Linksys EA7500 MAX-STREAM AC1900 Wi-Fi Router

We stand by the fact that this is one of the best built routers we’ve ever come across in this price range, perhaps, only to be beaten by one of the legendary Linksys WRT units. However, if would have been better had Linksys mentioned that this particular SKU isn’t the same that’s sold in first world markets. Using a MediaTek SoC or Qualcomm SoC is a common practice in smartphones but the packaging generally has a mention about the same. In the case of the Linksys EA7500 unit we received, we saw German lettering all over the packaging which led us to believe that this must have been the European version which has the better SoC (link). Since we don’t have the actual European SKU we can’t mention the performance difference but we believe the better SoC should be able to handle a lot more simultaneous connections and manage routing data packets much faster. Despite the MediaTek SoC, the Linksys EA7500 is still one of the best performing AC1900 routers we’ve tested, so in no way should you discount Linksys’s capabilities to pull off a good design. From the competition, you have the NETGEAR R7000, the Tenda AC15, the ASUS AC68U and the TP-LINK C9. We’d say the NETGEAR R7000 is a pretty close competitor in terms of build and the ASUS RT-AC68U performs equally well or even better in certain benchmarks, however, they’re all equally priced.