Netgear R9000 AD7200 Nighthawk X10 Smart WiFi Router

YOU’LL PROBABLY NEVER USE THE 802.11AD SUPPORT, BUT EVEN WITHOUT IT, THIS IS A POWERFUL, CAPABLE AND EASY TO USE ROUTER.

WIGIG, THE COMMON name for the wireless technology known as 802.11ad, has been floating around for a few years now. Using extremely high frequencies, WiGig can transfer data at up to 7.2Gbps — far faster than 802.11ac. But because it can’t travel through walls, it’s essentially limited to same-room usage. That last factor has generally made it a non-player, something that hardware manufacturers never bothered with because nobody had any real use for it.

VR changes that. In theory, VR headsets could use 802.11ad for wireless connectivity. No actual headsets do that yet, but the Netgear R9000 preps you for the day that they might. It’s one of the very few routers on the market that supports 802.11ad, at up to 4,600Mbps in this case.

Other than its 802.11ad support, the Netgear is a powerful 4 x 4 wireless router with MU-MIMO support. Its wired support is also top-shelf with six LAN ports, as well as port aggregation and a 10Gbps SFP+ port — those are used for super-fast access to network attached storage devices that support dual-Ethernet or 10GbE. It’s all driven by a 1.7MHz quad-core processor. It’s very impressive hardware overall, especially for users with lots of wired devices.

The firmware is also excellent, retaining Netgear’s easy setup system, great mobile apps and good family support. The Plex media server is now built into the firmware, and Netgear’s parental controls, although not perfect, are a slice above the rest with inbuilt support for customised per-user content filtering.