NETGEAR AC1900 Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router

NETGEAR R7000 Dual Band WI-Fi Gigabit Router I have a lot of wireless devices in my household and I am always looking for better range and features from a Wireless Router. While I have been able to cover most of my house and yard, I still have a few areas with either weak coverage or no coverage. So, I decided to give the NETGEAR R7000 Wireless Router a try. Short Summary: This router is a deviation from the design that all of the R series NETGEAR routers now seem to have. It is a desktop or shelf design that is also designed for wall mounting. Instead of having the same old box design, this router tried to make a statement with a design more like that of a stealth bomber. It also has three hi-gain antennas which allow you to obtain the best coverage. I found that following the advice in the setup page really does work best. The two outside antennas are at a 45 degree angle and the center one is at 90 degrees. Helps to also make it look like a plane! It also gives you the ability to do away with all of the annoying blinking lights that generally make a router a problem trying to locate in a home. Now, I am not saying that flashing lights cannot be impressive in an office atmosphere, but I hardly think that it makes a home look appealing. It does, however, add to the high tech look if that is what you are after. Actually, what is nice is that you can have the lights on when you need them and then you can turn them off when you don’t. This router works extremely well, has the best coverage I have found with a home grade router, has an excellent user interface, has a NETGEAR app that you can download for just about every device except Kindle Fire HD to monitor your network with and to share files with, will also use SAMBA to share either storage and/or a printer which has native support on Windows machines and on Apple computers, supports Kindle Fire and Apple devices (IPAD, ITOUCH) with a SAMBA app. You can also download backup software for Windows machines and is compatible with Apple Time Machine. I found that the Windows Backup software is extremely easy to configure and use. I have a 4 Terabyte drive on the USB 3.0 port and I am able to do 20 MB/s files with ease. This router also supports gigabit Ethernet. There is a 3.0 USB port in front and a USB 2.0 Interface in the back. This allows you to add a USB drive and a Printer to the Router. An additional feature is that by connecting a printer to the router, you enable that printer to be an AirPrint unit for your Apple Devices. My only gripe is that the USB 3.0 port is on the front of the unit and that the back USB port is only 2.0. Still, this is a very solid 5 star product based on performance, configurability, and reliability. Full evaluation: Here are the things that I wanted it to be able to do: 1. Support Apple products including iPad2, iPad3, iPad Air, and the iPhone 5S. 2. Support multiple Microsoft Operating Systems to include: Vista Pro, Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 Home, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows Home Server. 3. Support multiple manufacturers of Internet Enabled TVs 4. Support multiple manufacturers of Internet Enabled Blue Ray. 5. Support multiple manufacturers of Internet Enabled Audio Receivers. 6. Provide full coverage to a two story home of 3300 square feet, and attached three car garage, and coverage to all areas of the 1/3 acre property that the house sits on. 7. Be more esthetically pleasing so that you can locate it in a house WITHOUT it looking like a light show! 8. I was also looking for a router that could provide the highest level of protection to include the latest security levels on RF with protection turned on as default, the ability to turn off SSID (turning off broadcast ID makes it that much harder for someone to break into the system) and good security on Router Configuration control. It also had to be able to use the latest AC band to provide for multiple streaming videos while also providing adequate support for other functions at the same time. One of the things you need to understand about dual band routers is that the 2.4 GHz band will pass easily through walls and other obstacles while the 5 GHz band will not. This means that you will generally have the best coverage with the 2.4 band and the worst coverage with the 5 Ghz band. My testing showed this premise to be absolutely correct. The 5 GHz band does fine with three or four walls, but quickly deteriorates after that. Thus the coverage in the yard was almost exclusively the 2.4 GHz band. However, the fastest data stream was obtained using the 5 GHz band. So, if you are streaming video to multiple televisions (think Netflix and Amazon video at the same time to different television sets) you will probably want to use the 5 GHz band for that function. By locating the unit in the middle of the upper floor of the house, I was able to receive at least 4 bars of signal in every room of the house and in the garage. Finally, this router supports the new AC data rate on the 5GHz band as well as all of the other previous standards. It also supports all of the current standards for the 2.4GHz band as well. What this means is that it will support existing equipment and any new equipment that you might acquire. Note: each of the standards (a,b,g,n,ac) are only different ways of encrypting data. The original standard encrypted data at a much lower rate and the newest standard encrypts data at the fastest rate. They all use the exact same radio frequencies! Here are my results: First and probably the most important to a lot of folks, this system is very easy to configure! In fact, if pressed, you could just connect cables, power up the unit and run with it! Wireless is preconfigured for security and the unique password for the unit