Belkin RT3200 wireless router review

The Belkin RT3200 is a very cheap ($50 on Walmart) WiFi 6 router based on MediaTek's MT7915 + MT7622 solution. It is extremely similar to Linksys E8450. (Foxconn owns Linksys and Belkin.)

Hardware highlights (source):
 - CPU: MT7622BV (2x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1350 MHz)
 - RAM: 512MB DDR3
 - Flash: 128MB SPI-NAND
 - Ethernet: MT7531BE switch with 5 1000Base-T ports
 - WiFi 2.4 GHz: 802.11bgn 4T4R built-in antennas
                 MT7622VB built-in
 - WiFi   5 GHz: 802.11ac/ax 4T4R built-in antennas
                 MT7915AN chip on-board via PCIe
                 MT7975AN front-end

The router's stock firmware was okay but sluggish. I followed this to install OpenWrt. Just be sure to 1) backup the factory bootrom; 2) use UBI images ending in itb.

Then I enabled beam forming and BSS coloring and ran iperf3. It achieved ~450 Mbps in both direction between my wireless laptop with Intel AX201 and a wired NAS. The laptop was about 8 meters away from the router.

I then switched the bandwidth from 80MHz to 160MHz. But iperf3 did not show improvements. So I reverted the change.

I also connected EA7500 to RT3200. They negotiated a PHY rate of 1733 Mbps. But the iperf3 test was only ~480 Mbps.

I did not enable WED or HW offloading as I configured the router to be an access point.

Conclusion

If you have a decent 802.11ac wave 2 router, replacing it with RT3200 will not increase the throughput much. But it is a good cheap router if you do not have one yet.