The Netgear Nighthawk delivers solid speeds, traffic prioritization features for gaming, streaming, and mobile devices, and easy-to-use software.
SpecsUpdate
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Pros
Pro Great performance
This AC1900 router tops out at a theoretical 1.9 Gbps of throughput. In real life testing at 5 feet the router’s throughput is 616.8Mbps over the 5 GHz band and 121.6Mbps over the 2.4GHz band. At 140 feet it maintains combined throughput of 252.4 Mbps.
To achieve this result, it uses beamforming technology, which means that the router determines where the device is located and focuses a better signal towards that specific device.
Pro Several custom firmwares readily available
To make greater use of the powerful component hardware, owners can easily flash any of the popular third-party firmwares like TomatoUSB, DD-WRT, AsusWRT and more using the existing upgrade page in the stock web-based control panel.
Pro Excellent USB performance
The Nighthawk achieves file transfer rates of 231.2 Mbps over USB 3.0 and 224 Mbps over USB 2.0. This means that you can connect an external hard disk drive to this router and share a 2 GB file over a Wi-Fi network in just over a minute.
Pro You can specify the amount of bandwidth you wish to dedicate to gaming or video
Nighthawk offers two different types of traffic prioritization tools. Traffic that is sent out by the user can be prioritized for gaming, while incoming traffic can be prioritized for improved video streaming.
Cons
Con Good only for smaller homes
Does not work for a 2900 sq ft home with Nighthawk on one side of the house and trying to getting a signal on the other side of the house.
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