Netgear R9000 Nighthawk X10 Smart WiFi Router

11 reviews for Netgear R9000 Nighthawk X10 Smart WiFi Router

1. Rated 5 out of 5

   LoveAmazing – September 15, 2017

   PROS
   I have been a fan of Netgear now for so many years I have lost count. As they improved their routers and made them faster, I upgraded right along with the newer available technology. I’ve watched, over the years, their install and set up capabilities improve with each new product release. All that to say, the X10 has NOT been a disappointment. By far, this was the easiest, fastest and non problematic set up ever.

   That’s not the end of it…oh the speed of this one!!!!! Not just noticeable, but obviously noticeable at the very first email downloaded as well as webpage search. WOW!!!! If you want nearly instantaneous speed, then this is the router for you.

   But that’s not all. This is the first time I’ve really been able to fully enjoy my Plex Server!!!! I’ve been a subscriber to Plex now for a while, but never really had the horsepower in my NAS device to properly enjoy the wonderful look, feel, organization and all that goes with Plex. (Still looking for more from Plex, but they are on their way to an even more beautiful product.)

   A Few MINOR Cons
   I had hoped that the 5G channel would have been a bit stronger. It suffices, but had anticipated a bit more coverage in my home. It is over 5,000 sq ft. It covers most areas, but I do have a few ‘weak’ spots of coverage. I’ve decided to go with a Wi-Fi range extender to get absolute full coverage in the outer corners. NETGEAR has a model that will give me the continued speed I’m totally after with my Wi-Fi network.

   The X10 is a bit pricey, and I believe it is at the top of NETGEAR’s offerings for this product category. I admit I waited for a price decrease before springing for it, but it is well worth the money, especially if you have a fast ISP like I have.

   Don’t get carried away with the 60 GHZ channel capability. I’m not sure what device can use this capability, but I suppose it’s on the horizon and those of us with this router will be ready to utilize those speeds when available.

   Bottom Line
   If you are on the fence, go for it and if like me, you won’t be disappointed.
2. Rated 5 out of 5

   Mr Irwin – January 21, 2018

   I bought this router for a six primary reasons:
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   a ) Strong performance when handling a large number of connected devices
   b ) Ethernet Port Aggregation via 802.3ad (LACP)
   c ) Strong WiFi performance (though there are competing routers which may be a bit better)
   d ) Six Ethernet ports on the router’s switch
   e ) Active antennas
   f ) Dynamic Quality of Service (QoS)

   For anyone with MINIMAL experience with networking equipment, or general networking knowledge, I have some advice for you.
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   1. Download and read the User Guides and Documentation for this router (see link) https://www.netgear.com/support/product/R9000.aspx#docs
   2. Follow the step by step directions and pay attention to any WARNING messages in the documentation
   3. Ideally you’ll want to place the X10 in a room that is in the center of your house but if you need to play it in an edge room in your house then pair it with the NETGEAR Nighthawk Mesh X6S like I did to prevent WiFi dead spots (mostly applies to larger homes or people looking for the best performance).
   4. Backup your settings on the X10 once configured (it’s just a good idea).
   5. Once everything is set up, download the latest firmware (I did this via the web-interface, it’s easy).

   A little more detail below
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   For my personal setup I started by downloading the manuals at NETGEAR’s website for this router. I read the manuals just to make sure I did things in order because every company does things slightly different and it’s good to know how your particular hardware is meant work (and when it’s ready to do things). I mapped out my network (just draw a diagram of your house, the locations of your networking hardware, and connection type) and I determined where I would place my X10 router (and the X6S extender I purchased separately). I connected my modem and router and then the primary PC in my home using cat6a cable and performed initial setup of the router. Once the router was connected, in a working state, and ready for modifications, I logged into the web interface and I modified the settings that applied to me (enabling QoS, changing the default password for the router’s login page, enabling Ethernet port aggregation, setting priorities for devices, downloading firmware, etc.). Then I connected the X6S extender to this router via two NETGEAR Powerline 1200 Mbps (PLP1200) ports and cat6a cable. I set the X6S up in access-point mode (you can do extender mode but access point mode will give you the best performance in most cases if the wiring in your house is good). I ran tests in every room of my house and my WiFi signal was full-bars at all locations and the speed test results confirmed that my WiFi performance was consistent throughout the house (the loss or gain was NOT meaningful). This router is able to handle a large number of connected devices without slow down (from the router, you may have slowdown due to high bandwidth usage but that is not the fault of the router, that is a limitation of your internet connection). Today at my house we had 18 devices running on this router and it ran without any issues. I have had 0 disconnects, or sudden drops in performance (WiFi or wired) from any devices connected to this router.

