Netgear Nighthawk RAX120
Lacklustre performance, limited features and a slow interface make this a no-go
SCORE
PRICE £116 (£139 inc VAT) from box.co.uk
Having been mightily impressed by the Nighthawk RAX80, we had high hopes for its midpriced cousin, the RAX40. Naturally, we weren’t expecting the same stellar performance from a router costing half as much, but, as the Linksys MR7350 has shown, it’s perfectly possible to put together a fast, solid router in this price range.
Alas, disappointment sets in as soon as you open the box. The RAX40 is a sizeable thing, yet its construction feels plasticky and lightweight. In place of the upturned wings of other Nighthawk models, it sports a pair of very ordinary aerials.
The feature list is a step down too. Netgear’s Circle and Armor services aren’t available on the RAX40, meaning that even if you wanted to pay for parental control or network security features, they’re off the table. There’s currently no support for WPA3, either; that’s something that could be added through a future firmware up date, but why hasn’t it been already?
And as for performance… well. On both Wi-Fi 5 and 6, our tests started positively, recording good download speeds at close range. As we moved away, however, the signal dropped off precipitously, causing the RAX40 to tumble progressively down the ranks. By the time we reached the bathroom, it was placing 15th out of this month’s field of 17 products, and over Wi-Fi 6 it was dead last. Perhaps the best we can say for the Nighthawk RAX40 is that its Wi-Fi 6 performance was, overall, better than that of the Honor Router 3 – but for nearly three times the price it jolly well ought to be.
Indeed, this is a slow router in every sense. The user interface feels pervasively unresponsive, and setup and configuration are made tiresome by the fact that the darn thing takes around three and a half minutes to boot up or restart.
The Nighthawk RAX40 does have a few good points: Netgear’s incoming VPN server is included, and there’s a USB 3 port that lets you make use of local or online file sharing. Sadly, that’s nowhere near enough to excuse the Nighthawk RAX40’s many shortcomings – not when far superior offerings from Asus and Linksys are out there at very similar prices.