Linksys E1200

Cisco Linksys E1200 Wireless-N Router

When Cisco released the Valet Plus ($90, 4.5 stars), it had raised the bar for wireless router setup. Other vendors, I predicted, were sure to follow suit. Since then, most of the newer routers on the market feature the same sort of easy setup, making routers simpler than ever for the average home user to configure. Cisco has set the bar even higher, in three important ways, with the new Cisco Linksys E1200 Wireless-N Router. First, the quirks in the Cisco Connect software are mostly gone. The throughput of the E1200 is almost double the Valet's; it is in fact the best throughput I have measured to date from a single-band 2.4 GHz consumer router. Best of all, the MSRP is $60 about $20-30 less than the SRP of the Valet. Although it replaces the Valet Plus as our favorite single band router, the E1200 is actually billed as the successor to the underwhelming E1000 ($80, 2.5 stars). As with the E1000, the E1200 is not intended for high bandwidth consumption. For users looking for heavy-duty music or video streaming, multi-player gaming, or performing large file transfers with home servers and NAS devices, those users should consider Cisco's E4200 ($179, 4 stars) or Netgear's N600 ($130, 4.5 stars).