   Simply put, if you want a great router then buy this one but make sure you learn how to get the most out of it before buying it, otherwise, there are other similar routers with a few less features that might save you some money and fir your needs better. Also, at least for larger homes or people looking for the very best WiFi experience, pair this with the X6S (and place them in ideal locations) and if you want to go crazy like I did set up a power-line Ethernet connection between the X10 and the X6S using cat6a Ethernet cabling so the X6S can be run in access-point mode instead of extender mode.

   I love this router and I hope it lasts me 5 years like my previous router (which was still in working condition but couldn’t handle the processing requirements of my household). If I had to be critical of NETGEAR for anything it would be that a 1 year warranty is simply laughable for a router at this price point. This company needs improve in this area in particular. I have had good interactions with NETGEAR customer support and I plan on staying a NETGEAR customer in the future but a 1 year warranty is a joke and a premium router deserves a premium warranty. I hope that eventually NETGEAR puts a strong warranty behind all of their products but especially their high end products and learns from companies like Samsung (who I buy all of my SSD’s from partly because of their 10 year warranty on the 850 Pro) because a strong warranty is a way for the company to say that they believe in the reliability of the product and NETGEAR doesn’t do that currently. Other than the abysmal warranty, this router has been flawless.
3. Rated 5 out of 5

   ElecEnthusiast – March 12, 2018

   Day one…. Amazed! GUI not great but I can figure it out.

   Setup to my original network IP and everything worked without touching it. My wife has been having issues with her last 2 iPhones using too much cellular data and dropping wifi when in bedroom upstairs on opposite side of house. On my Android I never had this problem and usually get 30Mbps. This X10 is on first floor outside wall in a solid wood computer desk cabinet. I have 2 outer antenna pointed upstairs and forward. Getting 215 mbps down and 22 up. First time ever seeing paid for speeds on WiFi. Unheard of. Previous router Asus rt-ac66u.
4. Rated 5 out of 5

   Matthew Hamby – June 3, 2018

   After my 3-year old router continually dropped connection when there were more than a dozen devices connected, I knew it was time to upgrade. I picked the nighthawk specifically because of the comments by others about how it was able to handle a high number of devices. So far, it’s living up to everything – I used to be able to set my clock by when I’d start dropping: as family members came home and their phones, tablets, laptops, or chomebooks started automatically connecting, my router would start dropping connections. I was having to go around and unplug devices just so I could stream netflix, work from home, or browse the news. In the 4 days I’ve had the nighthawk, not a single dropped connection. The signal strength is phenomenal – I spent a day in the garage streaming pandora while having a garage sale and had no signal issues through multiple walls and even upstairs. The nighthawk is pricey, but I wanted future proofing. Setup was a breeze – unboxed and online within 10 minutes (time for my modem to reboot and the firmware on the router to update). The interface for the router administration is clunky, but all the right options and sections are there. I had issues with slow speeds, but Netgear’s customer support was very easy to deal with. After going through several options, they determined I had a defective router, so Amazon sent me a new one and I was good to go (even with the slow speeds, it wasn’t dropping connections and the signal remained excellent). I can’t hold this against them, and their very quick resolution keeps this a 5-star review.
5. Rated 5 out of 5

   Candle Harlot – December 14, 2018

   Backbone to every household’s wifi is first fast enough bandwidth to include fast enough cable modem from your ISP next is the wifi router. This router has no issues with 4K video, gaming, vr gaming or torrent downloads. Combined wireless speeds up to 7.2 Gbps. It also has no problem with multi-level homes using 802.11ac and the new 802.11ad (60Ghz). Quad stream (4 data streams per wifi band). It has a 1.7GHz processor 4-CPU Cores. There’s 6 gigabit LAN ports. Ability to link aggregate two Gigabit LAN ports for faster file transfers. 10G LAN SFP+ port for fast NAS access. 2 new technologies in faster information transfer so this is definitely an outward investment into your household. I’ve had no issues with mine. In fact your cable modem will crap out before this thing does. I only recommend using a Cat7,7a, or 8 to connect your cable modem to your router. Connecting a cable modem to this router with a slow Cat standard will most likely slow it down.
6. Rated 2 out of 5

