WOW - triples the speed at the far end of my apartment. I purchased the NightHawk AC 5300, X8 about two months ago and was blown away by its power to reach the far end of my apartment without an extender. Prior to this I had the very well respected Apple Extreme and an Apple extender to get that far.
But as the weeks went by I became frustrated because although the Router kept me connected, it was very slow. I had to settle for a 2.4 connection and even that was sometimes pretty slow on my tablet and on my phone. I finally gave in to my craving to get the extender to go with the very good router.
It has made an enormous difference and has surprising reach. At least half of my house now gets a stronger signal from the extender than from the router itself. Netgear's instructions say that an amber light means an ok signal. I kept wandering all around trying to get a blue light for both 2.4 and 5, which would be an "excellent" signal.
I would suggest not spending a lot of time trying to get blue lights - when I finally gave in to one amber and one blue, I discovered that the amber signal was more than "ok" - it was 2+ times faster. And then tonight, I suddenly found that both 2.4 and 5 were blue. Not sure I will always get such a good signal, even on the 5 band, but it's held all night. I would suggest getting the best amber you can (if you can't get blue), and let it settle in. Also, check your speed, you might be very happy with amber.
If I could, I would have docked half a star for the poor placement of the power cord into the extender. It actually prevents me from placing the lowest antenna where I'd like. But overall performance was too good to dock a whole star for something this minor by comparison.
I also found it a pleasure to set up with another Netgear product. The extender and router found each other within a minute and contact was stabilized in another 20 or so seconds.
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
