Linksys Velop AX Tri-Band Mesh WiFi System (MX10600)

TL;DR: - solid performance, very easy to achieve over 1Gbit speeds between nodes; actual speed will vary greatly with the WiFi client type and nodes position (don't expect a mobile phone to reach Gbit speeds, also don't expect to put the nodes more than 2 rooms apart, your mileage may vary); - the Ethernet ports on the child nodes are also usable for clients, so you can easily hard wire a console/computer/printer etc; this will typically result in better performance versus using WiFi on said devices; - weird radio choice; these are not true WiFi6, in the sense that one of the 5GHz radios is actually WiFi5 (although very quick 4x4 at 1.7Gbps); from what I gather, Linksys set this radio up to be the preferred backhaul, as it's slightly more powerful (24dBm vs 16dBm on the WiFi6); - on the child nodes, the band used for backhaul is not usable by clients; this can result in the child nodes turning off AP on the WiFi6 5GHz radio in certain conditions, especially where the main router is rebooted, as WiFi6 radios always come online quicker because they're using non-DFS channels; just power cycle your child nodes to avoid this; - very little WiFi configuration available; you can only select Wi-Fi channels and width (and only form the web admin interface); the usual config items available otherwise (DHCP/reservations/QoS/port forwarding etc); - ideally put the ISP hub in modem mode (all UK ISP supplied "hubs" have this option); this will result in better performance, and potentially avoiding IP conflicts (typically both your hub and the Velop use the same 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, which is guaranteed to cayuse you headaches); alternatively, set up the Velop in "bridge" mode, this will turn off routing and DHCP on it, using your existing hub for these functions; I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS, it's one of the reasons a lot of users leave negative reviews for mesh WiFi systems; - very bulky (and quite heavy) nodes, check if you intend to stick on a shelf, cupboard etc; - finally, quite expensive unless you're getting these on a discount, but you do get decent WiFi performance and coverage;

I had the older Velop routers and hoped that these would let me cover my 3 storey townhouse with only 2 routers instead of 3, but that was not to be and I had to order another one. Setting up is relatively simple but a bug in the app meant that it dropped half of my ISP login as it is an email address. The app dropped the @vodafone.com from the login, but techsupport were very helpful and solved it quite quickly by logging in directly to the router GUI instead of the app where I could see and correct the incorrect login. It's definitely NOT worth upgrading from Velop V1 or V2 to these unless you really want WiFi 6 which won't speed up your Internet connection, only the connection between your local devices.

(Linksys MX10600) I had a couple of access points to cover my house and part of my garden but wanted to upgrade and get a more seamless wifi across the house. There are so many options and the market is so confusing that it took me a while to decide which one I wanted to get. I've gone for this 3 channel system to get the dedicated back haul channel between devices. I started with 2 with the thought that if I needed a better signal in the garden I could get a third. I have about 2200 sq ft house and about 40m of garden from the house and the two devices. It's a tech house so there are quite a few devices on the network with a mix of 2.4 and 5ghz devices. With two people at home on conf calls and two kids either streaming hd to phones/tablets or laptops and an xbox gaming all at the same time haven't had any problems with any of the devices. Only the LG tv occasionally buffers but this is a poor tv design as it was doing it with the old system as well. BEST THING! This system was turn on with the app and just worked out the box. Connected the second point device and again just worked and connected. Every device has just connected quickly and easily. Guest access network all setup and simple. If you want to do much more in a technical level though this device doesn't give you much of an option. WORST THING! You can't turn off the light on the top of the box! I contacted Linksys as the master device is in the bedroom and when the room is dark the led light on the top of the device is very bright! Other linksys devices you have an option to turn it off. Not on this one, I have asked for it to be added to the next linksys update. RECOMMENDATION! If you are not tech savvy, like 90% of the world and you want great range and performance then this just works! Turn it on, follow some really simple instructions in the app and you are away! If you know how to download an app from the mobile store then you can get this working! You will be free to wander the house and never loose wifi or even notice you are changing which device you are connected to. It is expensive, Mesh systems are, but if you have deadspots in the house my experience says you won't after! Little technical: Moved from a standard BT hub was generally at best getting 20-22mb download connection with 30mb download occasionally using a samsung s22 as a test using speedtest on 5ghz connection. I now get 32mb download regularly. Upload is now normally around 10mb up from around 9mb. I still get 24mb+ (on s22) from the bottom of the garden (40-50m from devices which are inside the house). It was no problem to Stream a whole disney+ film without any buffering or degradation of the picture on a laptop.

