Netgear Nighthawk X6 802.11ac Wi-Fi Router review

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Netgear Nighthawk X6 Wi-Fi router review: The best router for a crowded house

Is it ever the perfect time to buy a new product? I'd say no, because there's never a perfect time to review a new product, either. There's always something right around the corner that promises to be faster, better, cheaper. But you won't know if those claims are true until someone tests them.

Case in point: I spent the first half of this week benchmarking Netgear's Nighthawk X6 Wi-Fi router (aka the Netgear R8000), so that I could publish this review today. Benchmarking takes time, as does analysis and writing. Asus decided to ship its all-new RT-AC87U Wi-Fi router on Wednesday, and my eval unit showed up today. Is it better, faster, cheaper than the Nighthawk X6? Right now, all I know is that it costs $20 less than Netgear's router despite its status as the first "Wave 2" 802.11ac router (that means it supports multi-user MIMO, which you can read all about in this story). 

The Nightawk X6 bears an uncanny resemblance to a facehugger from Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien.

The Nighthawk X6 does not support MU-MIMO, but it does have a strategy for supporting lots of wireless clients. Netgear describes it as a “tri-band” router, which is a bit of a stretch. It still operates on only two frequency bands—2.4- and 5GHz—just like its high-end competitors, but this router is unique in that it has three Wi-Fi radios to support three independent wireless networks. Here's the rest of what I know. 

The Nighthawk X6 is not the fastest router I've tested. As you'll see from the performance charts, that distinction still belongs to the Linksys WRT1900AC (again, I have not yet benchmarked the Asus RT-87U). And if your wireless network streams video to just one or two devices, you probably don’t need a router with the Nighthawk X6’s advanced capabilities.

Netgear packed this router with all the features you’d expect to find in a high-end model.

But if your wireless network needs to support several PCs, tablets, smartphones, TVs, and other devices—plus legacy devices on the 2.4GHz band—and you’re experiencing lag, dropouts, or other connectivity problems when several clients are streaming media at the same time—Netgear’s router is just the ticket. As such, the Nighthawk X6 is the first 802.11ac router I’ve tested that has the potential to displace the 802.11ac router you might already own.

If you (or your significant other) think the router calls too much attention to itself, you can fold its six antennas flat against the top of its enclosure. 

As I said in the opener, the Nighthawk X6’s primary claim to fame is its three discrete Wi-Fi radios. Out of the box, it uses one SSID for its 2.4GHz network (for 802.11b/g/n clients) and one SSID for both of its 5GHz networks (for 802.11a/n/ac clients). As you know, so-called first-wave 802.11ac routers like this one achieve massive bandwidth by bonding two 40MHz channels to create one channel that’s 80MHz wide.

In order to avoid having the two networks step on each other, the Nighthawk X6 bonds two channels at the lower end of the 5GHz spectrum and two channels at the higher end (the higher channels deliver more power). When you begin connecting wireless clients to the common SSID, the router automatically assigns each client to the most appropriate network. (You can also override this and assign the two 5GHz networks different SSIDs.) 

Also of interest: What's next for Wi-Fi: A second wave of 802.11ac routers

Netgear’s Smart Connect feature first determines if the router needs to perform any load balancing. If the number of existing clients on each network is greater than three, the router will connect the next new client to whichever network has the fewest commitments. If there are fewer than three clients on each network, or the numbers are equal, the router examines the client’s speed and assigns new 802.11a, 1x1 802.11n, and 2x2 802.11n clients to the higher-power 5GHz channels (channels 148 through 161). I tested the router using channels 6 and 10 on the 2.4GHz band, and channels 44 and 48 and channels 153 and 149 on the 5GHz band.

The router also evaluates each client’s signal strength, pairing clients with weak signals to the high-power channels and clients with strong signals to the low-power channels. If Smart Connect determines that load balancing isn’t necessary, the router automatically assigns 802.11ac and 3x3 802.11n devices at short range to the low-power channels and any 5GHz devices at long range to the high-power channels.

