Customer Ratings & Reviews

Wow...just bought this X8 and my download speeds skyrocketed! Love it so far. Worth the money.

I came accross this and had to try it. I upgraded from the R6300 router. I was up and running in less than 10 minutes. I have three story house and was hoping for better wifi signal. Not dissipointed ! Both 2.4 and 5 ghz ranges improved. Wife rolled eyes when I wanted to purchase. She relunctly agreed with improved performance. Attached 3 tb usb hard drive without issue. Just worked... Imagine that. UNC and web access to drive very impressive. A little expensive, but no regrets thus far. Glad I bought it !

I recently ungraded to a faster internet package and started sharing files over my network, so I needed a better router than my n. I wanted to upgrade to AC because I had trouble streaming Netflix and using my phone at the same time. This router is fast and reliable. I will say you will have to mess with the antenna placement a little but it works really well and you will not be disappointed.

I used this as my main router for about a year. About a month after the one-year warranty expired, the router stopped booting up. I ended up purchasing a Synology router, which unfortunately is not sold at Best Buy stores. The X8 was fast, though it did have some connectivity issues when we had meetings at the house with about 6-8 people. But at the end of the day, a $350 router should perform reliably - more so than a $100 router would.

Upgraded from a dual-band Asus to this tri-band monster so I could dedicate one 5G band for myself and open the 2.4G and other 5G for the wife and kids. Hardware is awesome but the web UI lacks so many features compared to the Asus UI. With the $399 price tag (use price match to get a better price!!!!), I expected more. I'll just wait until DD-WRT is made available for the X8 before I can really rock with this baby.

I have been a NetGear purchaser for two decades. I read the reviews on this product and most told me that the person who wrote it was not familiar with networking and the way computers, printers, and the internet communicate with each other. So I took those reviews with a grain of salt. The good on this one is that it does support 1Gb/s on the Ethernet ports, which is great for I have my house wired. The setup is the same as all of the other NetGear devices on the market and straight forward. I was able to setup my SSID not broadcast it setup security for login and implement the IP address scheme that I wanted. The bad is that the ReadyShare for the USB3.0 port is not working. I contacted support and they want me to be a Beta Tester for some code fixes on this device. Sorry I work out of my home and I am unwilling to put beta code on my router and risk going down in the middle of WebEx meetings. ReadyShare for USB2.0 does work - however I wanted the additional throughput that USB3.0 provides therefore that is not useful to me.

The NETGEAR - Nighthawk X8 AC5300 router gives me much better coverage than my old Belkin 'N' router.

This router's hardware is very good. However, its software has major bugs that cripple functionality. And, this router is missing major features that all of Netgear's competitors have had for many years -- even the cheap no-name competitors. An example of one bug is if you turn on Parental Controls (so your family doesn't get viruses), nobody can use the Guest network any more. Examples of missing features: All modern routers (except Netgear) let you set time periods when your kids cannot access the Internet (at night, for example). Many let you prioritize bandwidth by device, so you can get work done even if your kids are watching movies or playing games. Most let you spontaneously look at bandwidth usage to see which device is eating up your bandwidth. Most have simple tools to diagnose problems that help you get better performance from your router. Netgear has none of these. Search the Internet, and you will see that people have been complaining about this for years across many of Netgear's routers. Netgear just ignores them. Also, if you quit Netgear's Mac app that you must use to manage your router, the Mac just hangs. It's a shame the software is so bad, because the hardware is quite good.

Great router, easy to set up even for a non-technical person. Had many good reviews and wanted something that wouldn't be obsolete next month. Works with a comcast modem well. Very pleased with performance.

The best I have found! Works very well for home office use and movie/gaming. Buy it!!!

Very fast connections, easy to setup , no slowness

This is a very powerful Wi-Fi router we have over 40 devices hooked to it has great range excellent product.

This flagship Netgear router has exceeded all of my expectations. The ease of setup, familiarity with my previous Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router made installation of this router very straightforward. The wireless range of this router is phenomenal and having the smart 5GHz dual channels means that I am not getting any wifi channel contention any more that I used to get previously (I live in a condo with lots of neighbors routers showing up when I scan for wireless networks). I wholeheartedly recommend this router to anyone!

