensible manner. Most routers either err on the side of simplicity to the point of stupidity to protect the user from things they shouldn't mess with or they provide a user with an overwhelming amount of information to the point where even the most dedicated admin can feel frustrated with finding a particular option. But not this one. On first glance you may be a bit concerned that it is too simple but at the bottom of nearly every option is a "more settings" that you can click on that will open up many more options. It is all presented in a logical, concise and easy to read manner and I must say that this is clearly, without a doubt, the best router interface I have ever seen in my roughly 25 years or so of using routers. It even has an option to change your DNS settings easily to Google or OpenDNS just by clicking on an option! This is really sweet because I typically switch this and have to go look up the DNS settings but not this time. Again, it's just an example of the thought that Linksys has put into making this router both powerful and easy to use for common users as well as power users alike.
One complaint I do have is that no matter what I did I could not find a way to display the MAC addresses in my list of devices in the router table. Having the MAC displayed is nice for devices connected to your network which you are not sure of what they are. For example if I see a device with no name or a weird, generic numeric name I have no idea what that device is but I can look at the MAC address and then determine based upon that MAC address that it is my Samsung TV. I can then rename it to "Samsung TV" in the router table. Once this is done for all of your devices you can then see your network at a glance and ensure everything that is attached to it should be there and is being admin'ed correctly. For the life of me I could not figure out how to display MAC addresses of devices so I took the opportunity to contact Linksys and ask them if this was possible. This was an opportunity to test out their support.
So I called Linksys and after a very short amount of time on hold, about 20 seconds, the phone was answered by an actual person. It was a lady with a bit of an accent but I was able to understand her. After the standard questions as to my name, what I was calling about, etc the woman was happy to assist me. When I asked about the MAC address she said that they were aware, that it was not currently an option and that this was a design decision. I told her they should seriously consider adding this as an option for a future software update. She said she would add it to their call log and suggest it. She was very nice and all of this took only a few minutes. The support seems solid, at least from that call, which is nice to know going forward. This issue was really the only singular complaint that I could find about this router. However, I consider this to be a rather large oversight in an otherwise virtually flawless design from an administration viewpoint. I realize that Linksys wants to keep things simple and elegant but omitting the ability to see MAC addresses is inexcusable and hopefully this will be fixed in a future software update.
Another slight issue is that in some areas of the routers interface when you make a change, save and then go to leave to go to another part of the interface it will ask you if you want to "discard or continue with your changes". This is a small issue that, at first, made me think I hadn't saved my settings but then when I did save and went to leave again to move to another area of the router interface gave me the same popup. Hopefully this is patched and is a slight annoyance but once you are aware of it is not a huge issue. My last issue is that there is no app at all for iOS for this router. My last ASUS router had a really cool iOS app to control things from my iPad or iPhone but this one does not. There is a Linksys app which appears to be just a generic app for Linksys routers but it does not find this router upon searching several times and just from the design of it I don't believe it's meant to be used for the WRT32X. Hopefully an iOS app will be provided sooner rather than later.
Getting back to the positives of the admin interface I particularly liked the fact that on the QOS screen you can simply drag and drop priority level when defining priority levels. Everything is, by default, dumped into normal priority but you can, for example, grab your PS4 Pro from the list of devices and dump it into high priority and voila, that is QOS configuration that you have just done, simple and easy. I know some folks may want specific numeric indicators but I am fine with defining QOS by high, medium and low levels and I believe most folks will be as well. Just about everything in the interface, minus the MAC omission, is designed for ease of use and again, I cannot say enough about how much I like it.
After everything was setup in the router, which took me about 45 minutes, I began the process of running coverage, speed and latency tests. First of all I am happy to report that this router gave me 3 bar coverage all over the full range of my large, five bedroom, three story house. The areas in which my previous router were 1 to 2 bars were filled with a fast and 3 bar signal by the Linksys WRT32X. The worst area went from 1mbps download to 13mbps download. While still not super fast at 13mbps it's more than fast enough to prevent buffering and/or slow loading of webpages which is exactly what I was hoping for in the more furthest reaches of my house. So the coverage was superb, this thing blanketed my house the way I have always wanted a router to and I was able to remove my extenders once and for all. Next was speed and surprisingly the WRT32X gave me slightly slower speeds than my ASUS router. Nothing major, for example in one spot I went from 92mbps down to 88mbps down but in most cases it was slightly slower for wi-fi. Wired remained virtually unchanged however. I did many tests using Google, Verizon and Speedtest and consistently came up with similar results. On to the last area and that is latency. As gamers know we all need that to be the best, more so than download or upload speed. If latency is lacking we are going to have issues in games. Well here the WRT32X excelled and beat my previous router, consistently giving me about 5 to 7 milliseconds better latency in just about every test that I did. This was the case in both wi-fi and wired. In general my previous router did not cause me any issues and gaming ran well at about 25ms ping time but this router cut it down to below 20ms, usually coming in around 17-18ms ping time. So in that respect the WRT32X overdelivers on its promise to cut your ping times.