The Nighthawk X6 relies on a massive inline power supply (but I'll take that over a huge wall wart any day).

The Nighthawk X6 delivers throughput up to 1.3Gbps with 3x3 clients on each of its 5GHz networks, and it supports 256 QAM encoding on the 2.4GHz frequency band to deliver throughput up to 600Mbps with 3x3 clients that support 256 QAM. The equation (1300 x 2) + 600 equals the AC3200 marketing number that Netgear emblazons on the router’s box.

Does that mean you can expect to see your wireless network deliver throughput of 3200Mbps? Heck no, that’s just the sum of the wireless throughput on all three networks. And those are theoretical numbers that don’t take protocol overhead and a lot of other things into account. You’ll never see actual performance that high. Your router’s performance won’t make your Internet connection any faster, either. The reason you might want to upgrade to a new router is to boost the speed of your home network.

The Nighthawk X6 puts on quite a show, with dual-color LEDs reporting the status of power, Internet connectivity, its three Wi-Fi networks, its two USB port connections, and its Ethernet connections (it has a four-port gigabit switch and a gigabit WAN port). If that’s too much light pollution for you, flip the toggle switch in the back to turn them off. Buttons on top of the router enable WPS and toggle the Wi-Fi radios off and on (to save power, or to button down your network while you’re on vacation).

Look at all the pretty lights! (Oh, you hate LEDs? You can turn them off with the flip of a switch.)

Netgear packed this router with all the features you’d expect to find in a high-end model, but it’s unprecedented in using six MIMO antennas (each of its three networks supports three transmit streams and three receive streams). The articulated antennas can fold flat against the top of the router’s enclosure or lift up and away. I set them at a 90-degree angle to the top of the router for my tests. They don’t feel particularly sturdy, so keep the Nighthawk X6 out of the reach of curious toddlers.

The router itself can either lay flat on a horizontal surface or you can mount it to a wall. It relies on an inline power supply that’s bigger than what comes with many laptops, but I much prefer a brick like this over an outlet-hogging wall wart.

There’s one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 port on its back panel, so it can share both a printer and a storage device on your network. Netgear’s ReadyShare technology makes it easy to map an attached hard drive to Windows, and the company’s ReadyShare Vault software lets you establish an automatic back-up schedule for your client PCs (Apple’s Time Machine technology is also supported).

You'll find all the I/O ports you'd expect to find on the back of a high-end router.

But you must decide if you want to use the attached drive for shared storage or for backup—it can’t do both. If you use it for storage and need to access it from outside your home network, Netgear’s DNS service lets you create a customized URL for an ftp server. VPN support is there, too.

DLNA and iTunes servers make it easy to stream music, photos, and video to client devices inside your home. And Netgear supports cloud-based parental controls, if you’re into that sort of thing. (Powercloud’s Skydog router had the absolute best parental controls, although they were trapped inside old-school hardware. But that’s a moot point now, as Comcast recently acquired the company and put an end to the Skydog.)

Like the Linksys WRT1900AC, the Nighthawk X6 supports both implicit and explicit beamforming, so it can shape its spatial streams to find the best paths to its clients, regardless of whether those clients support beamforming. You can create a guest network to allow visitors Internet access while restricting them from accessing any networked computers, devices, or storage.

I tested the Nighthawk X6 eight ways from Sunday, and it earned first-place finishes in only two scenarios. That doesn’t mean it’s a weak router, because it boxed the Linksys WRT1900AC around the ears when it came to servicing two clients attached to different 802.11ac wireless bridges at the same time. But if you need a router to serve just a few wireless clients, you don't need to spend this much dough. Indeed, you won't see the Nighthawk X6's true power until you connect many clients to its networks.

To see how well it would perform with lots of clients, I paired two servers with two clients connected to two separate Netgear R7000 routers configured as 802.11ac wireless bridges. I then streamed data between the pairs simultaneously. I didn’t have time to test all the routers in my inventory this way, and I didn’t test at all four of the locations where I usually test, but I did compare the performance of the Linksys WRT1900AC (the fastest router I’ve benchmarked) at the two farthest locations (my home theater and my home office).

