 Buy a qualifying Intel product and get entered in the Intel Dynamic Ticket Giveaway for a chance to win great prizes. Visit IntelGamingPromo.com to learn more. Welcome to what will be a pretty quick and straightforward unboxing of the Linksys EA6500. This is what they're calling a smart Wi-Fi router and it runs at AC1750, so it's dual band which means 2.4GHz and 5GHz. And remember when they spec these maximum throughputs they're actually stacking the total combined throughput on the multiple bands and across multiple technologies. So it's actually AC1300 or 1.3Gb and N450. Now they're also calling it a smart Wi-Fi router which basically means it's got a bunch of different features including, and why smart Wi-Fi, the ability to utilize apps to customize your Wi-Fi home, get anywhere, access to your network, enable intelligent media prioritization. So some of these features are great, some of them are not necessarily as great. The EA4500 with what they called at that time Cisco Cloud Connect was, I didn't end up using those features and I instead used the more bare bones firmware but what I liked about the EA4500 is it was extremely fast, extremely powerful and didn't rely on any fancy configurations in order to really get awesome performance out of it compared to some of the other routers that we tried. So we actually have quite a few of those deployed. So why are we upgrading to the EA6500 you might ask and the answer is pretty straightforward. So number one is that it uses wireless AC so if you have any devices that are able to leverage AC, for example I have an HTC One, you will potentially see some speed benefit there. Number two is the fact that it's simultaneous dual band so 2.4 and 5 GHz means that you have the potential for maximum range as well as maximum throughput and we have some content coming very soon on Nvidia Shield which relies on a very strong wireless signal in order to stream HD video which is essentially your game. So in order to stream HD games from your computer to your handheld device so we wanted something that was really beefy enough so we asked Linksys to go ahead and send one of these over to us. In terms of accessories you get a huge power brick. I mean this thing, I mean I guess this is in line with what I already knew about AC and if you look at any of the actually decent AC add-in cards such as the one from Asus which has a massive heat sink on it and like antennas that come out like this, this is not power sipping hardware and so we're not and then the kind of implementation in here is not the same as what you might find in a phone so don't expect to see 1.3 gigabit throughput to your phone but it is a significant improvement over wireless N. We also get an ethernet cable as well as a setup CD and last but not least we get the router itself which has that same kind of not like the older UFO shape where they were super glossy but it has the same kind of shape as the EA 4500 except that it is significantly larger and has more ventilation which is also in line with that larger power adapter. So we find ventilation holes here along the bottom where we expect air to be passively drawn in. There's four rubber feet here, here, here and here as well and this was missing from the EA 4500. Glad to see they added this wall mounts right here so you can go ahead and put a couple nails on the wall and hang it off that. Then all along the sides of the device, side, front and other side, there goes the box, we find more ventilation holes and then again in the top here, here and here. On the back we find what Linksys is calling and this should really be a Cardinal Sin rebranding WPS, I think they're calling it Simple Tap Technology TM for easy setup. That is a WPS button right there so it allows you to, without entering any security keys, connect this to other devices. You've also got an integrated five port switch, four of which are normal ports and one of which is intended as a WAN port so that's where you'll plug your broadband modem into and then you've got a couple of USB ports for storage. So if you don't have something like a dedicated NAS, you can add storage to this simply by plugging things in there. There's often support for things like printers as well, a hardware reset button as well as power input. So the last things that I should probably mention about this are the high powered amplifier for ultimate range. Remember guys, 5 GHz routers do not necessarily have the same kind of range as 2.4 GHz routers. It is inherently a shorter range technology but what's good about it is there's less potential for interference whether it's from your cordless phone or whether it's from other wireless networks around you from people who haven't upgraded to 5 GHz or microwaves or whatever else so you might get more effective range out of it and then they also have lots of parental controls and I personally find their firmware easy to use but not just easy to use but quicker to use because you don't have to reboot your router in order to apply any changes which is something that maybe people using aftermarket firmwares take for granted but for people who don't want to go down that route when I compare this to something like D-Link's latest and greatest AC router which requires a 300 second cool down when you upgrade the firmware and I think a 100 or 90 second cool down when you apply any changes. This is much faster when you're trying to diagnose any kind of random network issue. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Linksys EA6500. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. Let me know what you think about this video in the comments. Do like the video and do share it if you think there's anyone who would benefit.