NETGEAR Nighthawk X6S AC4000 Tri-Band WiFi Router, Gigabit Ethernet, MU-MIMO, Compatible with Amazon Echo/Alexa (R8000P), Black, L(14/16)

After reading the instructions and down loading the app, it was 15 minutes from out of the box to installed.

We wanted great WiFi coverage of a 2500 sf single story home with 1000 sf patio space. No problems to report. And enough bandwidth for us plus the family plus children. 20 devices or so and the kids always are streaming video of something. No problems or issues to report.

Value for Money - this one is difficult with only 90 days of Tech Support offered based on purchase date. Other makers provide longer Tech Support after purchase. Plus this was not by far the cheapest way to buy a MU MIMO Tri Band Router, however the the speed of installation and expected long life of the router should be good.

Tech Support - again 90 days is not long enough Tech Support and they want $100 for a years additional Tech Support. As a Result I am not recommended this router for our Company's use in our multi location operation. This router was for personal use and not commercial use - without longer tech support the value proposition of this router is to be questioned for commercial and even some personal operations.

Super easy to set up. Just follow the prompts on the app. I had spotty coverage at best using the router provider by google fiber. Hooked this baby up and I can stream in the four corners of my home and lawn 👍👍

After researching the best routers on the market today and pricing them, the Nighthawk X6 AC4000 provided the best bang for the buck by far at it's price point. Very easy set up for those unfamiliar with networking, but robust enough for IT adepts being rich in features. The range is also superb with it being able to cover my entire home without use of a range extender. Definitely worth every penny!!

Expensive but definitely get what you pay for and it is the best router I’ve ever purchased!

It’s the bomb!!!

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Feature Product

• TRI-BAND WIFI - Avoids interference & optimizes network performance
• MULTI-USER MIMO (MU-MIMO)-For simultaneous streaming to multiple devices
• POWERFUL 64-BIT DUAL CORE 1.8GHZ PROCESSOR + 3 OFFLOAD PROCESSORS - Next generation processor to handle data intensive applications and for better video streaming, lag-free gaming, surfing, and more
• Compatible with Amazon Echo/Alexa - Control your home network using voice commands
• FAST BACKUPS - Two Ethernet ports can be aggregated for > 1Gbps wired speeds

Description

From the manufacturer Nighthawk app Easily setup your router. Manage Internet access by pausing and resuming internet instantly. Run a speed test. All from your mobile device! Nighthawk X6S Tri-band WiFi Router Connect More, Do More 4 Gigabit Ethernet Ports allow you to stay wired for the most stable and uninterrupted connectivity. Access your media and backup your data with an attached USB hard drive connected to the super-speed USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. Speed, Range, Reliability With Beamforming+ the router & device communicate with each other, so the router can directly beam the WiFi signal to the device which boosts speed, reliability, and range. Performance Powerhouse Equipped with a next generation 64-bit Dual-core processor that is more efficient than 32-bit processors found in most routers coupled with three offload processors, X6S can handle data intensive applications and provide better video streaming, lag-free gaming, surfing, and more. Gigabit Internet Ready X6S is built to support gigabit WAN to LAN speeds so you can make the most of your broadband connections such as XFINITY Gig, AT&T Fiber, Google Fiber. The NETGEAR Nighthawk X6S AC4000 router with tri-band Wi-Fi delivers multiple bands for homes with many Wi-Fi devices. Wi-Fi speeds up to 4.0Gbps and 6 high-performance antennas provide maximum speed and range. Advanced features include MU-MIMO and a 1.8GHz dual-core processor. Nighthawk app allows for easy setup and Wi-Fi management.

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This is a review for the NETGEAR Nighthawk X6S AC4000 Tri-Band WiFi Router.

Pros & Cons

This was one of the most more straight-forward and simple wi-fi routers I’ve set up. Setting up Alexa to work with it was also easy. However, that was just the initial setup. The hard part came when I needed to turn some features on like bridge mode. Once in bridge mode, re-connecting to the router is very difficult. This is a powerful router but it’s not going to be in most businesses since most business that have network administrators need the mesh wireless features which this doesn’t have.