When I streamed data to one client connected to a wireless bridge in the home theater, and to a second client connected to a wireless bridge in the home office at the same time, the Nighthawk X6 was 126 percent faster streaming data to the client in my home office, and 57 percent faster streaming data to the client in my home theater. Why? Because the Linksys must support both wireless clients using the same slice of radio spectrum, while the Netgear can support them using two independent slices. To put it simply, the clients must compete for bandwidth on the Linksys router; they don’t on the Netgear router (at least not until you add more clients to the mix).

The question I can't answer today? Does the MU-MIMO feature in the Asus RT-AC87U do a better or worse job of supporting multiple wireless clients. Stay tuned.

This is where the Nighthawk X6 shows its true power: Streaming data to two 802.11ac bridges on two networks at the same time. 

To squeeze maximum performance from an 802.11ac router, you need a client device that has the same capabilities. Configure a second 802.11ac router as a wireless bridge, connect it wirelessly to the primary router, and you can add up to four wired clients to the bridge’s Ethernet switch. Netgear provided two of its Nighthawk R7000s so I could test the Nighthawk X6 this way.

For one client wired to a Nighthawk R7000, which was, in turn, wirelessly connected to the Nighthawk X6, TCP throughput markedly trailed the numbers I saw when I tested the Asus RT-AC68U, Netgear’s Nighthawk R7000, and Linksys's WRT1900AC (with matching routers configured as wireless bridges). TCP throughput of 500-plus megabits per second over a wireless connection is nothing to sneeze at, but the other four router/bridge combos were even faster.

Curiously, a Netgear Nighthawk X6 paired with an original Nighthawk (configured as a wireless bridge) proved to be slower than an original Nighthawk router paired with a second Nighthawk (again, configured as a wireless bridge). 

I then plugged an Asus USB-AC56 Wi-Fi adapter into the laptop to test the router’s 802.11ac performance in a more convenient scenario (a wireless bridge must be plugged into an AC outlet, whil`e a USB adapter draws power from the laptop). The USB-AC56 is a 2x2 client adapter, meaning it supports only two spatial streams for transmitting and two for receiving. It won’t take full advantage of a 3x3 router, but it’s the best portable outboard Wi-Fi adapter I know of. Interestingly enough, the Nighthawk X6’s 5GHz network beat the original Nighthawk (aka the Netgear R7000) in two rooms and came within 3Mbps of matching it in my home office. The Nighthawk X6 once again serioursly underperformed when the client was in my home theater.

The Nighthawk X6 doesn't seem to like my home theater, but it delivered solid performances in all the other rooms in my home. 

In 2.4GHz 802.11n mode, the Netgear turned in solid performances in three of my four test locations. But it trailed the field by a wide margin when the client laptop was in my home theater. The laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB of memory, and an Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter, so I expected a much stronger performance at this location (Netgear’s older Nighthawk—the R7000—delivered 105Mbps here).

The Nighthawk X6 turned in a respectable performance on the 2.4GHz frequency band, but it's not the fastest. 

For my final benchmarks, I evaluated how fast each router can read and write data on an attached USB 3.0 hard drive. The Linksys WRT1900AC won this round, but the Netgear Nighthawk X6 finished a strong second.

The Linksys WRT1900AC proved faster at writing files to and reading files from an attached USB 3.0 hard drive, but the Nighthawk X6 placed a strong second. 

The Nighthawk X6 is the most expensive Wi-Fi router I’ve tested. Is its lofty price tag justified? It is if you need a Wi-Fi router that can support lots of wireless clients at the same time, especially if you frequently stream media to more than one device at the same time. The Nighthawk X6’s generous feature set is also a major draw.