On to actually testing out the games and how they played. I play PC games, PS4 Pro games and Xbox One S games and all are wired connections. I also have a second Xbox One (original not S) and that is wireless. I played some games on all of them and had zero issues with any lag in anything that I played. Everything worked superb and it was all green across the board. I will say though that on my connection from my ISP, which is 100mbps down and 10mbps up, that I had never really had any issues with my old router in regards to having any sort of lag issues in games. So with this router providing better ping times I certainly wasn't expecting any problems and after playing none cropped up. Note that I do not have any Killer enabled devices, my PC uses a regular Intel NIC but it performed admirably with the Killer enabled WRT32X. If you game wirelessly I imagine you will see better results as well considering my ping times decreased there but I did not try gaming wirelessly. Games that I tested included racing, fighting and sports games, all of which require low latency. Now I will say that when I setup this router my PC had no issues at all with it, my PS4 Pro did not even require a re-setup of the network but my Xbox One S did require me to reconfigure my setup two times. For some odd reason it grabbed some really strange IP and I had to flush out the settings and then do a hard reset of the Xbox One S, do an automatic network setup and voila problem was solved. Strangely the older and original Xbox One did not have any issues and was up and running on the new router without doing anything.
Also of note and one that may be of particular concern to Xbox gamers is that this router consistently provided me with an OPEN Nat without requiring any special port forwarding or setup of any kind. I have been an Xbox gamer since the original Xbox days and I cannot tell you how many hours of my life I have lost trying to get the Xbox away from a strict or moderate NAT to an open NAT. Having a strict or moderate NAT can cause so many problems so I know that having an OPEN nat from minute one, without doing a darned thing, is something most Xbox gamers considering this will want to know. I did go ahead and add my Xbox One S to the DMZ but neither Xbox One had any issues with NAT regardless if they were in the DMZ or not. Of course the PS4 had no issues at all with the connection and came up as Type 2 everytime I tested it (which is what it should be of course). One would expect all of this since this is, after all, a gaming oriented router, but it is still nice to see it be the case. If you're tearing your hair out with your gaming NAT being strict or moderate with your current router you will not have this issue with the WRT32X.
So bottom line, is this a good router for the money or not? If you are a gamer, unequivocally I can say yes that it is. It most certainly is a excellent router overall and specific to gaming probably one of the best, if not the best. I would not hesitate to strongly recommend it to any gamer out there that is looking for the best that you can put on your network. It is worth it to me for two primary reasons: first, the wifi range is extraordinary, secondly, it very low latency. The elegant and awesome interface is also a nice bonus as well. Now, this router's marketing is aimed toward gamers and I know many of you out there are, if you are like me, highly skeptical when you see this type of marketing. You may think that it is just marketing talk to sell an expensive, overpriced router but I can assure you that it is not. This router will lower your ping times and do everything your router needs to do whether you are gaming or just surfing. It's especially appealing for those of us who have larger homes and need wide wi-fi coverage. I have even noted that the 5ghz network extends far wider as well so that is something to take into consideration. If you are a gamer that is looking for high quality router that will be easy to setup, has a fantastic interface, give you no problems with your gaming devices, run smoothly in games and will give you really great wi-fi coverage then this is the router you are looking for. I'm not sure I can recommend this as easily to folks if you're not a gamer because there may be other options that would work for you at a lower price but I can safely say that if you do buy this even if you are not a gamer you will not regret it once you have it up and running. The ease at which you can admin your network will be an ongoing thing of beauty that you will not regret. And also note that even if you're not a gamer having very fast ping times can make a difference in your every day internet life.
All in all I'm glad that this is my router going forward and I will likely be using this Linksys for the next few years as my main router to run my 20-25 networking devices. Great job and major kudos to Linksys on designing such a "killer" router. I would recommend.
I've been looking for a wireless AC router capable of providing better coverage for my large house and one that would provide me with low ping times for my gaming. I am a heavy gamer who plays games on the PC, PS4 Pro and Xbox One so the demands on a router for low latency and fast speed are high. I also have a lot of devices, over 20, that run concurrently on my router so I need one that can manage all of those devices and never slow down. My current router prior was an ASUS Wireless N RT-N66U and although I had no issues with it in games whatsoever the coverage for my large, nearly 3000 square foot house was a real, problematic issue. I wanted to move to something that provided far better wi-fi coverage, could give me great ping times and would play nicely with all of my gaming systems. That led me to the WRT32X by Linksys...
