Netgear Nighthawk X4S D7800
$399 | WWW.NETGEAR.COM.AU Knocked out by Netgear’s other gaming Nighthawk.
As just $30 cheaper than the newer Nighthawk XR500-100AUS, it wouldn’t be too much to expect this router to perform on par with its cousin. Yet there’s a huge difference in speeds between the two, especially at long range.
The total bandwidth offered by this router is 2,600Mbps (800Mbps + 1,733Mbps), and it comes with an integrated ADSL/ VDSL modem, which could account for the price hike compared to its superior Nighthawk, which requires an additional modem. It automatically detected our NBN connection and even installing the most recent firmware without us having to do a thing. We did notice some weirdness with the QoS, though; the user has to manually set the upload and download speed of the internet connection, yet after saving this, the values were way off what we’d entered. It didn’t hurt gaming performance, though, with this router scoring in the middle.
We appreciated the twin USB ports, allowing for external storage to turn it into a NAS or print server, though at this price range, this is quite a common feature. There’s also support for Netgear’s ReadyCloud, allowing you to retrieve files from the external drives remotely. The unit allows for extremely tailored radio settings, though there’s only one application featured, a built-in Torrent downloading client.
While it does have a built-in ADSL/ VDSL modem, the long-range file transfer speeds aren’t up to snuff. It’s great for close-range speeds, not your entire abode.