If your wireless networking needs aren’t as robust, the Nighthawk X6 is overkill. The Linksys WRT1900AC is faster with a single client, and it costs less. The same is true of the older Netgear Nighthawk R7000 and the Asus RT-AC68U. My opinion might change once I've had a chance to benchmark the Asus RT-AC87U, but the Nighthawk X6 is the most powerful Wi-Fi router I know of today.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Netgear A6200 review: Good up close and flat-out fabulous at long range

Note: We updated this review in its entirety on 1/29/2014 when we compared the A6200 against five other 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters.

Netgear’s A6200 wins the award for most ambitious industrial design. Its USB interface is mounted on a hinged connector, and its antenna is housed inside a thin rectangular bar that you can pivot to fine-tune its reception. If you’re a frequent traveler, Netgear’s antenna design is much less fragile than the Asus USB-AC56’s screw-on antenna (unless you take the time to remove the Asus model’s antenna every time you pack it).

When I tested the Netgear adapter with its USB cradle and its antenna in a vertical orientation, its overall performance fell short of that of the first-place Asus USB-AC56 by just 2 megabits per second. But I saw a big gap between first and second place when the client was in close proximity to the router, separated by 9 feet: The Netgear delivered TCP throughput of 310 mbps whereas the Asus delivered 404 mbps. The A6200 placed second when the client was in the kitchen, too, delivering throughput of 312 mbps versus the 347 mbps that the USB-AC56 achieved.

ROBERT CARDIN

The hinged USB interface enables you to fine-tune the adapter to your router. Netgear also provides a USB cradle. (Click to zoom.) 

The Netgear adapter proved to be superior at longer ranges, on the other hand, delivering TCP throughput of 233 mbps compared to the Asus’s rate of 163 mbps when the client was in my home theater, 35 feet from the router. And when the client was in my home office, 65 feet from the router, the Netgear delivered throughput of 264 mbps to the Asus’s 213 mbps.

Netgear’s A6200 was no match for the Asus USB-AC56 at close range. But it dusted its competitor at longer range. (Click to zoom.)

The A6200 measures nearly 5 inches long when its antenna is extended (not including its USB interface), and slightly less than 3.5 inches long when the antenna is folded down for travel. The USB interface pivots, but it doesn’t fold away completely as the one on Buffalo’s WI-UW-866D does. The adapter has a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button that makes it easy to connect to a router that has the same feature.

Netgear’s Genie utility provides useful information such as site polling, physical link rate, and the client’s current IP address.

The A6200 is one of the more expensive adapters that I tested in this group, with a street price of $70 (the same as the top-performing Asus USB-AC56 and the decidedly inferior Linksys WUSB6300). If range is your most important requirement, I’d recommend this adapter over the Asus. If your client PC will typically be located in close proximity to your 802.11ac router, however, the Asus USB-AC56 should deliver higher performance.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters. For more, read the introduction to the roundup.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Netgear Nighthawk review: One of the best 802.11ac routers you can buy

Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi Router $200.00 Netgear's Nighthawk 802.11ac router boasts a strong feature set, delivers exceptional range, and is reasonably priced. It's the best Wi-Fi router on the market, at least for now.

Note: This review was updated in its entirety on 12/27/2013 after it was compared to five other new 802.11ac routers. The star rating did not change.

Netgear was first to market with a new 802.11ac router powered by Broadcom’s BCM4709 SoC (system on chip), which is based on a 1GHz, dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor. The Netgear R7000 is packed with tasty features, and it delivers exceptionally good performance. But the Asus RT-AC68U, which arrived on the scene a little later in the year, is equally good if not better.

Historically, Netgear’s consumer wireless routers have used fixed internal antennas, while Asus’s Wi-Fi routers have been equipped with external, removable antennas. When I compared Netgear’s first 802.11ac router (the R6300) to Asus’s (the RT-AC66U) last year, I credited the Asus router’s superior performance to its external antennas. The Asus RT-AC68U also has external antennas.

