Netgear Nighthawk AXE7800 WiFi Router RAXE300

Investment in a more powerful device – With an upgrade to FTTP and seeing if I could get 1000mbps speeds, it was clear my old DLink was not going to cut it, it was bout 8 years old and needing a reboot once a week. Also some smart devices in the house seems to be acting weird, not connecting etc. I usually buy high end routers to last a good 6+ years and invest so as tech changes I don't need to change. Certainly no Wifi6 devices in house (yet) but aim was to get better throughput and something to handle the 30+ devices (yes 30, they all add up).

Setup was ok, out of the box they force you to use the app but i was not able to, i reverted to using the Web UI to setup and that was easy, fast and done in no time. New SSID, password and then laborious task to change all the device over (I wanted a new SSID/pwd) Later on i found out the app would not connect, Netgear support was able to assist and issue seemed to be my iPhone, and the private relay privacy setting in iOS. This of course is why I could not setup with app, so might be ideal for Netgear to account for this.

Once setup, tweaked some settings and saw a huge improvement in range, speeds and reliability using existing connection and devices with 'drop outs' started to work better. Later we upgraded on a promo plan to 1000Mbps and on any cable connected devices its delivering full speed, on 5Ghz WiFi about half that to an iPhone 12 and now my weak points becomes the other AP at other end of house that is not capable of faster than 500Mbps and is needing to be replaced next.

Pros -great design, easy to mount on wall if needed -App is better than I thought, simple yet easy to manage most things, generate Guest WiFi QR codes and block devices if needed. -More reliable, better range and speeds - Of course the jump from an 8yo device to today you would expect better most things, Match it with a great internet speed tier and your good to go, but always consider that some devices in house may not get the full speed due to their age or inability to connect to the newer WiFi standards. -So far i have no had to reboot the device due to any issue, only config changes. -Netgear support - i had heard bad things, and you only get 30 days support but I found them to be helpful and found the issue and fix. Once you buy make sure you setup and use this -Trails options for Netgear Armour and Parental Controls - tested and seem great, but ongoing cost so opted out. -Supports DLNA and has USB C port to connect a flash drive to with media to share -Full 1GB ports

Cons -Price - for most will keep you away from this device, especially when mesh setups are now flooding market to solve most consumer issues, so this is more for the Prosumer. On sale, you should be able to get this for under $500 -Setup was a challenge - but just change to the UI if you can, more options and easier anyways. -

Tips -turn off iOS private relay to setup -take backup of config once done in case you mess things up -you may need to check online for firmware updates out of the box, there was one for me, yet device itself was not detecting an update