When I received the Linksys WRT32X the first thing that impressed me was the sheer size and weight of it. Compared to my old router, and well just about any router I've ever owned, it was utterly huge and built like a tank. Be aware of the size if you plan to mount this somewhere prominent because it will take up significant space. Wisely Linksys has put mounting options for nails, screws or whatever on the bottom of each of the four feet on the router to make wall mounting easy. Once you screw the four large antenna in (which is quite easy) and attach the wall mount (small block) to your surge protector the router is ready to roll. The router aesthetically is quite beautiful but yet a subdued beautiful with mostly blacks and grey tones. It's not garish with a bunch of red stripes, crazy lights or anything. It has moderately bright blue lights but in a nice design decision all of those lights can be turned off with a simple selection in the router interface. This is particularly nice for those who have their router in a home theater setting and have to look for ways to obscure those bright lights from ruining their home theater experience. This option to turn off the lights I think is a theme throughout the router in that Linksys tried to take complaints from previous routers and correct those mistakes for the WRT32X.
But before we go on I must say that I was also impressed with the packaging and presentation of the router when you are unboxing it. The way that it was packaged reminded me a lot of a high end Apple products. Using an easy open flip up box to display a lot of foam and padding to protect the router, very simple and subtle inserts and just how it was overall packaged presented it as a work of art. So on that front I was quite impressed with the unboxing of the WRT32X. Yes, this is an expensive router but when you open the box and start unpacking it you feel like it's a very top end product you are unboxing. You definitely feel like you are getting your moneys worth upon the initial impression. So major kudos to Linksys for "first sight: points. Note that, like Apple products, the WRT32X comes with minimal instructions and minimal physical assembly leaving most of that to online assistance and, well common sense on how to hook up something that is (supposed to be) easy to get going. Included in the box is just a heavy cardboard 2 folded quick start guide with pictures, some warranty information and a small, white note thanking you for your purchase and giving you a number to Linksys technical support should you run into any problems.
Setting up a new router for many techies is a mixture of dread and utter excitement at tweaking it to your specifications. So with great trepidation, and excitedness, I began the process. First up was doing multiple speed and latency tests with my current Asus router to get a baseline. And of course in doing so I made a note of coverage areas and where the Asus router was failing. Even with two extenders the Asus struggled to cover the far side of my home, especially on the lower levels (my router is mounted in a second story gaming room). I wavered between 1 to 2 bars of wireless coverage according to my iPhone 6 Plus in that area and my hope was the new Linksys would be able to provide a solid 3 bar experience. After doing multiple wireless tests with my phone and iPad I also of course did some PC tests utilizing a wired connection to my newly built i7700K PC. Now that I had a baseline of speed, latency and coverage I began the process of disconnecting my old router and replacing it with the Linksys.
After the WRT32X was hooked up I plugged in the power supply and the unit did not come on. This is because the WRT32X actually has what I believe ALL routers should have and that is a dedicated power switch on the back. Not a button but an actual small switch that turns clearly on or off. Some routers require a reset to be done by pulling the power cord and that is the worst. Having a button that is a toggle is slightly better but having an actual dedicated switch (like what is on a PC power supply) that turns on and off is clearly the best and for that I appreciate Linksys putting that on this router. Upon turning the router on I went back to my wired PC and pointed my browser to 192.168.1.1. There is another website link you can go to such as mylinksysrouter or something but I am old school and I remember 192.168.1.1 and thus that is what I used.
The browser immediately brought up an interface from Linksys and it greeted me with a "congratulations on using the Linksys WRT32X, let's begin..." setup message. Please note that in the instructions you can skip this guided setup and go right to the user interface to do manual setup but I figured I'd give the guided setup a try and I'm glad I did because it's short, it's direct, to the point and it covers all the bases you'd cover doing a manual setup using the interface anyways. No reason to be old school here, use the guided setup. Basically during the setup it's going to first, check for a firmware update and download it automatically if it finds one. Mine checked and did find a firmware update, installed it on its own and rebooted the router. This is really nice and doesn't require you to exert effort to find a website, download a file, load it, etc (also of note is that every night the router will automatically check for firmware updates, automatically download those and install them on its own as well.) Next, the setup guide will ask you what you want your admin interface password to be, to ensure that you do not leave your router open to someone who may try the default password. After that it will simply ask you to name your wi-fi network. The Linksys combines the 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks into one and will automatically determine which network your wireless device can utilize best. For this feature I am quite thankful as I have wanted this ability in a router for a long time. No more manually switching from your 2.4ghz network to your 5ghz network because you now are in better range. Then back over to the 2.4ghz network when you're having issues in another area of your house. Just a note though, if you do want two entirely separate wi-fi networks you have the option upon setting up your network to separate them.
