NETGEAR Intros Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Router and Mesh Extender

[Julio Urquidi]

NETGEAR today announced its tri-band addition to its Nighthawk Wi-Fi 6 family.

The AX12 Wi-Fi 6 router (AX11000) is powered by a 64-bit quad-core 1.8 GHz processor, backed by 512 MB NAND flash and 1 GB of DDR RAM. The 12-stream AX11000 provides maximum wireless link speeds of 1.2 Gbps at 2.4 GHz, and 4.8 Gbps for each of the two 5 GHz bands.

For physical interfaces, the AX11000 has one 1 Gbps WAN port, four 1 Gbps LAN ports, and a single 2.5 Gbps/1 Gbps port. The single WAN port and one of the LAN ports can be combined for Multi-Gig support producing up to 2 Gbps WAN performance; the 2.5 Gbps port is configurable to be a 1 Gbps link. The AX11000 also includes two USB 3.0 ports which can used for Netgear’s ReadyShare function, allowing an external USB drive to connect to the network for NAS-like functionality.

Other AX11000 features include SmartConnect, 8-stream MU-MIMO, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility, VPN support, and automatic firmware updating. The AX11000 can also be managed using the NETGEAR Nighthawk App, giving customers remote management, internet speed testing, guest network management and installation assistance.

NETGEAR also announced its first Wi-Fi 6 extender. The new Nighthawk EAX80 AX8/8-Stream Wi-Fi 6 mesh extender is a dual-band 4x4 device, supporting maximum link rates of 1.2 Gbps at 2.4 GHz and 4.8 Gbps at 5 GHz. It's powered by a 64-bit 1.8 GHz dual-core processor and has four Gbps LAN ports and a single USB 3.0 port that be used with Netgear’s ReadyShare and ReadyPrint applications. Additional features include SmartConnect and mobile management using Netgear’s Nighthawk app.

Availability and pricing for Netgear’s Nighthawk Tri-Band AX12 Wi-Fi 6 router (AX11000) is still pending, while the Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream WiFi 6 Mesh Extender (EAX80) is available through pre-order now with shipping scheduled for Q4 2019 and priced at $249.99.

 

[psychopomp1]

I have the RAx200 on pre-order from Amazon Germany with delivery by 17th Sept. I guess this announcement confirms that I should be getting it very soon. Was charged €450 including shipping to UK.

Will be fascinating to see how the RAX200 compares against my Linksys EA9500v2 for 802.11ac clients.

 

[pege63]

The WIFI speeds will drop to the maximum Wi-Fi speed of the connected devices anyway, depending of wath the client support speed are (1x, 2x).

 

[CrystalLattice]

I have the RAx200 on pre-order from Amazon Germany with delivery by 17th Sept. I guess this announcement confirms that I should be getting it very soon. Was charged €450 including shipping to UK.

Will be fascinating to see how the RAX200 compares against my Linksys EA9500v2 for 802.11ac clients.

Your Phicomm K3 and K3C will outperform it.
There's no more articles, recommendations, or reviews here, anymore, so what's really the point of this site? Wirecutter.com is better, there's still reviews there.

 

[Makaveli]

I checked out Wirecutter.com based on your post and it blows.

 

[Razor512]

Wirecutter does not really do in-depth reviews.
Though they do cover a wider range of content, their actual benchmarks are more limited, and largely fluffed up with a lot of ext. I like to call this textbook format which is when a company making a textbook, takes 2 pages of information, and turns it into a 15-20 page chapter, all without adding any additional useful information.

Most of the reviews are biased towards what would generate the best returns from an affiliate link rather than what is truly the best overall on purely technical levels and not subjective measures which are impossible to remove bias from. Thus you end up with reviews that try to push users towards things like cameras with a fixed pellicle mirror, which is not only an older design and a cost cutting measure (saves from having a mechanism to move the mirror, but at the cost of losing at least a stop of light, while also effectively acting as an OLPF, which further reduces quality.

Or you get a router recommended as being the best because it had a quad core CPU vs a dual core CPU, ignoring the actual performance, as well as ignoring red flags such as a unit not getting firmware updates.

