Review NETGEAR RAXE500 Nighthawk Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router Reviewed

[heffeque]

The RAXE500 is a superb router. Been testing mine for a couple of weeks now (replaced Orbi RBK852 mesh) and much to my surprise, this single router is covering my entire small concrete home and out to the garage (where previous single routers never reached previously).

I have well over 40 devices connected including multiple 4K streaming and it has performed great! Haven’t rebooted once and all my devices (mostly Apple) have stayed connected and are getting full speeds in every room/location.

Another factor is my IoT devices are performing as expected. No unresponsiveness or disconnects. Don’t let the price scare you away.

I tried the Asus ROG AXE11000 a while back and it required constant reboots and my clients kept calling off repeatedly and getting slow speeds when 20 feet away from router. Disappointing.

Quick question: if Asus' stability issues were completely resolved, would you still recommend avoiding the Asus and getting the Netgear? (just out of curiosity)

 

[Killhippie]

Does it have DoH over HTTPS like Merlins firmware, I saw the RAX70 recetly got that in an update. I have a RAX120 v1 there is no difference in v2 sadly, but it blocks Apples Encrypted DNS so I need to get a router that allows this feature, Asus routers seem the way but my 120 covers sucjh a huge aarea with its wifi the 500 would be tempting, but with no QoS or advanced features its a lot of money for not much router really, I mean the 120 never got a decent QoS I use it because of the wifi coverage but cheaper routers have more features. I would be tempted of it had DoH or DoT and a good QoS as my 120 is probably not going to get these updates.

 

[Poseidon]

10 months later and the Nighthawk RAXE500 is still running like a BEAST! The one thing that impresses me the most is that my household streams all of out TV content over 4 Apple TV 4K devices (sometimes 3-4 simultaneously) and not a single time has the video paused/buffered/pixelated or such. Not to mention exceptional, stable performance from all my IoT devices.

I’ve tried the ASUS GT-AX6000 and previously the ROG GT-AXE11000, because I’m a sucker for the latest and greatest toys, and while my handheld devices worked as expected - my TV streaming was subpar. That to me was the ultimate deal breaker with ASUS routers (besides their unstable firmware).

I’m on a 500 mbps plan and my WIRELESS speeds on the RAXE500 are always well over 552 mpbs even while streaming and gaming.

Also I know Netgear gets flack for the simplicity of their gui settings menu but I think it’s great because less things to tinker with means less probability of something going wrong. I love Netgear’s ‘set it and forget it’ approach. I don’t need countless settings options to configure and figure out what each mean and do.

Only thing I’ve played around with is setting up Cloudflare DNS servers, enabling IPv6 and selecting a DFS channel for the 5GHZ band. Everything else on default settings.

 

[L&LD]

Depending on how long ago you tested the GT-AX6000, you may want to test it again. Greatly improved with the latest RMerlin 386.7_2 release.

And remember, just because there are knobs to turn, you shouldn't always turn them.

 

[Sachb]

I know this is a very old thread, but I don't understand why the ASUS GT-AXE11000 was placed on the 1st rank for WiFi 6E routers.
The Netgear RAXE500 deserves the crown for this.
I have both, Asus GT-AXE11000 and Netgear RAXE500, if you're doing a range test, the Netgear is a much better at further distances than the ASUS.

The throughput on Netgear RAXE500 compared to ASUS GT-AXE11000 is higher.

 

[Sachb]

The RAXE500 is a superb router. Been testing mine for a couple of weeks now (replaced Orbi RBK852 mesh) and much to my surprise, this single router is covering my entire small concrete home and out to the garage (where previous single routers never reached previously).

I have well over 40 devices connected including multiple 4K streaming and it has performed great! Haven’t rebooted once and all my devices (mostly Apple) have stayed connected and are getting full speeds in every room/location.

Another factor is my IoT devices are performing as expected. No unresponsiveness or disconnects. Don’t let the price scare you away.

I tried the Asus ROG AXE11000 a while back and it required constant reboots and my clients kept calling off repeatedly and getting slow speeds when 20 feet away from router. Disappointing.

It's much better than the ASUS GT-AXE11000 for sure, but I found a bug on it. If you're using USB 3.0 on the router with SMB a.k.a SAMBA file transfers on Android, you'll notice buggy slow performance with it.

Edit: In other words, Readyshare is buggy, let's hope Netgear fixes this in their next firmware. This problem seems to be on Android.

 

[Newfie]

I know this is a very old thread, but I don't understand why the ASUS GT-AXE11000 was placed on the 1st rank for WiFi 6E routers.
The Netgear RAXE500 deserves the crown for this.
I have both, Asus GT-AXE11000 and Netgear RAXE500, if you're doing a range test, the Netgear is a much better at further distances than the ASUS.

The throughput on Netgear RAXE500 compared to ASUS GT-AXE11000 is higher.

Perhaps it’s there due to the date it was tested and the firmware at that time.