I bought an MX10600 being two AX5300 in a Mesh. Initially all was well but after 2 or 3 weeks the parent node's 2.4 Ghz channel malfunctioned. This caused constant drop offs as the child unit was some distance away and too far away for a reliable signal for 2.4 ghz only devices like wifi light bulbs. I spent days and days trying to get this work then after about 5 hours on line tech support - who were very patient - to isolate the issue. It was the parent node's 2.4 Ghz radio that wasn't working properly. I am quite tech savvy and I can only say that my experience, after the channel failed, was a total nightmare, though on line tech support were very helpful. I was able to return to Amazon as the channel failed within 30 days. If it had happened after 30 days I can't work out how you get a 1 year warranty. It was impossible for me to register the product with Linksys - I tried many times - the web site says ypu were successful in registering but if you query your account it says "no products registered." Linksys were not offfering me a replacement product and placed that duty on Amazon. Maybe you will get lucky and not have this type of problem. I have elected to have another go with a replacement, thinking I probably just got unlucky. For my second go I am switching from SmartLife Tuya to Philips Hue foe smart light bulbs as I think it is much safer re security etc. so from Wifi to Zigbee.

I purchased 2 of these wifi nodes in December to extend the range the Linksys mesh system that I already had in operation. One of these new nodes appeared to be very unstable and frequently dropped out of the wifi network which meant my security camera system lost connection frequently. It behaved quite erratically. At times it had a red light showing (rather than blue/connected light) even though it was clearly connected to my network. I tried all sorts of measures to make it stable. I tried my other nodes in the same location and found they all worked fine. I even placed this node right beside the parent node and found it remained unstable. I reset the node and it was still unstable. Eventually in March I contacted Linksys Technical Support to report the clearly faulty node. I was on the phone with Linksys from around midnight until after 3am!! I persisted with the call as it had been enormously difficult to contact Linksys either via online chat or phone and I had tried quite a number of times over a few weeks. The technical support guy ran through multiple tests with my node. Thank God I had plenty of equipment. During the call I had to use my phone, laptop, iPad connecting various devices and running tests for him. Eventually after 3 hrs he finally agreed that yes, my node was faulty. He explained about the replacement process and said I should try and arrange a replacement through Amazon. I contacted Amazon but they declined due to it being 3 months after purchase I think. After more contact with Linksys they agreed to replace the node themselves and said I would be sent an email with a link to get an RMA number (needed to arrange a replacement) . I had top chase this up as no email arrived. That took more days as it remained so hard to contact Linksys. Eventually a link to an RMA arrived but it didn't work !!. More attempts top contact Linksys. Infuriating!! Eventually I got the replacement node arranged and I was asked to post my faulty node back to Linksys at my expense. I suggested that I believed the postage should be at their expense and asked them to check up on this. Linksys told me the return was definitely to be at my expense. I later checked the warranty conditions and established that return of faulty goods was at their expense and sent a copy of the warranty to Linksys. I was told Linksys would check up on this. It took 7 days for Linksys to confirm that I was correct and that the return shipping would be at their expense. I had to pay and seek a refund for postage in the end. The postage refund took 5 weeks to arrive into my bank account. The faulty node arrived at Linksys on 29th March via Parcelforce. Linksys had stated I would be advised when the replacement node was being sent to me and also provide a tracking number but I did not receive any information. I contacted Linksys again on 23rd April as I had not received any information and the replacement node had not been received by me. I was told the node was delivered to me on 13th April by DHL. I emailed Linksys and re-explained that I had not received the node and that I was home all that day and that my security camera footage confirmed that there had been no visitors/couriers arrive apart from the usual postman. I also checked myself with DHL and was advised that in fact the package had been returned to the shipper (ie. Linksys) and I informed Linksys of this on 24th April. It took 6 days for Linksys to email me a response stating, "We will i investigate the case with our Shipping Department." I have made phone calls and sent many emails to Linksys and done online chats since then to try and chase this missing wifi node up. I have episodes of being left on hold for ages and ages. I have been disconnected from calls after doing periods on the phone... especially when Linksys have attempted to transfer my call internally to another office. I have even had an episode when my call was transferred a couple of times internally at Linksys after long conversations and long periods on hold and then eventually got transferred back to the first enquiry number/recorded message that I had started with nearly an hour previously. I have asked Linksys to phone me. I have asked for the contact details of their Head of Customer Services as I wish to make a formal complaint. I have asked all this several times and not received a call or contact information or advised how to lodge a formal complaint. Now, 18 days later I have received an email stating, "Please be informed that we are verifying this with Shipping department for locating the package since you didn't receive the replacement unit". Incredible!! No progress by Linksys in 18 days even though I was able to seek out and obtain the non-delivery/return top sender information directly from DHL myself nearly 4 weeks ago and on the day that I sought out the information. I didn't know if others have encountered the same appalling customer service at Linksys. I tried to check via their online forum on the Linksys website “Ask the Community”. But the forum has not been available over this period. It only has the same message for ages, “We are adding some more cool stuff to make the community experience better for you. We are truly sorry to delay the excitement but please bear with us.” There is quite a lot more that I could report about this whole saga but there is no point listing all that has happened. My experience with Linksys is the worst customer service I have ever experienced by a long way. The wifi product itself seems good...... apart from the one which was faulty. However I would strongly advise against purchasing any Linksys products unless you are simply prepared to write off the loss/expense if it is faulty as you will go insane trying to get it replaced or deal with Linksys Customer Service.