The reviews overall feel more like they were done by people forced out of a newspaper room, and into a tech review site, and they are now reviewing items which they are uninterested in.
They could be otherwise good and skilled reviewers but at best it would be like getting MKBHD to review a new spectrum analyzer, you will likely get a watchable and entertaining video that will show off the device and have some opinions about aspects of it, but it will not be too helpful to an electronics engineer looking for a new spectrum analyzer.

-----------

Sadly, without smallnetbuilder doing proper networking equipment reviews, there is no other real alternative if you want a technical review without bias, where reviews are written in a better style and skill than can be found in any newspaper or magazine (due to clear, succinct, and to the point text). There just isn't an alternative so far as far as I have seen.

 

[avtella]

I have the RAx200 on pre-order from Amazon Germany with delivery by 17th Sept. I guess this announcement confirms that I should be getting it very soon. Was charged €450 including shipping to UK.

Will be fascinating to see how the RAX200 compares against my Linksys EA9500v2 for 802.11ac clients.

Pretty much the same CPU and WiFi chipset as the RAX80 putting aside the extra 5Ghz band and 2.5Gbps port.With AC clients probably not much of gain over last gen, maybe better MU-MIMO support with the newer Broadcom chipset as the previous gen actually was pretty bad at it but that'd be about it.

I'd probably still consider the RAX120 the better one compared to the RAX200, QCA seems to do a better job with their wireless firmware stability , especially with open source support and in terms of ancillary features like MU, unless things changed from last gen.

Dong is a CNET guy, he does decent reviews. Not as in depth as we are used to with SNB but decent basic reviews with 2.4/5GHz long/short range and storage performance charts. Probably will have the RAX200 review next month.
https://dongknows.com/
His RAX120 Review:
https://dongknows.com/netgear-nighthawk-ax12-ax6000-rax120-wifi-6-router-review/
AX11000 Review: (Same hardware as the RAX200) (I'm assuming RAX200 may perform worse due to the antenna layout)
https://dongknows.com/asus-gt-ax11000-rog-rapture-gaming-router-review/

 

[thiggins]

It's not that I don't want to do reviews. But AX is still under heavy development and I'm trying to find test methods that show whether or not the alleged advantages of OFDMA really work. So far, I'm not having much luck.

I know some of you are focused on compute horsepower and using it to justify buying these science experiments. But I would still not buy any of these products at this point, and especially not top-of-line $$$$ tri-band routers.

 

[Internet Man]

It's not that I don't want to do reviews. But AX is still under heavy development and I'm trying to find test methods that show whether or not the alleged advantages of OFDMA really work. So far, I'm not having much luck.

I know some of you are focused on compute horsepower and using it to justify buying these science experiments. But I would still not buy any of these products at this point, and especially not top-of-line $$$$ tri-band routers.

Would it be worth initially testing AX routers using the current methods used for AC routers? Even if the AX features are not currently relevant, more and more draft AX routers are entering the market at price points that are competitive with mid to high-end AC devices. Lots of people want to know how they perform and even just having AC data would help.

 

[thiggins]

I hope to get some RvR data up at some point using AX200. But saw flaky results in first tests.

 

[sd70mac]

Would it be worth initially testing AX routers using the current methods used for AC routers? Even if the AX features are not currently relevant, more and more draft AX routers are entering the market at price points that are competitive with mid to high-end AC devices. Lots of people want to know how they perform and even just having AC data would help.

Not to mention the utility of testing wired throughput with Quality of Service, byte counters, and possibly filters all turned on.

 

[psychopomp1]

I have the RAx200 on pre-order from Amazon Germany with delivery by 17th Sept. I guess this announcement confirms that I should be getting it very soon. Was charged €450 including shipping to UK.

Will be fascinating to see how the RAX200 compares against my Linksys EA9500v2 for 802.11ac clients.

Urrgggghhh...delayed again. Amazon.de are saying they've got no idea when they expect to receive the RAX200 in stock.

@thiggins
Are you able to find out from Netgear an exact release date for the RAX200?
cheers

 

[thiggins]

Not to mention the utility of testing wired throughput with Quality of Service, byte counters, and possibly filters all turned on.

Wired throughput testing is not a priority at this point. All routers, especially high-end ones, provide gigabit wire-speed throughput. And, from my last round of tests, they seem to have figured out how to do that with Qos, etc. enabled.

