Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bought wrong one its not for cable line as I originally thought

I don't write reviews, or at least rarely. I'm not that guy. But, I want to warn everyone away from this product AND Netgear's terrible offshore technical support. Here goes: 1) I bought this simple dual-band AC router along with a Netgear Modem (not a single problem with the modem, btw) looking for a way to stop renting my Comcast wi-fi modem/router after realizing I've spent $1800 in rental fees for this equipment in the fifteen years I've been a Comcast customer. Thanks, but I'm done with that $10/month rental fee. 2) I have a fairly vanilla set-up with a MacBook Pro and collection of wireless apple and android devices. I do a little streaming of Netflix occasionally, and that's it. The only hard-wired device to the router I have is Magic Jack for a pseudo land-line. Simple. Straightforward. Too much for this piece of garbage. 3) I setup the router and it worked out of the box without a hitch. Decent range, fast, no problems. But, every few days it would go offline for no apparent reason, taking all my wi-fi connections AND my hard-wired Magic Jack phone service with it. At first I blamed Comcast (they're at fault 95% of the time, so why not?), and I moved the router to another cable jack where I knew the comcast signal was stronger. Same problem a few days later. 4) Fast forward a few weeks, and it's now happening every day and sometimes after only a couple of hours. I'm not interested in power cycling my wi-fi router every time I walk through the room, so this won't do. I take a deep dreath and wade into the swamp that is Netgear Technical Support. Strong accents, terrible overseas connections routed via the planet Venus as far as I can tell, not a drop of meaningful product knowledge getting me through my problems. After a dozen hours of phone calls and all kinds of meaningless reconfiguration directions and further directions asking me to undo the configuration changes from the previous phone call, I'm told I'm now eligible for a product replacement. So, I send the piece of junk back to them on my dime only to receive another device that behaves the same way. But, here's the kicker. While the device is being swapped, I press back into service a dusty old AirLink 8011.g router which NEVER drops the signal event thought it's ancient and hasn't been plugged in in years. No problems, can't blame Comcast for anything. Back to the replacement Netgear R6100: It's losing the connection daily and sometimes hourly. Argh. Now I'm up to Level 2 Technical Support: Better accents, slightly better signal, a little more knowledge (we're talking with the Philippines for Level 2 now, I find out). But, now they have me trying downgraded firmware patches and beta firmware patches (surprise: No change; still a piece of junk). Meanwhile, I've lost patience. My life isn't long enough for this. I'm off to buy a TP-Link AC router at twice the cost with a better return policy, and lo and behold it ALSO works perfectly. BUT, the fight isn't gone out of me completely. I'm willing to continue to do the bidding of the tireless Level 2 support people in the Philippines as they interface between me and the "engineers" to get this router working once and for all. Now, I'm connecting a USB drive to the router and trying to collect data for them at the time of the device going offline, but when the logging is turned on the device is unbearably slow so I'm switiching back and forth between theTP-Link newbie and the Netgear R6100 every day hoping it'll die while I'm at work or sleeping. Finally I capture 50MB of logged data which includes the device going offline, but I haven't heard back from the engineers, and I'm losing interest with every passing day. Now I know why these particular models are trading used on ebay for $20. I'm not even sure it's worth $20. I don't know where all these excellent reviews of this device came from. I spent countless hours combing through best buy's excellent reviews database to pick this device, and above you can see where that got me. Please, unless you have the patience of a saint, feel really lucky, or have a completely different setup from me, don't waste another moment of your time and look into a different product. Also, beware of what that 90 days of technical support from Netgear is going to look like if you decide to try one of their other router products. I bought my parents and friends Netgear N-routers two years ago and they've never even called to ask how to reset it, so those devices were and still are bulletproof, but not so with this piece of garbage. BUYER BEWARE.

I have it on my desk in my home office and it works in every room of the house, in the basement, in the garage, and in the attic. Supports 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz as well as AC WiFi protocol for maximum user flexibility. Also supports separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz guest accounts with isolated networks and passwords. More expensive models may have more range or slightly higher data rates but this one should be good enough for most of us.

This router installation could not have been easier. Literally plug and play. Range is fantastic and quality of signal is excellent. Allowed me to convert my 70 year old father's desktop computer to a wireless network with laptops. He's thrilled to be able to sit on the sofa with a laptop now connected to a network instead of running back to his desktop and uses it with no problems!

I hooked this up with TDS (I'm using their modem) and this exact netgear AC router and it's been great I hook up to the 5ghz band and never ever have a problem I let my guest get on the 2ghz band. I have more than 6 devices on the 5ghz band with no problem I can use it upstairs outside it's great!!!!! I even bought one for my in laws aND they love it!