By Netgear

Overview

when Netgear released WNDR4500 to the market which is a high-performance router with N900 technology, many people wondered why Linksys has not released a new product to market with N900 technology, dual band with a maximum speed of 450Mbps each band. However, Linksys instead introduced the next generation Linksys E4200v2 with firmware upgrade from N750 to N900 speed.

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Why Linksys doesn’t use a special series with a different name for N900 router instead of E4200v2? Later found out that Linksys will release a new product to the ranks of EA series routers with Cisco Connect Cloud technology, the EA4500 N900 and also a series of cloud companion.

What’s new with Linksys E4200V2?

When Netgear introduced Wndr4500 N900, we could notice some new features compared with the previous Wndr4000 N750 router including the speed improvement in its 2.4GHz band from 300Mbps to 450Mbps (N750 to N900), and one more USB port for total of two ports for share storage and printer. So what’s new with Linksys E4200V2?

Faster and more features

The only new improvement is the higher speed in 2.4GHz band from 300Mbps (in E4200) to 450Mbps. And the words in the highlight features say “USB port for shared storage & printers”. And in Specifications say “Includes USB port for Shared Storage, Virtual USB and Media Server”. Does it mean that this V2 is really the improvement of the capability to host a printer for sharing? The USB port in Linksys E4200 doesn’t support to host share printer. The support guy said that the share printer can be supported in the next firmware upgrade.

How do you compare E4200V2 with Wndr4500?

It is always interested to know the comparison between the two products from different manufacturers. The table 1 shows you some of the main spec comparison between Linksys E4200V2 and Wndr4500 N900 routers.

Wireless technology

Both routers use the latest, the fastest wireless technology wireless N900 with speeds up to 450Mbps each band using three spatial data stream with MIMO antenna technology. Not many wireless client devices deliver the speed up to 450Mbps. Linksys introduces AE3000 with dual band 450Mbps ideal for upgrading your standard wifi adapter to join the fast N900 router for maximum data rate throughput.

Interfaces

Gigabit Ethernet ports (both LAN and WAN ports) are standard features for high performance category wireless routers. Brand new computers including all-in-one (AIO) desktops are equipped with Gigabit NIC adapter. Besides, mostly AIO computers include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi adapter.

USB ports

The main difference between the two routers is the USB port they include. Linksys E4200V2 includes only one USB port which is now stated to be capable of hosting either shared storage or printer. This is the new features for v2. But Netgear WNDR4500 includes two USB ports; it reminds me to my favorite router Asus RT-N56U black diamond. Now it’s up to you, you prefer Linksys with one USB port for either shared storage or shared printer. Or you prefer Wndr4500 with two USB ports so you can attach both external disk storage and printer together. No more adding wireless print server or switching the printer and the storage.

Ratings

With the price is still relatively expensive, Wndr4500 getting good response from the user to the results of customer rating 3.9 out of 5 stars. Achievement is pretty good for this N900 class router. What about the Linksys E4200v2? Rating of v2 Linksys proved less encouraging which is 3.3 out of 5 stars. Most believe that Linksys will release the latest version, so they would rather wait than buy this v2.

Linksys E4200v2 Vs D-link Dir-857 N900

D-link shipped the fastest product the Dir-857 N900 into the market end of 2011 – almost 10 months after it was showcased in CES 2011. What is the main difference with E4200v2? The main difference is apparent; Dir-857 is equipped with USB 3.0 port ten times faster than USB 2.0 port. In addition, Dir-857 includes one SD Card slot which is DLNA compliant.