From PC World: Netgear’s new Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart WiFi Router has features designed for the present and ready for the future—and a price tag to match. For a suggested $500 street price, the router packs in dozens of high-end Wi-Fi and networking features, including both 802.11ac and 802.11ad wireless, a 10Gbps port for network-attached storage, and the ability to bond two 1Gbps ethernet ports together. Netgear says the router will ship before the end of October.
The company threw in everything and the kitchen sink in this model, which is aimed at the high-end home user, despite its cost. As with some competing routers, like Google’s OnHub series, the Nighthawk X10 aims to be the only router needed, even in a large house with many people competing for high-speed usage, such as for gaming and 4K video streaming. It also acts as a media server, backup server (Windows only), networked and remote USB hub, and Internet file server.
The router incldues two Wi-Fi standards: 802.11ac, which is well known, widely deployed as a wireless local area network (WLAN), and compatible with practically every computer and mobile device sold; and 802.11ad, a long-in-development, super-high-speed, short-range or Personal Area Network (PAN) standard.
Netgear offers some of the most robust 802.11ac support on the market with what’s known as 4x4:4—that’s four receiving and four transmitting antennas with four separate spatial streams, each of which can carry the maximum raw data in the 2.4 and 5 gigahertz (GHz) radio bands. That’s 800Mbps for 2.4GHz and 1733Mbps for 5GHz in ideal circumstances. The 5GHz band can use substantially larger channels than 2.4GHz, accounting for the difference. Netgear says it put the Wi-Fi amplifiers in the tips of the antennas for better performance, but we’ll have to see whether that’s an advantage in real-world testing.
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