Customer Ratings & Reviews

I've been a Netgear fan for some time with ownership of several Netgear routers through the years. Their newest offering - Nighthawk AC5300 tri-band router filled the bill. Our family's wired/wireless needs are well served by this "smart" mu-mimo router's technology. At any one time, on a day to day basis, our Nighthawk is managing, VOIP, a wireless notebook PC, wireless network printer, 2 iPhones, an iPad, Pandora streaming through my Denon AVR, Apex marine aquarium controller and webcam. Additionally, when our daughters come home to visit with their families, the router takes on the added workload of 3 more smartphones plus 2 additional tablets. Whew! To date our Nighthawk has not missed a beat. We have a solid signal throughout our home (>2,000 sq ft) with no downtime whatsoever. If you're in the market for a rock-solid router with mu-mimo technology, look no further than the Netgear Nighthawk AC5300.

We originally had the nighthawk x4, but due to a Black Friday special, we upgraded to the x8. A couple of things: Speed: Not a major speed jump. With the x4, my download speed was around 100 mb, I'm currently at 125 mb. Reliability: With our previous router, the connection would consistently drop. This router is extremely reliable and we have yet to have an issue. Range: Awesome Range, we currently live in a two story 3600 sq ft home and we have no issues with range.

I tried a couple other routers which were great as well but did not reach our bedrooms like this router did (our house is about 4000 sq ft and this router is placed in a centralized location). If you have a lot of devices this router is great as you can assign different gadgets to the different wavelengths and minimize or prevent slow down. For smaller homes this router may be overkill as it is a bit pricey compared to other great routers out there. Also I don't believe this router stands up on it's side, so it does take up some real estate on your entertainment center or counter.

I had a different brand for several years and lately all my family was complaining about loosing connection to the internet for their phones and laptops, the speed was not comparable to the one with this router, wifi is just great with 2.4 and 5 gigahertz and the speed with gigabit with ethernet, 6 connectors on the back of the router not 4 like other routers. all these speed are great but you need this service from your internet service provider and your modem must be capable of these service, my wifi speed for my phone is just great around 150 to 200 mbps and with ethernet cable for my computers around 150 to 250 mbps the longest you have a gigabit ethernet card installed in your pc or a gigabit usb adatpter. You can set up several networks for wifi for guest 2.4 and 5 ghz and two more of each one for the house use 2.4 and 5 ghz, a total of 6 wifi networks for family and guest, the 2.4 ghz for the older devices and for the newer and faster devices the range is great, if you need more coverage like in my case i have several access points and we have coverage in almost 1 acre property, my kids go to a park across the street and we have wifi from our AP, just remember in order to keep your wifi speed your AP needs to be gigabit and wifi 2.4 and 5 ghz. The best part is we don't loose our internet connection due to router issues, just great router. I purchased this router during Thanksgiving specials with $100.00 discount, xmas was the supreme test for this router with around 100 people using our networks, my wife has a big family!!! :) I have two pc gamers in the house and they play day and night and sometimes they invite other gamers to the house, my wife with social media, my daughter with videos and movies, two grand kids with tablets and smartphones, two phone lines and around ten plus computers connected all the time, two smart tv, tablets and several smart phones android and apple devices. The purchased of this router was one of the best investments for our network we are able to do what the family and guest need to do online videos, games, social media, movies and work related task. According to our experience one of the best routers in the market now days, all these is not just out the box you have to set up this router to your needs and according to your internet service speed. I hope to keep this router for a long time at this point I don't know what is the life expectancy of this router.

I have several Netgear routers and after testing all of these, I found the X6 and X8 have the same range and connection speeds. The only improvement we found was the extra ports in the back of the X8. If you already have the X6, don't expect an improvement in your range or speed. If you haven't purchased the X6 already, yes the X8 is worth it. Compared to the Asus top of the line units, while the Asus may be a little faster with a slight increase to range, they are not as easy to set up and the tech support for Asus is terrible. They really have no idea what they are doing and can only read from a teleprompter on the computer screen when you call in. The Netgear techs are fantastic and the setup on the Netgears are much much easier. If you don't believe me, try the others and after you end up returning them,.. read this review again and especially this last part where I say, "TOLD YOU SO......"

Router is very easy to setup, and the reach is great. Ran test speeds before and after and the improvement is crazy (in the mid 20's for upload and download). Added a 2TB external hard drive to use as a cloud that all devices can access and shift files. No drops or ip conflicts, must have if you intend to have alot of devices (i have a hub with 8 hard wired devices, and then i use 6 ports on the back of this router for more hard wired devices, then I have about 4-6 wireless devices at any given time.

This is an excellent equipment that has everything that you can need. Nevertheless that is a little bulky, I installed on a wall and with two units I cover all my home that is 4,000 SQF, one on each floor; letting obsolete the five previous units from many brands an models. I'm very happy with the routers and I never had the necessity to reset any one. The setting needs some time but the results are really great!

Purchased this to replace Apple airport time capsule. So far happy with purchase. Enjoy the extended range (about 50 feet further, many walls it has to go thru). But it is Huge in size. Keep that in mind when you order. Very easy to set up also. Have not run into any issues yet. Only 4 stars due to price.

I needed a router which would send sufficient signal to the other side of the house crossing the garage. I couldn't find a router which would satisfy my needs. Let me tell you that this beast will not let you down. Will go right through walls and I love the multiple bands. You can assign devices and keep your network running at peak speeds. Excellent item.

