NETGEAR Nighthawk X8 AC5000 Tri-band WiFi Router

I purchased this router on Amazon a couple of weeks ago to replace an old Wi-Fi router that was starting to have connectivity issues. I live in a fairly large 2-story home, and need a Wi-Fi router with great range. The specs on this router appeared to fit what I was looking for. After receiving the Netgear router and getting it setup, my first impression was very positive. I have a 60 Mbps cable modem connection. I could generally get Wi-Fi speeds between 25 to 60 Mbps, depending on the distance from the router. The signal strength range appeared to be much better than my old router. But after 3 hours, everything went downhill. The Wi-Fi signal completely dropped (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). I logged into the Netgear router administration website (called NETGEAR genie) using a laptop with a wired Ethernet cable. I saw a yellow exclamation symbol next to the Wireless status in the genie application, but I could not find any details that described the issue. I rebooted the router, and everything worked properly again. Then, 2 hours later, the exact thing happened again and Wi-Fi was out. I rebooted the router and it worked again. The next morning, the Wi-Fi signal had dropped again. I rebooted the router; it only worked for 30 minutes this time, and then Wi-Fi signal dropped again. So this had been 3 times to reboot the router in less than 18 hours since initial setup (obviously unacceptable). I called Netgear support and got a fairly fast response. After explaining my problem, the support technician didn’t seem to have any explanation as to why the Wi-Fi was dropping and why I continued to see the yellow exclamation symbol in the Netgear genie application. Her suggestion was “let’s reflash the router firmware to an earlier version and see if that fixes the problem.” I wasn’t happy about this approach. Downgrading the firmware to an earlier version should be done if you know with some specificity there is problem with the latest firmware that is causing the issue. Just downgrading to “try and hope” this fixes the problem appeared to be a way to quickly close the support case and get me off the support line. But I did as suggested, downloaded an earlier version of the router firmware as recommended by the support technician, installed the firmware, and rebooted the router. Initially, everything was working fine. But 6 hours later, the Wi-Fi signal dropped again. I rebooted the router. This time, it did not work, but it was worse. Even the wired connection to the router would not work. I could not log into the Netgear genie application. The entire router appeared to be dead (except the power led light was on). I cycled the power to the router a few times, but could not get the router to respond. I was really upset then. I called Netgear support at 4pm Central in the afternoon. This time, I was on hold for almost 30 minutes with no answer. I hung up the phone, went back to Amazon’s website, and clicked the “Return Item” button to get my money back. Thank goodness for Amazon’s outstanding customer service! And now… to the happy ending. I went back to Amazon’s website and did some more research on Wi-Fi routers. I saw the top selling Wi-Fi router that week was the Google Wifi system. This system uses 3 devices in a mesh network to provide Wi-Fi coverage throughout the entire home. I had not heard of this new system, but the reviews were great, so I decided to give it a try. Wow, this Google Wifi system has been great. It was very easy to setup. It’s been working flawlessly for over 1 week now. It provides outstanding Wi-Fi coverage (full 60 Mbps+ speed) throughout my entire house. So my Wi-Fi network is no longer the bottleneck, but the bottleneck is the cable modem connection to my Internet Service Provider (which is as it should be). Even though it was painful going through the issues with the Netgear router, I ultimately ended up with the Google Wifi system that is much better anyway. Lesson learned -> I should have done more research before making my original router purchase decision.