Maybe VPN performance will be improved by more powerful processors. But I don't test that anyway.

 

[RMerlin]

It's not that I don't want to do reviews. But AX is still under heavy development and I'm trying to find test methods that show whether or not the alleged advantages of OFDMA really work. So far, I'm not having much luck.

Do manufacturers have any tests methods of their own which they could share with you? I assume they must have some kind of test procedure to at least determine if those esoteric features do work properly or not.

I hope to get some RvR data up at some point using AX200. But saw flaky results in first tests.

Maybe reporting such flaky results is what the market might need to be convinced to stay away from these lab experiments, even if a retest might be required 6-12 months later to determine if things have improved, or if "nope, still sucks".

it might take you off the Chrismast card list of some manufacturers, but I doubt you'd lose much sleep over that

 

[thiggins]

Do manufacturers have any tests methods of their own which they could share with you? I assume they must have some kind of test procedure to at least determine if those esoteric features do work properly or not.

I am in conversations with multiple vendors discussing this, yes. It's a work in progress.

 

[David William]

Thanks for the information; I need suggestion on WiFi 6. I thought posting here will be high-jacking the thread and it's against the terms so I create thread here: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/should-i-upgrade-to-wifi-6-router.59032/

The question should I upgrade to wifi 6 router or use the extender with my existing AC router?
Connecting the new wifi 6 extender with wired connection!

 

[Krisbi]

This with PoE+ input plus wall mountable. Why do some verndors (Asus, Netgear, TP-Link) produce high end wifi access points for consumers, but only medium devices for business...

 

[psychopomp1]

Dong is a CNET guy, he does decent reviews. Not as in depth as we are used to with SNB but decent basic reviews with 2.4/5GHz long/short range and storage performance charts. Probably will have the RAX200 review next month.
https://dongknows.com/
His RAX120 Review:
https://dongknows.com/netgear-nighthawk-ax12-ax6000-rax120-wifi-6-router-review/
AX11000 Review: (Same hardware as the RAX200) (I'm assuming RAX200 may perform worse due to the antenna layout)
https://dongknows.com/asus-gt-ax11000-rog-rapture-gaming-router-review/

Dong has done a review for the RAX200 and according to his tests, it comes out at the top for both wifi 6 and wifi 5 clients on the 5ghz band. Can't wait to receive my RAX200!



https://dongknows.com/netgear-rax20...tream-ax11000-tri-band-wi-fi-6-router-review/

 

[avtella]

It’s only a slight increase on the 5Ghz AX and on WiFi 5 clients the RAX120 had slightly better performance at range but in general pretty similar there... but RAX200 is much worse on the 2.4 Ghz and much worse in storage performance as well compared to the RAX120. The RAX120 with later firmware is actually getting better throughput on 5Ghz.

Honestly neither has the full fledged AX feature set and therefore literally money down the drain. In terms of a router with the exact same hardware, the RAX200 is $600 vs Asus AX11000 at $450 (Seen for as low as $400) which actually has more controls for fine tuning, much better traffic monitoring and a proper Open VPN client implementation for third party VPNs and also a longer warranty.

Thanks for the information; I need suggestion on WiFi 6. I thought posting here will be high-jacking the thread and it's against the terms so I create thread here: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/should-i-upgrade-to-wifi-6-router.59032/


The question should I upgrade to wifi 6 router or use the extender with my existing AC router?
Connecting the new wifi 6 extender with wired connection!

Don’t buy WiFi 6 routers at the moment as they are not full fledged AX in terms of having all the features. You are also going to end up effectively a beta tester because there are still firmware issues on the WiFi side for both the Qualcomm and Broadcom products. If you want reliability stick to AC for now unless you are an enthusiast and are willing to put up with issues.

If you really do want current gen AX I would recommend Qualcomm based RAX120 over the Broadcom based RAX80/200. Mainly because QCA generally seems to implement advertised features like MU-MIMO in a more working manner and you get proper open source support if that’s important to you.

 

[coxhaus]

For around $600 you can buy a very nice small business solution with multiple APs. It would be a better more reliable system which would probably last more years maybe not quite as wide of band at the very top. It would probably support more users as well.