As far as features, although it has a smart phone app, not all of its features can be configured through it. You will need to connect directly to the Nighthawk R8000P via its built in webpage. From there you have all of the classic setup scenarios that we are all familiar with: DMZ, port forwarding, Bridge Mode …etc.

It has Tri-Band Wi-Fi that can achieve speeds of up to 1.6Gbps. Tri-Band allows for more devices to be simultaneously connected to the Nighthawk. I have about 10 Wi-Fi devices connected to the Nighthawk and it still clocks in on speedtest.net at about 690Mbps (I have a 1Gpbs connection.)

MU-MIMO, Beamforming, the six antenna, Gigabit on both LAN and WAN make my 10 devices incredibly fast.

Includes 2 USB ports 1 x 3.0 and 1 x 2.0 (Storage in 3.0, printer in 2.0) These let you connect storage and share it over both LAN and WAN (WAN using their included utility called “ReadyCLOUD”

It also, includes Alexa support using their Netgear Skill. It’s very easy to set up and has some basic, often used commands that work great on both Alexa Echo and Alexa App on your smart phone.

As far as performance, this router way outperforms my original one from Comcast. I really like the beamforming; I can walk around my home and it does a really good job staying at peak performance. The only problem I had was the speed vacillated a bit in a corner through a lot of Sheetrock.

I really like the ability to aggregate ports; I can take two 1Gbit ports and bond them together to form one 1/1 Gigabit high speed connection (1Gig up while simultaneously doing 1Gig down) to a gaming PC.

There is a bit of a duality with this; Netgear made the initial setup very easy but the complex setups very hard. Despite this I find this a very powerful wi-fi router that is worth the price. I would recommend it to those just want to have a really good high speed wi-fi router that is feature-rich.

I always avoided higher priced routers because I felt they couldn't really deliver much more than the $100 ones. Boy was I wrong. First off, set up was easy with the Nighthawk app. Although the app information that comes with the product is outdated. They have since changed the name. I should point out that I was upgrading from another Netgear router so I was already familiar with the process, set up, and functions of the app. I don't think new customers will have a problem. Step by step, easy stuff.

Speed performance is unmatched in anything I've owned before. I subscribe to 400 mbps internet. At most I've gotten 200-300 mbps during wireless device speed testing. I even conducted a test with my old router first. 84 mbps. with 27 devices connected. After all of my devices were connected to this new Nighthawk router my speed tests came back around 436 mbps. That is wireless. I could only ever get those speeds hardwired to my old router. Impressive.

Signal strength is strong through the entire house (1200 sq. feet), including the basement where I have a little man cave set up. Like I said, 27 devices and I have yet to see a dip in speed or signal. Videos start within seconds on app, the internet, or other media devices. There is no lag in playback or during video game play or when everyone is watching videos on their devices.

I like the tri-band feature that decides the best channel to get the best performance from the device connecting to it. You can keep each channel separate if you like and connect to the one you think is the best (Your House 2.4, Your House 5.0), or you can combine them into one named network "Your House" and let the router do the work. I found this is easiest. Especially when reconnecting all of my smart bulbs and Amazon devices.

This router appears to be future proof based on it's top handling speeds, but that does necessarily mean your cable company won't throw in some sort of new "compliance" function in the future that won't let it work with "their network." But as of now, and probably for quite a few years, this Nighthawk router is the bomb. Worth the extra money spent.

NOTE: This is an initial review based on setup and a weekend of use. If anything changes after a few weeks or months with this router, I will update this review.

One quick update -- I've already had to REBOOT this once after WiFi stopped working. Fluke? I'll let you know if it happens again.

Background: It is being used in an area that has challenging WiFi coverage. The stock DSL WiFi router can't reach everywhere. I previously had success using a multi-node WiFi system, but this may be a better/simpler solution (and not require a subscription fee).

