With any electronic product that you come across there will be pro's and con's. If the pro's suit your needs and the con's are negligible then it's a win for us. Sometimes the con's slip over into the area's that we don't want them to and this is where we make a decision to move on and find something better. Let's see how big the pro's are for the Linksys E300 and see if it can overshadow the con's it has, if any.
Let's first look at the technical aspects of the router to make sure it is fitting your requirements. It has all the standard wireless signal capabilities: draft 802.11n, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11b, 802.3, 802.3u, 802.3ab. It will be compatible with any wireless card that you have in your laptop or desktop. It has Power, Ethernet, Internet, and USB ports to enable all computer to internet connections as well as connections for your computers, gaming systems, HDTV's, and Blu-ray devices that are internet enabled. LED's are used for indications of internet connection, power, USB connection, and ethernet connection. These are great standard features and should be sufficient for any home wireless applications you will need.
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Now let's list of all the pro's of this router that makes it stand out over the competition for the price range that it is in. Firstly it is a beautiful sleek looking design. It is one of the more aesthetically pleasing routers that we review on our site, it will be love at first site. All antenna's are hidden in the body of the router itself to make for a more sleek looking product as well as being more compact. This is a plus as some routers have 3 or more antenna's that can get annoying with all the wires and chords you have around computers, things get tangled. The Linksys E3000 comes with an incredibly easy installation disk. Simply plop it into your hard drive and follow the on screen setup instructions. You'll be required to plug in cables and turn it on, configure your router to connect to the internet (complex sounding, easy with the install guide), create your wireless network name (AKA: SSID), choosing optional encryption, and if encrypted choosing a password. This whole process should take 5 minutes for someone who is even slightly familiar with computers.
This is a great list of pro's, not only do you get every single standard feature that comes with all routers nowadays but you get the bonuses of convenience and compactness. Let's list off the con's to see if their enough to want stay away from the product. The biggest disappointment of the E3000 is that it doesn't support USB printers. If it did, you would be able to plug the printer directly into the router and send signals to the router itself from your computer to print, meaning you could have the printer in one location and wirelessly print from anywhere in the house. This really came to be the only major downside to this router. Some small downsides were the Media Server feature doesn't process as well as one would expect, and the desktop application doesn't allow manual editing of router settings which we don't find a big deal since if you know how to manually edit the router you wont really need an application to get to it.
Linksys E3000 Review
