Linksys Altas 6 AX3000 WiFi Mesh System MX2000 Review

Linksys Altas 6 AX3000 WiFi Mesh System MX2000 Review

Buy it at Amazon: Linksys Altas 6 AX3000 WiFi Mesh System MX2000 [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Simple and quick setup, large coverage area with strong and fast signal throughout the home.

#sponsored #freeproduct You’ll receive three routers, three power adapters with 5 ft cables, a 3 foot Ethernet cable, and a quick start card. All of the units are identical and can be either used as a parent or child node. Each one measures 7.25” tall, 3” square at the top, and 3.25” square at the bottom. The sides are plain and solid, while the top has a grille for ventilation and an LED status light at the front corner. At the back are 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports with the last one labeled Internet, and inside there are 3 wireless antennas. Just below those is the 12C power port for the power adapter. One thing to note is that the LED cannot be dimmed or disabled. On the bottom are the power switch, WPS, and reset buttons as well as rubber feet all around to prevent sliding.

The Atlas 6 is an entry-level mesh system with AX3000 network speed running on a 1GHz dual-core processor, and it supports up to 600Mbps and 2400Mbps on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands respectively with access to 160MHz channel widths. This 3-pack covers up to 6000 sq ft of your home and supports up to 75 devices, though the system is expandable and can have up to 50 nodes, but that’s be way beyond any normal residential application. To setup the mesh system, you’ll need to download and install the Linksys smartphone app. A Linksys account is required to complete setup and you must login in order to link the system to your account. However, setting up the unit is simple and straightforward and takes less than 10 minutes.

As a mesh system, you’ll get the best performance out of the system if you setup all three of the nodes, with 6000 sq ft of coverage and support up to 75 devices across the system; however, you can use fewer units as well and the system is expandable up to 50 nodes. Security-wise, the system employs 128-bit encryption a WPA2/WPA3-Personal encryption. I like that each node has 4 Ethernet ports so we can connect multiple wired devices at each node, or if you prefer, you have the option to used wired backhaul between the nodes.

This system is perfect for our house because we have three floors and the modem is located in the top floor and I can place one node on each floor in the rooms directly below one another. The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signals will be combined into a single network and cannot be separated, though your devices should automatically connect to the band that provides the best connection its capable of. In the app, you can elect to have push notifications when one of the child nodes goes offline for any reason. In the dashboard you can view the network’s status, whether it’s connected to the internet and how many devices are on the network. You can also manage its settings like enabling Guest Access with a separate WiFi network name and password.

There are parental controls available like pausing internet and blocking specific websites and updates to firmware can be downloaded and installed from the app as well. When performing a speed check in the app, this mesh system delivered download speeds at over 500 Mbps and 23 Mbps upload, which is a vast improvement over the speed I was getting from my single point of access WiFi 5 router. You can select up to 3 devices for traffic prioritization if you have limited speeds and bandwidth. There are several advanced setup options like specifying the MTU size, port forwarding, and WiFi MAC address filters. While you can’t manually choose the channel frequency, you can use the “channel finder” setting to automatically scan for the one that will give you the best performance with least interference. You can also enable Dynamic Frequency Selection, or DFS, which uses a wider band of frequencies for 5GHz connections that can improve WiFi performance depending on your environment and conditions, though if your device can’t use the channel it will default to your 2.4 GHz network.

Overall, the coverage area of this mesh system allows us to have constant stable speed throughout the home with no dead spots or weak signal anywhere. Its range even extends outside the home which means our outdoor smart plugs stay more reliably connected to network and internet. While there aren’t a ton of advanced configuration options, it’ll meet most users’ needs and setup was quick and easy. The network is also expandable is your needs change, and for me the system delivered faster download speeds with better signal strength than our previous setup.

Buy it at Amazon: Linksys Altas 6 AX3000 WiFi Mesh System MX2000 [Affiliate Link]