I had a quality router prior to this model, but I wanted to try this out due to the multiple bands and the fact that we have multiple people accessing the network at the same time in our house. We are surfing, watching videos on Netflix and YouTube, as well as playing online games. I did have an issue getting the browser to update when installing the router and I was initially unable to finish the setup, which left the router showing to be connected but without really being so. It also prevented me from accessing the network logon screen again. The router just acted like it wasn't even there. I had to switch to Chrome from Internet Explorer or Edge and then the setup resumed and everything was smooth from there. I was also able to update the firmware afterward without issue. The connection to my ISP has been full speed or slightly above what I'm rated for, so that is great. Videos launch pretty much instantly and we have experienced virtually no pausing, whereas I did have more on my previous router. I've had the router for about a month now and it has been perfectly reliable so far. This is an expensive item, but thus far I feel that I've gotten what I paid for and I'm very pleased.

The Nighthawk X8 was easy to set up and provided strong signal throughout our large house. The faster router exposed the Cox cable modem as a bottleneck restricting downloads to about 35 Mbps. Once the cable modem was replaced, downloads hit 100 Mbps for a single test device. The Netgear software is adequate, but could use more polish.

I upgraded from the Nighthawk AC3200 model, which was their top unit when I got it, and decided this one had better specs. While I probably don't use a majority of the features in this model, I find it to be a very fast and reliable router so far. Seems to be working fine at the moment, and does what I need it to do. I will explore other features as time progresses and hopefully learn to use them. Router looks better than the predecessor as well. Antenna placement is more sleek and the unit looks its price.

Love this router, I have over 30 devices on my network so needed something robust that I could trust to handle the traffic and work for the next 5 years. This is my first high end router and it has not disappointed. Easy to setup, long range, plenty of speed.

I knew I needed a new router for expanding and upgrading my home network. This router may seem expensive but for anyone looking to truly set up a fast and large network, this is the router. I have a lot of movies saved to my computer and between my wife and kids streaming movies, my old router couldn't handle it. My first choice was running Cat 5e cables to their rooms. the old router had only 4 switching ports, so I ran one to the computer, one to the kids room and one to my PS4. the last port went to another switch port for DirecTV and cell phone signal booster. It helped a little since it freed up wifi and downloads speeds were faster but it still struggled if all three were trying to access movies off the computer. This is where this router excelled. I bought this since it had 6 switching ports and I also bought the WD My Cloud 4TB External hard drive and put all the movies on there and attached this to the router. Now all of us can stream and download at amazing speeds with no buffering and lag. My Internet service provide provide 100 Mbps (bits not Bytes). I performed a download test from my computer which was directly connected to the old router via Cat 53 ethernet cable and achieved a max download speed of 27 Mbps. After a got this new router and did the same download test via ethernet cable, my new download speed reached 134 Mbps. I was astonished. I was paying for 100Mbps and my old router was not able to deliver that speed. I highly suggest this router. The best part is that once installed, an app is able to be downloaded to the computer and any smart phone for easy access to the router's settings. This is a must buy!

Let me tell you that I have used my fair share of routers. My most recent was an Asus Extreme and it seemed decent in terms of performance that is until i got my hands on this Netgear Nighthawk (I did receive the product for free). Pros:Super fast file transfer and very reliable wifi. I transferred a 500GB file from my NAS to my laptop with both routers to gauge the difference and it was in excess of a 40% improvement! My wifi has not dropped once since installing this router as well and I can actually play larger video files over wifi from my NAS without any buffering which in itself would have made the potential purchase worthwhile. Setup was a breeze as it is with all Netgear product and I would definitely recommend this router to anyone that is looking for the best performance possible. Other major influences would be if you have a larger home or rely heavily on a NAS like I do. The product is built like a tank and the antennas feel very solid unlike the Asus which would move on their own over time. Love the little lights on top of them as well. Cons: None really come to mind but if I had to choose one, it would be a better mounting solution as I mounted mine on the wall.

I decided to "go big" and see if a pricier router would fix all the connectivity issues that I was having. With my previous router, I was having to power cycle it daily, as my LIFX bulbs were losing connection all of the time. This router instantly fixed that problem, reaches every part of my home, and the speed is great. We stream a lot of movies in my house, and we have never had an issue with multiple HD movies streaming at one time. I'm super happy with this router.

Setup was very easy. This router has excellent range on all bands, easily reaching every corner of my house. Speed is excellent, with tests showing no loss at all. Expensive but worth it. Highly recommended!

I moved to a much larger 3 story house (2900 sq. ft.)and my 5 year old modem wasn't strong enough for the entire house and I was losing signal constantly. I purchased this router and my cable internet provider put my modem in the back of the house in a finished room that used to be a screened in porch. The router has to go through a brick wall and I get a strong signal all through the house, even the basement. I have 1/2 acre yard and I get a full signal outside as well. This router gives me max speed that my Internet provides me and range to be able to be anywhere in my house or my property. I love the (2)2.5ghz and 5ghz channels to allow zero interference with my neighbors. I highly recommend this product to anyone.

Replaced a Linksys EA4500, a pretty good router in its own right. This thing is freaking fast! Coupled with a Motorola SB6183 and Time Warners Ultimate 200 I'm getting 230/20 and no buffering no matter where I am in my home. What makes it sweeter is I saved $100 on it for Black Friday, but it is worth the 399. But with the good there is some bad, the app is a little buggy and not as extensive as most experienced users would like, but firmware updates should remedy that. If you can afford it and don't mind a tank in your house, get this router!

I have FIOS and their modem/Router is single band, adding this router enhanced range and speed and allowed better performance with multiple connected devices.