So I chuckled when I saw humongous external, removable antennas on the R7000, which—like the Asus RT-AC66U—has a rather slablike enclosure that you can lay flat or hang on a wall. I think it’s even more amusing that Netgear is marketing its new router with the nickname “the Nighthawk.” Asus markets its router as “the Dark Knight.” Is this a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, or has Netgear realized that people buying high-end routers care more about a router’s performance than about its ability to blend into a home’s decor? I hope it’s the latter.

In any event, the Nighthawk’s sharply angular industrial design and huge antennas make it look very much like its namesake, the F117 Nighthawk stealth jet fighter. A dozen LEDs on top of the router inform you of the status of its wireless radios, USB ports, Internet connection, ethernet and USB ports, and other features. Each LED is labeled, but the tiny gray symbols on the gray enclosure are nearly impossible to read. The last two LEDs on the right side are also buttons: One turns the router’s wireless capability on and off, and the other enables WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) for connecting a client.

Netgear describes the Nighthawk as an AC1900 Wi-Fi router. That number stems from its ability to support physical link rates of 1300 mbps on its 5GHz radio (using the 802.1ac networking standard) and of 600 mbps on its 2.4GHz radio (using the 802.11n networking standard). The higher-than-usual 2.4GHz link rate is made possible by the device’s use of 256-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation). Most routers rely on 64-QAM, which provides a maximum link rate of 450 mbps with 2.4GHz 802.11n networks. Broadcom markets this capability as TurboQAM.

Unfortunately, not all old 2.4GHz, 802.11n devices will suddenly become faster. To enjoy the higher link rate, the client must also support 256-QAM. In some cases, this can be accomplished via a firmware update, if the manufacturer offers one.

The Nighthawk matches the Asus RT-AC68U almost feature for feature, and it’s superior in two respects: First, Netgear’s router offers downstream Quality of Service( QoS) , where most routers—including the Asus—support only upstream QoS. This means the Nighthawk can recognize network traffic such as a Netflix stream and assign it higher priority than other traffic, such as a BitTorrent upload. The Nighthawk also has better parental control features. In addition to supporting OpenDNS, you can block websites based on keywords, you can operate parental controls according to a schedule, you can exempt specific PCs from the parental controls, and it can send you email alerts when someone attempts to connect to blocked sites and services.

The Nighthawk also supports OpenVPN, which gives you secure access to your home network—and all of the client PCs running on it—from anywhere that provides Internet access. The router has two USB ports and can support both a USB printer (you’ll need to install Netgear’s USB Control Center utility on each client) and a USB storage device. The Nighthawk provides a personal ftp server, with dynamic DNS support to make it easy to access a USB storage device connected to the router from the Internet. Using Netgear’s free service, you can set up an easy-to-remember ftp address (such as ftp://yourname.mynetgear.com) and use it with any Web browser to access the contents of the drive.

The Nighthawk comes with both DLNA media and iTunes music servers, so any DLNA-compatible device or Apple AirPlay device on your network—an AV receiver, Roku box, Apple TV, or the like—can stream media from a hard drive attached to it (though the iTunes server supports only music). Netgear also provides free ReadyShare Vault backup software that you can install on as many client PCs as you want to back up its hard drives. The Nighthawk supports Apple’s Time Machine backup technology for Macs on the network. But Netgear has no answer for Asus’s dual-WAN support or the RT-AC68U’s ability to support a 3G/4G dongle for broadband backup.

It’s pretty much a tie between the Netgear Nighthawk and the Asus RT-AC68U in terms of which router has the best feature set. The Asus is a little better from a business perspective, and the Netgear is a little better from a consumer perspective. So the next question is, which router performs better?

When I tested the routers paired with an identical router configured as an 802.11ac Wi-Fi bridge, I was surprised to see the Nighthawk finish in third place overall. But when you see throughput of nearly 374 mbps at a distance of 65 feet with the signal passing through three insulated interior walls, you probably won’t care.

The contest between the Netgear and Asus products was even tighter when each router was paired with a client connected to a Linksys WUSB710 802.11ac bridge. The two finished second and first, respectively, but the overall difference was a razor-thin 0.3 mbps this time.

