We connected our Netgear ReadyNAS RN214 to the Nighthawk X10 via port aggregation. You get less noise and therefore a slight bit of improvement-particularly when picking up distant connections from lower power devices. The WiFi amplifiers are actually located at the top of each antenna rather than being found in the motherboard. The Netgear Nighthawk X10 router shares active antenna technology with the X8. Therein lies the beauty of true MU-MIMO (multiple-user, multiple input and multiple output). If your family gels with mine, you have LOTS of wireless devices in your home. The Netgear Nighthawk X10 router can connect with as many as four, single stream devices at one time-per channel. In laymen’s terms, the X10 can communicate simultaneously with multiple mobile devices at once. Compare that to the Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 router which has 1300 + 1300 + 600 Mbps (3200Mbps or AC3200). Rounded (way) up that gives you the AD7200 bandwidth designation. The largely theoretical 60 GHz band would net you 4600 Mbps. You get a potential throughput of up to 800 Mbps for each stream on the 2.4 GHz network and 1,733 Mbps on the two 5 GHz networks. a new Broadcom chip supports four streams and NitroQAM (1024-state quadrature amplitude modulation). That keeps your network from clogging down when you have a slower 2.4 GHz device on a 5 GHz band. The Netgear Nighthawk X10 R9000 broadcasts two 5 GHz networks along with a dedicated 2.4 GHz band. Even with multiple streams going at once, the X8 is more than up to the task. Where the Netgear Nighthawk AD7200 Quad-Stream WiFi router makes sense for power users is when it comes to in-house HD video streaming. If all you do is listen to music from music from Spotify or watch video via DISH Netflix streaming or VUDU, the Netgear X10 may be overkill. Plenty remains to discuss on this more-than-capable $499 flagship router. It also means we didn’t test it as we had no compatible hardware on-hand-but that’s OK. For 60GHz that pretty much means line of sight. Of course, as frequencies go up, transmission tolerances and distances go down. You can buy some hardware cards that add it, but the only place I’ve seen it is with some obscure short-range wireless HDMI systems. This is the 60 GHz band that, for the most part, doesn’t yet exist. One other feature adorns the new Netgear Nighthawk X10 router: 802.11ad technology.
Netgear nighthawk x8 r8500 review upgrade#
For most, the upgrade won’t make much sense, but if you plan to stream lots of media in-house, the added horsepower and integrated Plex Media server (a first for a wireless router) may pique your interest. On the old Netgear R8500, one of the dual USB ports was 2.0. Next, you get an updated 1.7 GHz Quad Core processor, integrated Plex Media Server, and dual USB 3.0 ports.
It also supports four data streams per WiFi band and has one more LAN port (7 in case you wondered). The Netgear X10 router has the same Tri-Band wireless transmission, MU-MIMO support and four active antennas.
The Netgear Nighthawk X10 Router (R9000) improves upon the X8 in a number of subtle ways. Have upgraded from the Netgear Nighthawk X8 router, I found the transition to their newest model simple.