is contained on the strip with the SSID and Network Key on the internal package of paperwork. It also supports WPS which means that as long as your equipment supports it, you can just push a button on the router to have your device automatically connect; no need to type in passwords! The user interface is straight forward and easy to navigate. You have an enormous amount of flexibility with the configuration of this unit. I was easily able to accomplish my requirement of turning off SSID. This unit also includes a sign-out feature for the administrator and will actually disconnect if you forget and wander off to another website. Using the back button will NOT allow you to connect until you have completed the sign in process again. You can also turn the lights on and off, which I consider a real plus!! There is a Genie app that will run on your computer, Apple device, phone, etc., that will allow you to share files and manage your network. The app is free and can be downloaded from several locations, depending upon the equipment you want to run it on. Here are my testing results: (Note: not all devices will support both bands! Ensure that your devices support both bands before trying to use them! Many less expensive wireless devices only use the 2.4 GHz band) I was able to actively stream HD to all of my Internet TVs concurrently while also doing backups, Internet searches, stream audio to multiple devices, and run my xBox without any problems. For reference purposes, my Internet Connection is 20Mb/S. For the Apple products, this router supported them with the following caveats: Both of the early model IPad models supported and used both bands though their antennas do not do as good a job as the new iPad Air. For the Microsoft products, I had the best range on both bands with the four different laptops that I tested. I was able to reach over 150 feet from the router with the 2.4 Ghz band and just under 100 feet with the 5 Ghz band. All five of my Internet enabled Televisions which were located in different areas of the house, floors, and in the garage, were able to connect to the 2.4 Ghz band and the 5 Ghz band without issue. I had the router located on the second floor, in the middle of the house, against the front wall of the house. All of the Internet enabled radio receivers were able to connect without issue using either band. All of the Internet enabled Blue Ray Players were able to utilize the 2.4 Ghz band and the 5 Ghz band while including the unit located in the garage. By setting up all of my portable units to utilize either of the two bands and to be able to automatically connect, I was able to wander around my yard and maintain a connection with everything. Being able to connect to the USB and whatever storage device you put on it (Thumb Drive, Hard Drive) requires that the wireless device you are using support SAMBA. All Macs and all Microsoft Operating Systems support this function. What does not support this function directly are the Apple Touch, the Apple IPAD, the iPhone, and the Kindle Fire. The good news is that you can download a free app onto each of those devices which then allows them to connect to the local resource on your network. This is a great way to share documents and pictures! The Genie app from NETGEAR allows you to connect to the share port to share files. However, on Apple devices this app only allows you to access files on the share drive on your Apple devices; it does NOT allow you to upload or download files to it. Home Server was quite happy to connect to any device that it will support using either band. The requirement is that you either plug the server into one of the 5 ports on the back of the router or that the server you are using has wireless capability. The guest network is a very nice feature and it works in such a way that you can isolate that network from your home network. You can also implement parental controls to limit what content can be accessed on either the Guest Network or on your own network. There are more security and other features in this unit than you can shake a stick at. I tested as many of them as I possibly could and had excellent results with all features. I did not run into a single issue with any of it. To keep this from becoming a book, I will simply say WOW! As you can probably tell from the above, setup is extremely easy and takes less than 5 minutes from starting to unbox to having the system up and running. The user interface is well laid out and is very intuitive. You can be as simple or as complicated as you want to get with the configuration. A final comment about the bandwidth that this unit supports. You need to keep in mind that no matter how fast and how much data a router can pass, it cannot make your Internet connection any bigger or any faster! So, if your Internet connection is capable of 10 megabits per second and your router is capable of 1900 megabits per second guess what? The fastest connection you can get is 10 megabits per second to the Internet!! This also applies to streaming video if the source of the video is the Internet (think Amazon Prime Movies, Netflix, etc.). However, if you have a home server with videos, a game server with games, a server that does backups, you are doing file transfers between computers, etc., you will have a lot more bandwidth to be able to do concurrent things!! I will also note that to obtain the fastest data transfer rates you will need to use a wireless device that supports AC standard. The unit I test with is the NETGEAR A6200. I would have to say that this is one of the best home version wireless routers I have ever used for the price and I would highly recommend it! It functions exactly as it should and it is easy to incorporate into your home whether you like an item that disappears into the background or one that stands out and looks extremely cool!