Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (R7000) vs TP-LINK Archer C7 V2

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.

The Archer C7 allows you to use one guest network per WiFi band. You can choose when these guest networks are activated and you can also configure the maximum amount of bandwidth that guests can use.

The TP-Link Archer V2 offers great value for the money for most people who are looking to buy a wireless router. It is faster and covers the same area faster than routers that cost twice or three times as much, While it's not the best performant router under all circumstances, the jump in price to get the best router for a certain scenario would not be proportional to the added performance.

At short range (around 11 ft) it provides 200Mbps-160Mbps depending on the line of vision, thickness of walls, etc. While on long range (around 43 ft) it provides 175Mbps-72Mbps depending on the line of vision, thickness of walls, materials the walls are made, etc.

Blue lights in front of the panel indicate status of power, wired and wireless connections.

It has four Gigabit ethernet ports, supports USB file sharing and media streaming through two USB 2.0 ports, has parental controls for an increased degree of control, and has support for guest networks.

The Archer C7 allows you to access both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands, which has the benefit of improving performance but also makes it easier to escape any interference from any neighbours' WiFi.