NETGEAR - Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi Router, 1.9Gbps (R6900)

As a rule I do not review products. It takes time to do so and I am an inveterate lazy slob. But I use other peoples' efforts and reviews all the time to make product selections and I feel it is time to give back. I'm motivated by guilt for sure but also by this very fine product. If I can tell someone else about the quality of the Nighthawk and some of the other benefits of owning one, then I have in this one instance repaid my debt. This is my third or fourth router. The Nighthawk is far and away the most expensive router that I have bought. I got off the money because of other reviews that suggested that this unit outperformed all others. Obviously, I have not tried all other brands of routers but I have used two other widely recognized brands. This unit does, indeed, seem to give better coverage throughout the house at higher speeds than the other two types that I have tried. For example, the reason that I started looking for a new router was not because my previous router died but because I was suffering interruptions in simple data streams even with my computer located only inches away from the router. Interestingly, this happened whether I hard wired my computer to the router or was wireless. These interruptions were even more pronounced when trying to watch Netflix on our Roku in an adjacent room. We suffer impossibly narrow band connectivity so any glitches on the up stream side end up being a big glitches on the user end. Video streams were often nothing more than tiny bits (no pun intended) of choppy garble. After a very easy install--my other routers required long conversations with the tech people trying their best to dumb down what they were saying so that I could do what I needed to do to get the things working--I held my breath and checked the data stream that I depend on for my business and the streaming video through the Roku. Both exceeded my expectation. What is even more convincing is the fix has held! Dozens of times in the past I have thought a digital problem was solved only to find that a day later the same problem resurfaced. Not so this time. The Netgear Nighthawk fixed the problem and kept it fixed. And did I mention how easy this thing was to install? Don't forget that. From opening the box to being up and running was approximately fifteen minutes. That includes syncing my phone and Roku and three computers. If you are thinking about a high quality router you should definitely give this one some consideration.

Wal-Mart Reviewers hit the nail on the head on this one. After four routers and still dissatisfied with download speed and dead zones, I turned to the reviewers' remarks to find the best router I could without getting a second mortgage. Netgear is the best brand, as many reviewers declared, so I concentrated on that brand, and it didn't take me long to see that this Nighthawk received the most consistently great reviews. Based on that only, I ordered it online, picked it up the same day, took it out of the box, followed the boldly printed, easy directions, and my kids were downloading YouTube videos within five minutes, all at record speeds for our house. And we have an old house with the kids' "wing" very far away from my office (location of the router), separated by a vinyl-covered asbestos wall... you can imagine how hard it is to get good wi-fi reception. However, they've got it now (even though I placed a Netgear wi-fi extender in a room between us, just to be safe). This router somehow knew to connect with DirecTV and the kids' computers almost automatically, and we did very little to finish setting them up. Like I said, less than five minutes, start to finish, and we have about six wi-fi devices in the house. Could not be more pleased with this router, and if one of the dogs eats this one, I'll be the exact same model the next day at Wal-Mart (and cheaper dog food for a while too).