   Chad – December 18, 2018

   All routers have a lease system for releasing IP addresses every 24 hours and what happens which this device is it doesn’t release to every device it’s supposed to support over 200 devices at the same time, however, we’ve found that supporting 25 is a struggle for this device. The support on this is terrible, reset is a constant answer from the support crew from netgear, it’s really sad. When you update information on the device to keep it running properly, you end up losing that information because of the sheer number of times you have to reset the thing for it to work properly. This is for gaming, but apparently netgear didn’t really tell the device to allow gaming stats such as adjusted MTU and channel sensing so that you can find what your neighbors are using in order to use your own channel to reduce overlap and signal loss. Please update the firmware so that it will do these things and properly release IP addresses. I even disconnects hardwired devices so it’s definitely not a wireless signal loss issue!
7. Rated 1 out of 5

   Anima The Aeon – January 11, 2019

   This thing is bulky. The antennas are decently large. The interface for this router is in typical Netgear fashion and if you are used to a netgear router before, this won’t be any different. Not terribly hard to navigate. The LAN ports on this guy are fantastic. Don’t have hickups and I played Xbox One X plenty with it. The huge issue I have with this device is the wifi. The wifi continuously disconnects devices. I have NEST cameras outside and they disconnect randomly a few times during the day. Usually at night. This router is literally within 5 feet of one of the cameras on the other side of the wall and it could’t keep the signal to it. Once in awhile I would have to let my TV even re-establish a connection to this router. I returned the first thinking it was a lemon and got a replacement. The replacement within the first 24 hours disconnected my wifi devices. Sometimes it’s the Alexa Spots or my Ring doorbell or my NEST cameras. My Xbox and PC are hardwired and never had any issues. Half the time, I would need to reset my entire network config to get it to work again. I even tried disabling QoS and smartconnect. I went as far as pinging to determine the best MTU number. Nothing helped or worked. I’m not reaching out to support for a device that costs this much and doesn’t work as advertised out of box. I shouldn’t need to adjust settings JUST for the sheer fact of keeping my devices connected to it wirelessly. For a router that costs this much, it’s not worth the hassle. It’s not worth the investment. For all it offers as far as wifi signals and speed and blah blah, it can’t get the basics of letting devices keep a connection.
8. Rated 1 out of 5

   Carl Engman – October 26, 2019

   I got this router about 6 or 7 months ago. I worked through some amateur UI to lock down my network with MAC filtering and things worked ok for a while. I went to put a new device on my network and the device access page was gone. I couldn’t configure or add any device to the network. Looking at the support page (which was a joke), a number of other people had this problem over *years* without any real resolution. This was after the 90 day support, do if I wanted any response from Netgear I’d have to pay for it. A few users had tried to reset the router to the original factory settings and reload everything from scratch. When I tried the reset option, the router bricked entirely.

   It’s fast enough if you don’t want to do anything special (like secure your network). I can’t speak to how long it will last though, since mine didn’t last very long.
9. Rated 1 out of 5

   wanger77 – March 21, 2020

   I hate this thing. Had the Orbi, which worked well for about a year until their firmware update made it unreliable. Tried Google Mesh, which was slow AND did the same eventually. This one – I have been fighting this thing since I got it. The DCHP constantly boots devices off and refuses to allow them to connect. I have about 55 devices, and eventually I had to assign a static IP reservation for every device to get some sense or reliability out of this thing. Still, I probably have to reboot it every other week as it won’t let a device on. Also the WiFi speed will fluctuate – sometimes down to 50mbps – it typically gets 130mbps nearby, which isn’t good for a router of this price. And a router that is friggin HUGE and is more like a drone than a home device. I didn’t act fast enough on the window to return this piece of crap and now stuck with it.
10. Rated 4 out of 5

    C’est Moi – April 4, 2020

    I am not impressed by general tech reviewers anymore who’s always super impressed by the specsheet without having a device run through its paces in realistic settings which also include the experience of firmware upgrades and changing conditions where they operate.

