Customer Ratings & Reviews

A great overall router for gamers has features to benefit gamers other routers don’t have to cut down on lag, such as the Geo-filter which allows you to only connect to a remote server closest to you, eliminating the others outside of the preselected mile radius of your choosing.

I thought I would give this model a try. Network Plus, Security Plus, A Plus (repair) rated IT with 25 years experience. Bought this for home with 4 teenagers, 2 xbox one, PS4 and lots of Roku, Firebox, youTube and Netflix watchers. Easy to install and configure the network. That's where the fun stops. In my house, the "device map" looks illegible with 56 devices. The problem is the Router cannot determine which is the Apple Watch and which is an unnamed device when in fact they have the same MAC/IP address so the screen is so cluttered you can barely select one device. When you look at the IP address table, there isn't the same number of devices. What happened to the unnamed devices ? They are duplicates...cluttering up your screen. You can only tell this by double clicking on each of the 56 devices. If it has a MAC but not IP address, it's probably non-existent. Gaming ? Forget about the Geo-filter. Their suggested "Profile" for COD-WWII is 2,000 miles. Anything less and you don't get into a lobby. And at 2K, you can connect (poorly) to a large number of lobbies. That was worthless. Overwatch player? You'll need to set it to 3,000 miles just to get a game. I didn't even try with Fortnight. BTW, the UPNP didn't work with 2 Xbox. Had to use Port Range Triggering. I can do that on $50 router. Other items: Internet scheduling. I wanted to turn it off for no playing during school nights. The scheduler is so poorly written, that you must choose a time of day and then choose the days that it applies to. Not the times AND days. It had to be for example, only 9-11 PM on which ever days, it couldn't be 8-10 on Tuesday and Thursday also. What family needs the same exact down time every day of the week? Biggest annoyance: The DHCP server. I know the D in DHCP stands for Dynamic which means you can get a new IP address, but most devices request and receive the same IP address. NOT ON THIS ROUTER. If your device goes off-line, the router assigns the IP address to another device. We found that out after the wireless printer IP went from .30 to .8 to .130 in ONE week. Then it assigned .2 to one of the Xbox, which is the IP of one of my repeaters, so then I had to reboot everything to get out of the 169 loop. What a mess. Setting up 28 IP address reservations in a table is ridiculous for a home router. I did not see any change in the latency, but I did see a drop from 391 Mbps to 360 in download speed. The "speed/device allocator" did work well, and I did like that feature, but it doesn't outweigh the negatives. The wireless reach was abut the same. Still needed repeaters for third floor. This router and it's software is not worth the money or the headaches.

Advanced gaming OS bulit into firmware; best gaming router.

Customer service from Netgear is beyond horrible. After 8 months and the router still under warranty I can not get an RMA. I had automatic updates on. They installed corrupt firmware that disabled my router, if you look on the internet and even the NETGEAR community website, you will see that this a problem with the XR500 and a lot of other model routers. NETGEAR is also aware of this problem and have posted all of the routers that are affected by this yet they do nothing to fix it. The warranty for their software is only 90 days of the 1-year warranty. They went into the router and said the hardware was OK, it was a software problem. They wanted to charge me $89.00 for a 6-month Gearhead contract to fix the software they designed, developed and installed. After the last firmware update the router would connect to the internet but would only transmit 5-8 Mps on both LAN and Wi-Fi. They said it is a software not a hardware issue and not covered. I feel like they DDoS'ed me and are now holding my router for ransom. I have tried to get an RMA from them, but they just want to keep on going in and looking at the router telling me it is the only way to get an RMA. It has been looked at several times, but they still will not give me an RMA. If you buy a NETGEAR router, make sure you pay for the Gearhead contract, make a backup of the system while it is functioning properly or disable automatic updates. If I had disabled auto update, I am sure the router would still work. The 90-day warranty on the software tells me they have no confidence in their software, or they will install corrupt software to try to get money out of people that did not get the gearhead contract. I have used NETGEAR routers for 20+ years with no problems but now I will never buy another one nor recommend them.

