Want to cut your Xbox One online lag? This $299 official router might be what you need
If you want to eke out some extra ping from your favorite Xbox One games and don't mind paying extra for it, Linksys and Microsoft have a new router to show you. The Linksys WRT32XB is coming in February for $299.99, complete with official Xbox branding - right down to the big green band and Xbox logo at the top.
Linksys says the router uses Killer networking tech to automatically prioritize its connection with Xbox One / S / X systems, reducing "peak ping" by as much as 65 percent. That means you won't suffer nearly as much lag from your partner watching Netflix or your roommate torrenting terabytes of increasingly weird porn (we all know about it, Gregory) on the same network. Other users who aren't gaming might notice more slow-down instead of you, but they're not the ones who dropped three Benjamins on a spiffy new router, am I right?
The router will also prioritize PCs with Killer networking technology built in. It's a very similar router to Linksys' existing WRT32X model, just with the extra Xbox One specialty: it has dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz support, four external antennae, four gigabit ethernet ports, and a USB 3.0 port and eSATA/USB 2.0 port. It's a nice little piece of hardware, but $299 is a high price for a router of any kind. Unless you're the kind of person who always insists on having officially licensed gear whenever it's available, you'll probably want to wait and see whether this router's impact on real-life gaming performance justifies the premium price tag.
While we're waiting for the results to come in, why not check out all the best Xbox One controllers and accessories that are already on the market?
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I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.