    I’ve read many bad reviews of this device. I found this device to be great. In fact I got it for $450 soon after it came out, and lately I’ve seen it go for as high as $250. It’s still receiving updates and unlike tp-link it’s not abandoned for a v2 of the device. Netgear makes solid devices. Yet, I can confirm the internet rumours, they do give up at the software and support level.

    The default firmware is very difficult to use (I didn’t deduct a point for this). I deducted a full point because of 4 things, 1) it doesn’t allow for a proper view of what devices it’s serving. I’ve also seen many devices go unreported. The “Attached Devices” page is less than useless. Best way to find out connected devices was a work around, trying to add a static IP lease to a device it gives a readable list, yet this is incredibly inadequate 2) it can only handle and allow 1 subnet (I am now wiser and know that I can get a much more powerful router from mikrotik that can handle many while allowing a lot more freedom to experiment) 3) while it can do VLAN, there are some weird restrictions on it rendering it unusuable for use as a VLAN configured switch in AP mode 4) it’s generally advised to keep router firmware up to date, but in the case of Netgear I found it to not be a great idea. It appears Netgear from time to time releases firmware that can brick a device. It may be best to move onto voxel’s or another 3rd party firmware (especially after warranty expires). The 3rd party firmwares although not always at the same version level, seems to be more stable and less risky.

    So 4 big problem for a pricy device and yet why do I deduct only 1 point? Mainly because they do market this product for home use. For home use it’s quite a powerful plug and play beast. Most home users will be extremely satisfied with the features and performance. Wifi signal is plenty strong. The 2.4GHz signal covers whole house top to basement floor of a combined 3000 sq ft. 5GHz has some deadspots as expected.

    I found ALL features of this home NAT gateway beast to be useful and useable EXCEPT the AD wigig signal. I couldn’t find a way to make use of it. I simply had to turn it off so I don’t have unnecessary crowding of RF. The 10G SFP+ port is sweet. I found many decent priced transceivers to use with it.

    On a last note, this was going to get me into becoming a Netgear household and then I stumbled onto the nightmare of dealing with their customer service for a different product (Arlo). So I’ve now given up on Netgear for my future home needs. However this beast has been performing beyond my expectations for almost 4 years now, serving 100s of devices with very minor hiccups. I still recommend this device to a new customer who can have this for $250-$300. Keep in mind the AD wigig will be useless and it will be a beast of a plug and play home router. It’s very much comparable to the latest AX wifi routers which are sold at a much higher price point. Also this one has a 10G SFP+ port, which makes it only one of 2 home wifi routers that I’m aware of having this feature.
11. Rated 2 out of 5

    Indy Reviewer – June 6, 2020

    Netgear’s X10 Nighthawk A7200 (R9000) is a beast of a router. It also has beastly software that means you should avoid it if possible. 2 stars.

    The hardware on this thing is near enterprise level and it’s just massive (along with enough LEDs to brighten up any room you’ve got it in.) This shows up in a couple ways. First, this was purchased to provide processing for smart devices that simply overwhelmed another older router, and that it did well as there was a noticeable improvement in devices being located and on/off/monitored. What more people will notice is that it does get closer to ideal throughput levels than most other routers – a 700 MB/s internet gateway will provide around 550 MB/s at about 20-30 feet, and even at 50 feet you’re still getting 250-275 MB/s without mesh. This is a substantial improvement over previous routers, and if you’re remote enough to set up a 160 Mhz channel you can probably do even better than that.

    Unfortunately, there’s a downside. Most of the reviews here date from the early release of the router when it had all sorts of bugs that took a year to fix – but were eventually; it’s fair to question their applicability. However, to my chagrin I couldn’t get VOIP or a couple other devices to work, and in doing some digging there was a major issue in very late 2019 with QoS that seems to have spilled over into other aspects, including port forwarding. There was finally a hot fix for the QoS issue in April 2020, but it doesn’t seem as if it’s addressed just nuking what it allows through – even if it’s DMZ’d (which is a terrible idea – I’ll give Netgear credit for showing access attempts in the log).

    So, there’s unresolved issues with this even 3+ years after it came out, and taking almost 5 months to fix the self-created bug is simply unacceptable – especially with only a single year’s warranty on this. Despite the hardware, that’s a 2 star product and it’s been returned in the last day of the window since it’s already bad enough.