That said... Setup is a little complicated, and the device gets hot. Signal strength is great, and having multiple networks for older and newer devices helps everything run at the speeds they were designed for.

Setup of the router was a little complicated. I was trying to replace the WiFi built into my home DSL modem with this router. I wanted to keep the same SSID and password so I wouldn't have to reconnect all of my devices. I eventually kept the same SSID for my 5 GHz devices, and came up with a new SSID for my older 2.4 GHz devices, so I did have to run through the WiFi setup on them to get them to reconnect, but my 5 GHz devices picked up the new network with the same name with no issues.

You're asked to download the NETGEAR Up app (which has been renamed to Nighthawk). After installing the app, half way through I needed to disable the WiFi on my DSL modem and continue the setup of the Netgear router. Not all of the setup is done in the application itself. Part way through the setup you launch a browser and complete the setup there. It took me a few tries, but once setup, everything has worked wonderfully. I've almost got full bars all the way across the house.

Originally I had one slow 2.4 GHz WiFi connection through my DSL modem used by all of my devices. I later had that device shut off, and used a second, more powerful WiFi router to extend it. Clutter, cables, and not much improvement. With this setup, I've enabled a legacy 2.4 GHz network, and two 5 GHz networks. I'm not sure what I'll use the second 5 GHz network for, but at least all of my newer devices can use the faster speed. My old network ran at 144 Mbps since everything had to run at the 2.4 GHz speed. Now all of my 5 GHz devices are running at 866 Mbps. This has greatly helped with streaming movies to my television.

NOTE: The router gets HOT. It's going to be interesting to see if it has any issues in the summer. You'd probably want to keep it off of carpet.

One really nice feature is there is a switch to turn most of the LED lights off on the device (but NOT power). With the flip of a switch on the back, all lights but the power light go off. You can turn them back on to see connectivity information, and if traffic is happening on the ports, but most of the time I leave this off. I might put tape over the power light, but it's nice that you can control the rest with a switch.

Having multiple networks, I was worried if my 2.4 GHz devices would be able to communicate with my 5GHz devices, and I've had no issues at all. I have a lot of legacy and smart home devices on the older 2.4 GHz network, and my phones and other devices can use the 5 GHz network. I've had no issues with connectivity.

Impressive!

This is an absolute beast of a router, with all the power that you'd expect at this price point. It delivers the full bandwidth of my 300Mbps cable plan with negligible added latency, even while serving close to a dozen devices. It's also quite easy to set up with the Netgear app. The Smart Connect feature is really cool: When you flip it on (and you should), the router's 2.4GHz network and two 5GHz networks all share the same SSID, allowing the router to assign devices to the best network to minimize band competition. Advanced settings like IPv6 aren't in the app, but are easy to enable from the browser's setup page at routerlogin.net.

If money were no option, this would be a 5-star review. But alas, I have to point out that you can get a router with similar performance for a fraction of the price. Take, for instance, Neatgear's entry-level Nighthawk model, the R6700. Its range is more limited, but still described on Netgear's website as sufficient for "very large homes." Both have a 1Gbps WAN port, which makes that the bottleneck for Internet bandwidth: Even if you're lucky enough to have a 1Gbps internet connection, you won't notice a difference between the R8000P's touted 4000Mbps combined wi-fi speed and the R6700's mere 1750Mbps, because both provide the full 1Gbps over the 5GHz band. Premium features like tri-band, Smart Connect, and MU-MIMO are only going to matter if you have a large number of devices competing for lots of bandwidth: say, half a dozen family members streaming 4K video at the same time.

All in all, I liked spending time with this router. The tech specs read like a geek's dream. But in a world full of cheap, reliable 802.11ac routers, it's hard to justify the eye-watering price, or the bulky footprint. All those bells and whistles just don't make much of a difference. And if you're considering getting this router because you have a large home that cheaper routers can't fill with signal, you're probably better off investing in a mesh network solution, such as Eero or Netgear's own Orbi.