I purchased this product less than 30 days ago and I have had 3 cases on it for intermittent connection issues. As I leave the DumOS on I can see that the incoming traffic ceases yet there is nothing wrong with the incoming bandwidth from the modem. This was happening approximately 7-8 times in a 24 hour period. Then after the first time that I called (which was really the 4th time due to dropped calls and errors with the phone tree that put me into an endless loop, I spoke to someone with a terrible phone connection who I was able to hear every 4th or 5th word. I attempted to send in an email to the company regarding this issue of which someone called me back at 11:44 PM when I was asleep since I have to wake up early for work. I advised them that I would be available at 9 am the next day. After waiting until 10 am the next day I called them and as I was waiting to speak to a representative I received a call from them. Once again it was the same person with the terrible phone connection and we were disconnected approximately 4 minutes into the call. So I called back again to speak to "tech" that remoted into the router. She updated the firmware and lowered the incoming/outgoing CTS/RTS which seemed to work for approximately 18 hours. The router then began dropping the internet connection again and it has increasingly become worse as the estimated amount of time to correct itself has grown to approximately 4 minutes unless I power cycle the router. So I decided to open another ticket and received a response stating that I needed to call a specific phone number. When I called that number I was told by the rep that this was a "high-end router" and that I called into the wrong queue. So he attempted to transfer me. After waiting approximately 3-4 minutes for him to transfer me (hearing the queue music) the call dropped. To his credit he called back and put me back into that queue. However, I waited on that line for 5 and a half hours with several micro disruptions which would indicate to me that someone picked up the line and placed me back on hold thereby giving me the indication that someone was using my call for statistics and engaging in call avoidance. I really hope that I am wrong but I feel that I have lost faith in Netgear products as much as I have their customer service. From the looks on this site it appears that their brand ambassadors may be more active and efficient than their dedicated call support team. I am getting ready to return this product for a functional router unless they can prove me wrong in this review. Based on their performance thus far I suspect I will have a different branded router by Tuesday. This has been the worst experience I have encountered with a router let alone any technology product I have ever purchased and I used to help others troubleshoot Windows Millenium.

So far not a great experience. It works fine plugged in obviously but on wifi it is very unreliable. Shuts off on its own, disconnects for no reason, is so slow to the point that it's unusable. I've tried factory resetting with no luck. Netgear customer support is very sub par. This is now the third time I've called and they have me change one small setting and tell me to call back the next day if it's not fixed. Getting close to my 90 warranty mark where I'm SOL if they don't replace it by then. Wish me luck...

Well what can I say. Severely disappointed in this product and it's quality. Purchase one as a upgrade from our dead router. Got home hooked it up and setup wifi. Was not getting any connection via Ethernet lan ports in the back. Looked online. Several pages of results about non functioning lan ports. Took it back for exchange thinking it was a bad unit. Well second unit had the same issue. Took that back and am getting a different brand. Perhaps this made me more upset then usual as I was really excited for this device only to have to go back to Best buy several times in 1.5 days. Very unhappy and will probably never ever buy another Netgear device.

The router setup was easy and the wireless works. However, the LAN ports will fail after a period of time and this is a KNOWN issue by Netgear as they have numerous customers with the issue. They do not have a fix for this issue. If all you need is wireless connectivity, this router should work for you. If you need the LAN ports, you should AVOID this router.

I bought this thinking yay!!,a router made just for gaming....WRONG!! This has been a total nightmare! Works bad with the xbox one X and i returned it and got a AC4000 sooo much better!

I had to return this router due to all the ethernet ports loosing connection about every other day due to an issue this router has with xbox. It seems to be a common problem according to online forums and its been a problem over a year now with this router which they haven't been able to fix with several firmware updates. The only way the router will work properly is if you set your xbox to energy saving mode which i do not want to do. What a shame because otherwise this router is great.