How
WiFi should be done.
Holy
crap! Right, the first thing we need to mention about this next-level
home WiFi router from Netgear is the price. The Netgear AC5300
Nighthawk X8, with those angular, almost-1980s looks that Netgear
seems to favour these days, will set you back in excess of the £350.
You might be looking at your £70 router right now, thinking 'but
this one is fine', and you'd be right. But the Nghthawk X8 is like no
other router we've tested before, and we've tested quite a few. Let's
delve in.
This is a giant slab of a router. We'll be honest that we're not massive fans of Netgear's current design direction, as everything looks just a tad under-developed and utilitarian. However, we're always willing to overlook aesthetics due to the sheer might of performance that the company installs in their tech, and the Netgear AC5300 Nighthawk X8 is surely leading the attack.
The
headlines here are that the router features tri-band WiFi and offers
combined speeds of up to 5.3 Gbps. Yep, gigabytes. There are six
Ethernet ports on the back of the unit, two of which are Ethernet
with Aggregation for super-fast file transfer rates. There are two
USB ports for connected media, one of which is USB 3.0, and there are
four whopping great antennas on the back, as well as another four set
internally to work together to create a huge usable wireless range.
Oh, eight antenna... is that the reason for the 'X8' in the name?
Maybe.
As
with all of Netgear's routers and extenders that we've reviewed, set
up is a total breeze, and as long as you know you IP login details,
from opening the box to connecting to the WiFi network takes about
five minutes. After that it is the Netgear AC5300 Nighthawk X8 that
does all the hard work for you, assigning each connected device to
one of the three bandwidths most suitable to it. This means that even
with a large number of devices squeezing every last drop of
internet-y goodness from it, the router could deal with them all so
nobody was left high and dry (or high and lagging).
We
tested this by using every single WiFi-enabled device we had in Test
Pit Towers (and that's a lot) to stream something. Four were
streaming Netflix, which is the maximum number our Netflix account
allowed, apparently, while everything else hit YouTube for some
hi-def music video action. Whereas in the past these kind of tests
have ended with us saying “and by the sixth phone, things starting
to slow down...” but not with the Netgear AC5300 Nighthawk X8. No
matter what we were doing online, at whatever time of day (and some
of that is our own personal private business, mind!), the internet
was as fast as it has ever been.
The
USB ports were also put to good use, and we had our first taste of
Netgear's ReadyCLOUD smartphone app. We hooked up an external hard
drive the USB 3.0 port, and by using the app, we had our own private
cloud storage. Imagine Dropbox but without the limitations or
worrying about someone getting in to all your files. The app works
great, was nice and simple, and being able to access a hard drive at
home while anywhere with a mobile internet connection was awesome.
So
you might balk at the price, but once you use this thing for a few
days you see just how much it is worth it. If you live alone in a
relatively small house or flat, this might be a tad wasted on you.
But for families with older kids, or shared houses with gamers and
streamers – or indeed if you just live in a massive house – this
is definitely your next router.
Around
£390