A bit disappointed. Bought this fairly expensive router to have the latest and greatest with all the growing IOT devices and streaming in my house. Was disappointed to find out only VPN option was OpenVPN which requires a VPN client. Works for Windows, but not for Android at the moment. Looks like they are slowing working on R7000 beta version. You would think this latest and greatest would come with this since they claimed to have it. My old Asus router of 2+ years old had both PPTP and OpenVPN option. May need to return this and look at one of Asus's new ones, but reviews said this one was a good one.

I had a few routers that were all a few years old. With all the wifi devices I have now, iPads, phones, laptops, FireTV, myQ garage doors, alarm system and on and on the mesh of different routers was a mess. None could handle the throughput needed, most were connected to old 2.4 b/g and my only old Netgear 5GHz was only n so it was time for an upgrade. I wanted a triband router and actually ordered a Asus AC3200 at a great Black Friday deal of $197 at a competitor, but then stumbled across this new Netgear AC5300 X8 Nighthawk and saw rave reviews and at a Black Friday prices of $299 on Prime I could not resist. Got it setup and tweaked and this thing screams. Hopefully it will be as reliable as my old Netgear router and the interface is the same so I love their advanced settings. All the devices are getting excellent signal and throughput. It is a bit iffy at the far end of the house 2 floors up, but I picked up a TP-Link C7 as an access point for the single device up there. This thing is huge, but my guess is they needed the size to avoid fans for cooling and all the components needed to support 3 bands, 6 Ethernet ports, 4 external and 4 internal antennas. Looks like the Asus will go back as soon as it arrives. 1/16/2016 Update So after 2 months of ownership I wanted to update my review. This is still an awesome router. It does have a few quirks. First the UI gets sluggish which should not be the case with all the processing power this beast has. Also the UI does not always show correct status of the LAN ports as they are up, but the UI shows them down. Also anytime you make adjustments to the overall QOS settings (not devices) the router basically reboots, very annoying. And the most annoying bug is I have several Roku devices hardwired and if you videos on the CNET channel on Roku the router reboots, basically rendering the CNET Roku app useless. 2/3/2016 Update. Well I am dropping this to 1 star. Netgear has been unable to resolve the issue and is incapable of understanding the issue. This has become a $300 boat anchor and I will be exploring options for another brand. Too bad I have been a long time Netgear owner of various products.

I was initially pleased that it had range as good if not better than my old Nighthawk R7000. Setup was simple, and it worked great for about a day and a half. Then the 2.4Ghz radio apparently died; both my primary and guest 2.4Ghz networks were no longer accessible on any device even though they still showed up as fully enabled in the Netgear admin app. The 5Ghz networks still worked, though not perfectly--it usually took two or more attempts before a connection could be established, even when working on an iPhone or MacBook Pro just a few feet from the router. Router admin functions also began running very slowly, taking anywhere from 20 seconds to 2-3 minutes or more between screens. I finally reset the unit to original factory settings, and still couldn't get any connection on the factory pre-set 2.4Ghz network. Very disappointing--it's being returned this coming week.

This router is powerful and has great range. On BIG issue... The 2.4 GHz signal would just stop working! The 5GHz would continue to work. It was not a defective router because I exchanged it and the same thing happened on the new unit. Do not buy now until they fix the issue. After they fix this issue, I will buy it again.

Setup was okay. Tried to upload the latest firmware straight from Netgear and router turned into a brick. tried to reset with no joy. Exchanged for a new one and tried the firmware update first with the same results. Reset did not do anything. Exchanged for another new new one. This download the firmware to my pc. Then uploaded it to the new router. Completed setup and everything was fine until I tried logging out of the router and three weeks of use. The router would not come back. Did a power reset but the router was still down with the amber light cycling. Tried a reset and it is still not any better. Returned to Geek Squad for them to troubleshoot/replace. Wishing I had bought a Linksys or Dlink. Glad I bought the warranty plan from Best Buy otherwise $300 down the drain.

This router is super fast. I had it for a couple of weeks now and I am very happy. It's expensive but now I know why. It's clearly the best router I've purchased. My family and I had problems with the other router and complained about them. With this one there's peace and quiet and now I can play my games with no interruption.

Has 3 different channels the speed and connectivity is outstanding. Expecially with more than one device connected my home has 17 connected devices we're all using the internet 24/7. But the idea that when one person is online or the connected smart home devices are online no one loses signal.