LinksysHydra Pro Mesh WiFi 6E Router MR7500 Tri-Band WiFi Mesh Router AXE 6600 For Wireless Internet For The Home, Work, And Guest House - Connect 55+ Devices, 2,700 Sq Ft

We upgraded our home Internet plan to a 2.5 Gig plan from 1 Gig. Too many phones, laptops and TVs all going at once for the 1 Gig plan we were on. I upgraded our Modem and needed to upgrade our Router as well. I tried several Routers but simply was not satisfied with their performance. I decided to give the Linksys Hydra Pro a go. It has worked flawlessly from the get-go. We have a 6,200 sq. ft. house and literally every room gets Wi-Fi without any issues. Even though it's rated for 2,500 sq. ft ... the reach, at least in our environment, is far more than that. I'm not using any extenders or additional modules in the house. Every TV for example (which is on either Apple TV or Amazon Firestick 4K Pro) gets exceptional picture and audio without any buffering or broken audio. We have no cable boxes in the house ... all TVs are on Xfinity Stream.The only thing I can say is that the only firmware update we have gotten since installation was out of the box during the initial installation, I believe, it was done in January or February. I don't think Linksys is big on updates. That said, the main point is that the Router itself works exactly as stated and has worked without any issues whatsoever. From my perspective, and even though it may be a little outdated at this point, it is a great Router and I will keep it on-line for as long as I can.

Easy to set up. Great for speed and reliability

I had a Linksys Velop wifi 5 mesh, running it in bridge mode to provide a large area with wifi coverage. The network was using an Asus router with it's wifi turned off as the only router, with the Velop mesh for all the access points. That worked well, except in bridge mode, the guest network actually wasn't separated from the primary network, so guest users could access devices on the primary network if they knew how to do that. And I got a new phone that supports WiFi 6. So I bought this router and successfully replaced my old router. The configuration went pretty smoothly.I had to do a factory reset on all the Velop nodes, essentially destroying the existing Velop wifi 5 mesh. Then connected the new router to the cable modem, and did the router setup using the Linksys app on my phone, to create the new main node for the new mesh. Then used the Linksys app to add the unconfigured nodes to the new mesh, one at a time. BTW if you are using hardwired backhauls (connecting the Velop nodes to the router using Ethernet cables) you need to not connect the cables when configuring the node - it has to be added to the mesh via wifi. Connect the cable after the node is in place, and then power cycle the node to get it to use the hardwired backhaul.The end result is a fast wifi 6 central router combined with a wifi 5 mesh for reaching out to a large area. The phone seamlessly switches from 6 to 5 when walking around, it does exactly what I had hoped for. Now that I'm not running bridge mode, the guest network is actually secure. The router does support a USB disk drive, which basically just worked when i plugged it in. Very happy.What I would like to see added would be more advanced control of the router. There is a local router control panel, which you get to via a web browser at the router's IP address. This provides some amount of configuration, but not as much as I would like. Asus provides much more in this area.I intend on replacing the Velop 5 nodes with Velop 6 nodes at some point, which will be an easy task. Overall an excellent product with an excellent outcome, and didn't need Linksys tech support to get it done.

4 stars because there is no way to hide the wi-fi SSID

I've been a fan of Linksys for many years. I did IT work in the past and worked with other routers and have found that Linksys is best for reliability, set up and quality. My EA9500 was over 7 years old and still working perfectly, but I figured it was time to delve into a mesh system. I was using a main router and 2 'older' Linksys routers as 'bridge' routers. I hadn't really had any issues, except that all the equipment was over 10-15 years old. I did a lot of research and decided on the Hydra Pro 6e for my main router, and the Atlas Pro's as the 'child nodes'. I have a 2800 sq ft house (1st floor and basement), with my main router in the basement. I placed one child node in the master bedroom (wired), another in the living room and the 3rd in my garage, (both wireless). (It should be noted that with all the devices in my house, from cameras, to TV's, phones, etc., we have 37 devices). So far, I have no 'dead' areas and all devices show a strong signal. Setup was very easy - I logged into the router through the IP address to set up my cameras, and then used the app to finalize the settings. In the future, I may run CAT5e to the other nodes just for reliability. This seems to be a great combination and I would recommend it to anyone looking to get a mesh system.