Netgear Nighthawk R7000 AC1900 Review

Rating: 8.0.

We are late to the game with this particular review, but we had so many requests from readers to look at the NetGear Nighthawk R7000 that we decided it was worth a (belated) look. No doubt you will have a instant love-it-or-hate-it reaction to the appearance of the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router. It is certainly no object of beauty but instead looks very purposeful. This Wikipedia page for the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk suggests the model name is no coincidence as the angular styling has clearly been borrowed from the iconic Stealth Fighter. The three chunky antennae also play their part in the visual impact as they are abso-fricking-lutely huge.

The design of the charcoal grey casing means that you cannot safely rest anything on top of the router, and that is probably a good thing as the ventilated chassis has been designed to allow air to flow to the passively cooled 1GHz dual core processor that lies at the heart of the router.

You need that beefy ARM processor to power simultaneous 5GHz 802.11ac and 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless connections along with Gigabit LAN and WAN wired Ethernet. The specification puts the Nighthawk R7000 at the high end of the market so it is fairly predictable that it carries a steep price of £189.99 SRP and £165 inc VAT at the shops.

That's a lot of money for a Wi-Fi router that doesn't include an ADSL or cable modem so let's see exactly what Netgear delivers to the paying public.

Specifications:

• AC1900 Wi-Fi (600 + 1300Mbps) 802.11ac
• Simultaneous dual band 2.4 GHz and 5GHz
• ‘Beam forming’ technology
• Triple antennae
• 1 USB 3.0 port, 1 USB 2.0 port
• Four Gigabit Ethernet ports (LAN)
• One Gigabit Ethernet port (WAN)
• WPA2-PSK/WPA encryption
• NAT + SPI firewall
• WPS
• 1GHz dual-core processor
• 128MB flash storage
• 256MB RAM

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