I have been using this router to manage my VERY busy home network now for over a month and I have to say it is not only the best router I have ever owned, but has been the best router EXPERIENCE I have ever had from top to bottom. Those of you who have any experience with routers whatsoever know exactly what I mean by 'experience'. Allow me to explain. I'll start by describing my home network/needs.

Xfinity is our ISP, and Comcast sent us a combo modem/router to use, but frankly, the router aspect of it is terrible, so I put it into bridge mode (basically turning off the router function) and have been using an ASUS RT-AC87U dual band gigabit router for a few years in conjunction with the ISP's modem. We have a 4,000+ square foot house and needed something that could send steady and strong signal throughout. We also have TONS of devices (iPads, laptops, desktops, iPhones, a wireless video doorbell, network printers, smart TVs, 3 Roku's, 2 Chromecasts and so on). The biggest suck on our bandwidth however is my home made dedicated Plex media server (which is basically just a headless desktop that is always running and always connected to the network) which stores ALL of our media and streams it to up to 6 different devices simultaneously. Not only do we stream this content all over the house to various rooms and devices, but we consume this content while we're outside of our network as well (including out of the country)! Additionally we subscribe to YouTube TV which requires solid router performance as well. Our old ASUS did an OK job of handling it (or so we thought), but there were regular drops in signal and it required rebooting at least once every few weeks. There was also a LOT of buffering while streaming video content, but we were so used to it we just assumed it was normal.

Enter the Nighthawk. . .

When I was a teenager at the start of the internet as we know it, my dad had an old netgear router that always gave us fits. From that early 90's experience I had formed a negative association with netgear that has lasted all this time. I can tell you now that my opinion of this company and their products has done a COMPLETE 180 since I have started using this router!!! This thing is INCREDIBLE!!!! Let me run down some of my favorite features:

- EASIEST SET UP EVER!!!!! Every time I set up a new router, I always assume it will take me half the day and that I will be without Internet for hours while I troubleshoot. That couldn't be further from the case with this router. Using the app, it basically set itself up FLAWLESSLY while I sat back and marveled at it. It took no time at all and I was up and running. They have truly perfected router configuration and set up.

- THE APP! I usually get irritated when I have to download ANOTHER APP to use external devices, but this app is AWESOME and totally worth the download!! It has incredible and powerful features that go beyond the self setup like speed testing, real time usage stats for every connected device, guest WiFi management, traffic meter etc. Basically you can easily and securely manage all your settings without ever having to sit down at a desktop and type in 192.168... and I don't have to remember usernames and passwords that are so easy to forget. Changes made in the app take effect immediately.

- SPEED!!! I thought our ASUS router was good until trying this one. I feel like we're FINALLY taking advantage of the speeds we pay good money for! Streaming video content has become a pleasure rather than an endless frustration!

- SMART BAND MANAGER! The nighthawk has this awesome smart feature that automatically detects what devices would benefit from 5 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz connections at any given time and allocates the 2 bands to the right places and the right devices at the right times ALL THE TIME. Of course you always have the option of manually choosing what devices are connected to which band any time you want, but in playing around with it, I have found that EVERYTHING runs better and more efficiently when I enable this smart feature. SO cool!

-ZERO SIGNAL DROPS!!! Like I said, I have been working this router HARD for well over a month now and not ONCE have I had buffering or signal drops or the need to reset or reboot.

Besides all of these amazing features and FANTASTIC performance, the router itself looks pretty dang sexy if you ask me! It fits right in with my baby (the custom video editing PC I built for myself) and my dual monitor set up on my editing desk.

I really cannot say enough good about this router. All I can say is I RARELY give 5 stars to anything like this, but the Nighthawk has earned every last one. If you have had a bad experience with Netgear in the past like I did, I strongly encourage you to give them a second chance, and to do it with this router. It's a BEAST! I am a total convert and if they keep making products like this, I can tell you I will be Netgear for life.