Once into the actual router admin interface I was surprised to see the most elegant and usable interfaces. All pertinent information is clearly visible and displayed in a logical and sensible manner. Most routers either err on the side of simplicity to the point of stupidity to protect the user from things they shouldn't mess with or they provide a user with an overwhelming amount of information to the point where even the most dedicated admin can feel frustrated with finding a particular option. But not this one. On first glance you may be a bit concerned that it is too simple but at the bottom of nearly every option is a "more settings" that you can click on that will open up many more options. It is all presented in a logical, concise and easy to read manner and I must say that this is clearly, without a doubt, the best router interface I have ever seen in my roughly 25 years or so of using routers. It even has an option to change your DNS settings easily to Google or OpenDNS just by clicking on an option! This is really sweet because I typically switch this and have to go look up the DNS settings but not this time. Again, it's just an example of the thought that Linksys has put into making this router both powerful and easy to use for common users as well as power users alike.
One complaint I do have is that no matter what I did I could not find a way to display the MAC addresses in my list of devices in the router table. Having the MAC displayed is nice for devices connected to your network which you are not sure of what they are. For example if I see a device with no name or a weird, generic numeric name I have no idea what that device is but I can look at the MAC address and then determine based upon that MAC address that it is my Samsung TV. I can then rename it to "Samsung TV" in the router table. Once this is done for all of your devices you can then see your network at a glance and ensure everything that is attached to it should be there and is being admin'ed correctly. For the life of me I could not figure out how to display MAC addresses of devices so I took the opportunity to contact Linksys and ask them if this was possible. This was an opportunity to test out their support.
So I called Linksys and after a very short amount of time on hold, about 20 seconds, the phone was answered by an actual person. It was a lady with a bit of an accent but I was able to understand her. After the standard questions as to my name, what I was calling about, etc the woman was happy to assist me. When I asked about the MAC address she said that they were aware, that it was not currently an option and that this was a design decision. I told her they should seriously consider adding this as an option for a future software update. She said she would add it to their call log and suggest it. She was very nice and all of this took only a few minutes. The support seems solid, at least from that call, which is nice to know going forward. This issue was really the only singular complaint that I could find about this router. However, I consider this to be a rather large oversight in an otherwise virtually flawless design from an administration viewpoint. I realize that Linksys wants to keep things simple and elegant but omitting the ability to see MAC addresses is inexcusable and hopefully this will be fixed in a future software update.
Another slight issue is that in some areas of the routers interface when you make a change, save and then go to leave to go to another part of the interface it will ask you if you want to "discard or continue with your changes". This is a small issue that, at first, made me think I hadn't saved my settings but then when I did save and went to leave again to move to another area of the router interface gave me the same popup. Hopefully this is patched and is a slight annoyance but once you are aware of it is not a huge issue. My last issue is that there is no app at all for iOS for this router. My last ASUS router had a really cool iOS app to control things from my iPad or iPhone but this one does not. There is a Linksys app which appears to be just a generic app for Linksys routers but it does not find this router upon searching several times and just from the design of it I don't believe it's meant to be used for the WRT32X. Hopefully an iOS app will be provided sooner rather than later.
Getting back to the positives of the admin interface I particularly liked the fact that on the QOS screen you can simply drag and drop priority level when defining priority levels. Everything is, by default, dumped into normal priority but you can, for example, grab your PS4 Pro from the list of devices and dump it into high priority and voila, that is QOS configuration that you have just done, simple and easy. I know some folks may want specific numeric indicators but I am fine with defining QOS by high, medium and low levels and I believe most folks will be as well. Just about everything in the interface, minus the MAC omission, is designed for ease of use and again, I cannot say enough about how much I like it.