The Asus RT-AC68U beat out the Nighthawk when tested with a client equipped with a Linksys WUSB6300 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter, but the Nighthawk was just 1.5 mbps slower. In fact, all the routers performed very well on this test, but the Netgear and Asus products have far superior feature sets.

Each router’s 5GHz 802.11n network performed well, but the Nighthawk’s overall performance was the second highest, compared to the RT-AC68U’s fourth-place finish. If you have legacy clients, this router should serve them well.

The Nighthawk’s 2.4GHz 802.11n network performed much better than the Asus’s router on this test, but it certainly wasn’t the fastest in this category. I didn’t have a client that supported TurboQAM, but I plan to review some Wi-Fi adapters that do in the near future.

If you don’t want to invest in a stand-alone NAS (network-attached storage) device, connecting a USB hard drive to the Netgear’s Nighthawk USB 3.0 port is a viable alternative. The dual-core CPU running at 1GHz inside the Nighthawk positive crushed the rest of the field, especially when it came to writing files to the hard drive.

The Netgear Nighthawk is very fast, and it’s stuffed with compelling features for a very reasonable $200. Upgrading to this from any 802.11n router (or anything older) is an absolute no-brainer. If you live in a household in which other users compete for bandwidth, the Nighthawk’s downstream QoS feature might solve any video-streaming problems you encounter. If you don’t already have a NAS, this unit’s USB 3.0 port will be attractive. And if you have a 2.4GHz client that you don’t want to discard, Netgear’s 2.4GHz beam-forming technology could make for faster connections. If you’re more interested in business-related features, the Asus RT-AC68U will better serve your needs.

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Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 (RND4000) Review: Plenty of Functionality, but Slow Performance

Without drives, the $400 (as of March 23, 2012) Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 is very inexpensive for a well-constructed four-bay NAS box. But add two 1TB drives (as tested, which brings the price up to $800), and factor in its poky performance, and the box's value becomes a less clear proposition.

The ReadyNAS NV+ v2 has a single USB 2.0 port on its front, accompanied by a quick-copy button. Beneath that, a swing-open door reveals the four nonlocking drive bays; everything is composed of solid metal, but the absence of locks makes this box an inappropriate choice for businesses. A small, two-line status display sits at the bottom of the device; touch the power button once to see the unit's IP address and capacity, and keep an eye on the display for other pertinent messages.

The back of the unit is home to a single gigabit ethernet port and two USB 3.0 ports. The box lacks an eSATA port, which may kill the deal if you want to use an existing eSATA box to back up the NV+ v2.

Though the ReadyNAS Dashboard HTML interface is both attractive and intuitive, the ReadyNAS has only a modest selection of features. The NV+ v2 supports multiple users and shared folders, is DLNA-certified for streaming multimedia, and works with the Mac's Time Machine backup service. The biggest lack is Rsync or something similar for off-site backup, though you may back up across the local network to a local IP address.

The NV+ v2 also has Netgear's Drobo-like X-RAID2 automatic RAID, which allows you to add drives without first backing up (though you should back up anyway) and optimizes the amount of storage used for data redundancy.

With a 1.6GHz Marvell Armada 300 CPU and 256MB of memory on board, the ReadyNAS NV+ v2 powered its way to mediocre performance numbers in our recent roundup of 11 NAS boxes. It managed a decent 85.8 megabits per second reading a single 10GB file, but only 37 MBps writing it. Presented with a 10GB mix of files and folders, it read them at 36.8 MBps and wrote them at 25.9 MBps. Considering its CPU, the ReadyNAS NV+ v2 should be capable of better numbers, so future operating system upgrades may improve performance. (Netgear says that it is looking into these performance issues.)

As matters stand, the ReadyNAS NV+ v2 covers most of the basics, streams media well, and is comparatively affordable. That makes it a bargain if you don't need great overall performance or off-site backup.

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