O-Sense
CONCLUSION
When Netgear announced the availability of the Nighthawk X6 R8000 I was intrigued since it was the first Tri-Band AC3200 compatible WiFi router in the market and having reviewed the excellent Nighthawk R7000 made things even more interesting. Specs-wise the R8000 lands not far away from where the R7000 did but although it’s more advanced judging by the time we spend testing it and of course our results it seems that we were wrong to think that Netgear wanted to replace the 2nd with the 1st. You see the R7000 is a faster model in general compared to the R8000 but it only has two radio bands. This is where the R8000 comes in since its two 5GHz bands may not be just as powerful as the one 5GHz band of the R7000 but they allow for more simultaneous connections with almost double the total bandwidth. The high-gain Antennas of the R7000 also feel quite sturdier compared to those of the R8000 but I can’t say that we came across any problems while testing (still I was expecting slightly more). As for the Gennie web interface well the R8000 offers quite a bit more compared to the R7000 but even that offered much more than we could ever hope to use.
AC1900 routers are not very cheap so it’s safe to assume that one of the very few available AC3200 compatible routers in the market will cost quite a bit more. Well the Nighthawk X6 R8000 does and so it currently retails for USD285.50 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 268Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which lands it right between similar solutions by ASUS and D-Link. Of course we can’t comment on the equivalent models by ASUS and D-Link (at least not now) but since they too will feature similar hardware components results should be very similar. In the end if you want the fastest router around then you’d be better off either with the Nighthawk R7000 again by Netgear or the WRT1900AC by Linksys. If however you’re looking for a router with 3 separate bands that can allow for more connections and thus better total signal strength with a very good range then the Nighthawk X6 R8000 AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi Router should be on top of your to buy list which is why it gets our Platinum Award.
PROS
- Overall Build Quality
- Design
- Near-Excellent Wireless Performance
- AC3200 (Concurrent 802.11n & two 802.11ac Bands)
- User Friendly Web Interface
- Features
- Technologies Used (Beamforming & TurboQAM)
- Android & iOS App
- 4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports / WAN Port
- 2 USB Ports (USB 3.0 & USB 2.0)
- LED On/Off Switch
CONS
- Price (For Some)
- High-Gain Antenna Quality
