Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (R7000) vs TL-WR802N

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can configure it once with a specific SSID and password and then just plug an Ethernet cable every time you need a wireless connection.

When you use the repeater function, the LAN/WAN is disconnected and the port is used only to rebroadcast the existing wireless signal. The WiFi antenna is quite powerful as well, so this router will probably be able to pick up signals that your phone does not.

Has a microUSB port that is used for charging. This way you can connect it to most phone chargers if you lose the cable that comes with the router.

It measures only 2.2 x 2.2 x 0.7 inches and it's very light at only 7.2 ounces, making it easy to carry around even in your pocket.