After everything was setup in the router, which took me about 45 minutes, I began the process of running coverage, speed and latency tests. First of all I am happy to report that this router gave me 3 bar coverage all over the full range of my large, five bedroom, three story house. The areas in which my previous router were 1 to 2 bars were filled with a fast and 3 bar signal by the Linksys WRT32X. The worst area went from 1mbps download to 13mbps download. While still not super fast at 13mbps it's more than fast enough to prevent buffering and/or slow loading of webpages which is exactly what I was hoping for in the more furthest reaches of my house. So the coverage was superb, this thing blanketed my house the way I have always wanted a router to and I was able to remove my extenders once and for all. Next was speed and surprisingly the WRT32X gave me slightly slower speeds than my ASUS router. Nothing major, for example in one spot I went from 92mbps down to 88mbps down but in most cases it was slightly slower for wi-fi. Wired remained virtually unchanged however. I did many tests using Google, Verizon and Speedtest and consistently came up with similar results. On to the last area and that is latency. As gamers know we all need that to be the best, more so than download or upload speed. If latency is lacking we are going to have issues in games. Well here the WRT32X excelled and beat my previous router, consistently giving me about 5 to 7 milliseconds better latency in just about every test that I did. This was the case in both wi-fi and wired. In general my previous router did not cause me any issues and gaming ran well at about 25ms ping time but this router cut it down to below 20ms, usually coming in around 17-18ms ping time. So in that respect the WRT32X overdelivers on its promise to cut your ping times.
On to actually testing out the games and how they played. I play PC games, PS4 Pro games and Xbox One S games and all are wired connections. I also have a second Xbox One (original not S) and that is wireless. I played some games on all of them and had zero issues with any lag in anything that I played. Everything worked superb and it was all green across the board. I will say though that on my connection from my ISP, which is 100mbps down and 10mbps up, that I had never really had any issues with my old router in regards to having any sort of lag issues in games. So with this router providing better ping times I certainly wasn't expecting any problems and after playing none cropped up. Note that I do not have any Killer enabled devices, my PC uses a regular Intel NIC but it performed admirably with the Killer enabled WRT32X. If you game wirelessly I imagine you will see better results as well considering my ping times decreased there but I did not try gaming wirelessly. Games that I tested included racing, fighting and sports games, all of which require low latency. Now I will say that when I setup this router my PC had no issues at all with it, my PS4 Pro did not even require a re-setup of the network but my Xbox One S did require me to reconfigure my setup two times. For some odd reason it grabbed some really strange IP and I had to flush out the settings and then do a hard reset of the Xbox One S, do an automatic network setup and voila problem was solved. Strangely the older and original Xbox One did not have any issues and was up and running on the new router without doing anything.
Also of note and one that may be of particular concern to Xbox gamers is that this router consistently provided me with an OPEN Nat without requiring any special port forwarding or setup of any kind. I have been an Xbox gamer since the original Xbox days and I cannot tell you how many hours of my life I have lost trying to get the Xbox away from a strict or moderate NAT to an open NAT. Having a strict or moderate NAT can cause so many problems so I know that having an OPEN nat from minute one, without doing a darned thing, is something most Xbox gamers considering this will want to know. I did go ahead and add my Xbox One S to the DMZ but neither Xbox One had any issues with NAT regardless if they were in the DMZ or not. Of course the PS4 had no issues at all with the connection and came up as Type 2 everytime I tested it (which is what it should be of course). One would expect all of this since this is, after all, a gaming oriented router, but it is still nice to see it be the case. If you're tearing your hair out with your gaming NAT being strict or moderate with your current router you will not have this issue with the WRT32X.
So bottom line, is this a good router for the money or not? If you are a gamer, unequivocally I can say yes that it is. It most certainly is a excellent router overall and specific to gaming probably one of the best, if not the best. I would not hesitate to strongly recommend it to any gamer out there that is looking for the best that you can put on your network. It is worth it to me for two primary reasons: first, the wifi range is extraordinary, secondly, it very low latency. The elegant and awesome interface is also a nice bonus as well. Now, this router's marketing is aimed toward gamers and I know many of you out there are, if you are like me, highly skeptical when you see this type of marketing. You may think that it is just marketing talk to sell an expensive, overpriced router but I can assure you that it is not. This router will lower your ping times and do everything your router needs to do whether you are gaming or just surfing. It's especially appealing for those of us who have larger homes and need wide wi-fi coverage. I have even noted that the 5ghz network extends far wider as well so that is something to take into consideration. If you are a gamer that is looking for high quality router that will be easy to setup, has a fantastic interface, give you no problems with your gaming devices, run smoothly in games and will give you really great wi-fi coverage then this is the router you are looking for. I'm not sure I can recommend this as easily to folks if you're not a gamer because there may be other options that would work for you at a lower price but I can safely say that if you do buy this even if you are not a gamer you will not regret it once you have it up and running. The ease at which you can admin your network will be an ongoing thing of beauty that you will not regret. And also note that even if you're not a gamer having very fast ping times can make a difference in your every day internet life.
All in all I'm glad that this is my router going forward and I will likely be using this Linksys for the next few years as my main router to run my 20-25 networking devices. Great job and major kudos to Linksys on designing such a "killer" router. I would recommend.
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