Netgear R7500-200NAS Nighthawk X4 Ultimate Gaming Router - AC2350 4X4 MU-MIMO Dual Band WiFi Gigabit Router (R7500v2) with Open Source Support. Compatible with Amazon Echo/Alexa

First of all, its a computer. It has processor in it. It is disturbing that this device needs one but for what it can do better than the prevous four Netgear routers I have had, it was worth it.I'm glad I waited for the security bugs to get worked out since the router is connected to a Windows Server and a datbase server. While I appreciate being the first one to get one, this would have been playing with fire on this product line,I had never seen one in the store and I was surprised at how large it was. It certainly had a larger footprint than the previous upright models had. Our first reaction when taking it out of the box was "was this made by Netgear or from someone appointed by a Sith Lord" since the shape, color and design of it certainly appeared as if it came from the Deathstar that it even made the BB8 droid in the house nervous to be next to it. Be prepared to clear some space for this one.It can appear to be overkill for what it does but if your like ourhold and video streaming is becomming more important in your house, you need a router tha can handle the demands of HDTV on more than one device in the house. Thankfully, this router manages it very well.Unlike some of the higher end routers that Netgear carries, this router is generous with the USB 3.0 and an external SATA port for pluging printers and storage devices to keep the media organized. As a Tivo houshold, I was surprised that this router is compatible with our esisting series 3 boxes and can easily transfer videos from device to the external storage using the Tivo bridge we have. I would only hope in the future that Netgear can make external storage devices encrypted just in case they end up in the wrong hands since this can be used for household security purposes.I though the the range would be extended better for upstairs use. We have a Netgear range extender that we use to make the signal go further but its location has been in the way of using the outlet for other devices.I wasn't able to measure the bandwidth for QOS when connected to the Netgear DSL modem through our Centurylink service. While we don't have the greatest bandwidth where we live, we hope it can get better over time but using the best network equipment we can get can help the situation.Thanks to the Genie software in the router, this device will easily integrate into the Netgear DSL modem and it's own extenders without any additional setup.Since this router is a computer, I'm hoping that this device can learn how bandwidth is used within devices to help solve some of the holding patterns some devices had in the past.

I replaced a D-Link DIR-813 with this NETGEAR Nighthawk X4 AC2350 and I am loving so far (one week use).The router was easy to set up, name the wifi connections (named after our dogs) and, to my surprise, the 5Ghz signal is very strong on my back patio, with the router is located over 50 feet away at the front of the house. I didn't use the 5GHz signal on my old D-Link because the signal wasn't reliable from more than 10 or 15 feet. I use Spectrum (old Timewarner) and I get 139 Mbps download on the 2.4GHz connection, 236 Mbps on the 5GHz. I'm getting 236 Mbps on my wired computer, so the 5GHz is presumably limited by the service I'm getting from Sprctrum. I switched our phones and other wifi devices to use the 5GHz signal. I noticed after set up that my wired desktop was running at 10/100 instead of gigabit (amber light instead of white), I suspect it was doing that on the old router and I didn't notice, so I replaced the Cat 5E cable with Cat 6 and it flipped to gigabit, so my old Cat 5e probably had a crimp or something.Interesting back story: On Sat April 15, 2017 my wife's computer died (won't power up) and it apparently took the router down with it, an electrical problem apparently shot across the ethernet cable (not sure which was the culprit, the computer or the router). I was working on my taxes, trying to finish before Easter Sunday, so having the timing of these problems was terrible. Wife's sentiment: "That's what you get for waiting until the last minute." I was able to get internet access for my computer by connecting to the cable modem directly and started hunting for a new router. I finally settled on the NETGEAR Nighthawk X4 AC2350 when I noticed that Amazon would guarantee next day delivery, wow! I was thinking I would use Amazon for research and then buy one locally, even if I had to pay more money, but this was a dream unfolding, it it panned out as advertised. So I ordered the router at about 11:00 PM Sat night and, to my shock and amazement, it was delivered about 11:00 AM on Easter Sunday - WOW!

My story: I am a gamer, a PC gamer, and what gamers hate most IMO is lag. While playing games from time to time i saw that my pin was going very high which can cause some game to became unplayable (FPS, etc) and while investigating, it was a couple of reasons like force windows update if you have windows 10, steam library updating on the background, my cellphone updating apps thru wifi, or even playing youtube videos at 1080p (i don't have the greatest of internets, my ups and down speeds sucks) So after some research it came to 2 options: Go to my ISP and take a better internet plan but pay more, which i didn't have the money to pay it or control the priority on which bandwidth was use, this is where this router take places. After some reading/researching/youtube videos i decided to get a nighthawk router, the x4 or the x4s but seeing their prices at almost 200 make me want to cry when i saw the prices. I was skeptical at first for paying that price for a router but then amazon warehouse had a deal on a used router, a x4, that was used as a demonstration unit in some store, since it had all the protections stickers in place, and for cheap, almost 100, that is like 50% off, so i just what the heck bought it. Setting it up is quick easy with the manual and the router page is very intuitive and easy to use but the real test with this router is if i can game and download something on the background while there is no pin loss, So i just set up and enable the QoS inside the router and began to test it. So i fire up overwatch and watch the pin ms counter while i was downloading the latest nvidia drivers on the background and my pin never climb up, if anything 5ms but still, compare to before the router that climb over 1000ms pin if i downloaded anything, this is a huge success. If you are a gamer and you are frustrated when your pin climbs up unexpectedly, I highly recommend this router for your gaming setup if you can afford it.