It really seems like the Nighthawk, for whatever reason, isn't all that good at optimizing the signal for a client device that isn't in a fixed location. In fact, I've run thousands of speed tests in my home over the past several months under the same controlled settings, and the Nighthawk is the only router that's given me this much of a headache.
#Netgear mesh router wifi 6 software#
Same goes for the online speed test software and the server I was connecting to, neither of which registered any issues when testing with my own router. So what was happening here? It wasn't my network - I made sure to run some control tests with my existing router, and didn't see anything like I was experiencing with the Nighthawk. Slow speeds in my kitchen one minute, then back to normal as soon as I disconnect and reconnect. And that was with me frequently re-connecting in order to give the system its best chance to succeed. In the end, the Nighthawk returned an overall average speed of 219 Mbps throughout my whole house, which is worse than all but two of the dozen or so systems I've tested in my home, Wi-Fi 6 or otherwise. That was with the router only a couple of feet away. I alternate rounds of speed tests from the front of the house to the back, and then from the back of the house to the front - on one of the latter rounds, where that close-range living room test is the last test in the sequence, my speed came in at 93 Mbps. I'd move to a new spot during my tests, and my speeds would nosedive. That did the trick - after disconnecting from the network and then reconnecting to it, my speeds were back up were they should be, just shy of 300 Mbps.īut then it happened again. And, when I see a weirdly slow result like that in my tests, I'll make a note of it in my spreadsheet, then reset the connection. Netgear claims that the 2.4GHz band can hit speeds of up to 600 Mbps, and that the 5GHz band is capable of hitting speeds as high as 1,200 Mbps. As always, combined speed ratings like those are a bit misleading since you can only connect to one band at a time. And don't even think of getting a third band to use as a dedicated backhaul for transmissions between the router and the satellites at this price.Īs for specs, the Nighthawk is a dual-band AX1800 router, with the "AX" indicating that it supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and the "1800" indicating the combined top speeds of the two bands.
You won't find many extra bells or whistles in the app, either. You don't get a multigig WAN port on the router like you do with the Netgear Orbi 6, for instance, so your incoming internet speed will be capped at 1 gigabit per second. The Nighthawk doesn't have everything, though - which isn't surprising given that this is a Wi-Fi 6 system on a budget. That's useful to have in case you want a wired connection between the router and the satellite for faster system performance, or if you want to wire something like a media streamer directly to the satellite.
#Netgear mesh router wifi 6 upgrade#
One other design upgrade of note: The Nighthawk mesh system adds a spare Ethernet jack to the back of the satellite, something that the dual-band Orbi mesh system lacks. All of that makes Netgear's mesh entry to the Nighthawk brand a tough system for me to recommend. Other mesh routers I've tested have all done a much better job of optimizing my speeds - and other surprisingly affordable Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers are coming soon, so you've got alternatives worth waiting for. It wasn't an issue with my network - it was the Nighthawk router getting confused by a non-stationary client device.īasically, the Nighthawk mesh router is brawny enough to hit impressive top speeds, but not brainy enough to maintain a steady connection as you move throughout your home. At several points during my tests, where I move from room to room running speed tests from various spots around my house, my speeds would plummet, forcing me to disconnect and then reconnect in order to get my speeds back up where they should be. But when I took it home to conduct my real-world speed tests, things were a lot different. Yes, the Nighthawk mesh router was plenty fast in our lab-based top speed tests - it actually notched the fastest close-range transfer speed that we've seen from any of the mesh routers we've tested thus far, including a few models that cost twice as much.
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