Netgear Nighthawk XR500-100AUS
Extreme speeds at a great price.
Unlike its sibling, you’re going to need an external modem to make the most of this router. However, if you do happen to be hooking this up to an NBN modem, get set to be blown away by arguably the best overall performance of the lot. It didn’t take out the No.1 spot in every test, but on average, it was the best at file transferring to a small number of devices, which isn’t too shabby considering it’s $160 cheaper than the ASUS. This is probably because it’s only an AC2600 unit, meaning it’ll only handle a small number of devices before network congestion becomes an issue.
The other trade-off is a lack of dedicated gaming features. It’s built around the DUMA OS, which is absolutely brilliant. The first time we visited the dashboard, an automatic tutorial explained every section, so we knew exactly where to go to fiddle with the QoS settings. These are mostly automatic, though, lacking the granularity of other models that can prioritise different types of traffic. Heading into the advanced Wi-Fi options reveals an ocean of settings that can be tinkered with. We still managed to get excellent speed results with the default ones. Best of all, we didn’t experience a single hitch with any of the configurations. Gaming performance was also exceptional, with the best pings of the bunch.
While it may not have the bandwidth to handle a dozen different laptops, smartphones and PCs, this is an excellent router for those who want peak performance out of a small number of networkattached devices.