Like many of you, I have been debating between this product and the similarly specced Netgear Orbi WiFi 6 system. Ultimately, I decided to go with the Velop system for a couple of reasons. I liked the addition of a USB port on the Velop compared to the Orbi (Connected to a Samsung T5 SSD) and I liked idea that each node operates on an individual basis, rather than being a satellite to the main node, dedicated backhaul was not an issue as I had already decided to hard-wire the entire system. The price though was a huge factor in my decision too, purchased three nodes, a twin pack and an individual node, all for much less than the comparable Orbi system would have cost. A bit about my setup, as mentioned, I have three nodes all hard-wired throughout my house (~4000sq/ft) with Cat 8 Ethernet cables, connected to a 1Gbps Fiber Connection, an important side note is I have everything in bridge mode, as it’s all hard-wired, this removes some of the functions within the app such as device prioritisation/management, but this is not an important issue for me. I was until recently using a similar system but with Apple AirPort Extreme/Time Capsules, but had started to find that these routers were struggling with the ever increasing amount of smart devices on our network, these have proved to be a huge upgrade, not surprising though as Apple’s routers are getting fairly long in the tooth now, almost 8 years old. I still use an Apple Time Capsule hard-wired via Ethernet as a backup device. The speed and coverage this system offers is immense, as you can see from the attached Speedtest, on my iPhone 11 Pro with WiFi 6, I’m getting almost 900mbps, which is about as good as you can expect over a 1Gbps connection. Overall, I couldn’t be happier with this system, yes the buy-in cost is high, but the returns are phenomenal, especially with multiple users working from home now, every user is pretty much guaranteed 5-600mbps wherever they are in my house (~4000sq/ft) even on WiFi 5 (AX) devices, not to mention the future-proofing that these routers provide. Setup is very straightforward using the Linksys app, no complaints there, installation takes around 5 mins per node. If you’re in any doubt about this system, go for it, you will not be disappointed. Happy to answer any questions if needed.

I bought a pair for 2 months. I bought them because it has 4 Lan port with USB port. Samsung TV cannot found the USB storage. I cannot play any photo or video thru this router. Other devices can read the files. (But my previous ASUS router can). Home switch to Satellite was no respond. Maybe need to wait for 15mins. Sometime i will restart my wifi of my mobile. Then it can connect with satellite. After connect with satellite. it is very difficult to read the file which save in USB port at HOME. Linksys router app is not much functions. Parents control is easy to use. Finally , don't buy it. Buy ASUS

I had thr MR9600 router which was connected to these MX devices creating a mesh around the house. It was constantly disconnecting from the Internet. The issue wasn't with the ISP. Spoke to Linksys tech support over a number of days to try different things. They were great, they made notes linked to telephone number so when calling I didn't need to explain again. The eventual solution was to take out the MR9600 as the parent and replace it as parent with the Mesh devices. I connected the MR9600 as a child node. The signal and connection is stable and great with signal all over the house. I have a total of 5 nodes and they connect and work great. The Linksys app is a little slow but again functionality is great. If you want a good mesh network you won't go too far wrong using these Linksys devices