NETGEAR Releases $200 Nighthawk Gaming Router

[Julio Urquidi]

Powered by NetDuma’s DumaOS, a dual-core 1 GHz processor, and 128 MB Flash and 512 MB RAM, NETGEAR’s new dual-band Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR300 Wi-Fi Router includes several features catering to improve customers' overall gaming experience.

Features designed to minimize lag include a customizable gaming dashboard used to tweak the router’s controls, including QoS to prioritize gaming devices, Geo Filtering, and identifying bandwidth hogs with network monitoring, as well as other known features like Beamforming, VPN support, ReadySHARE Vault, and the Nighthawk app used for setup and remote management.

Aside from having a wireless maximum link rate of 1750 Mbps (450Mbps @2.4GHz and 1300Mbps@5GHz) , the XR300 includes four Gigabit LAN ports, a single Gigabit WAN port, and an unspecified USB port for file sharing.

Available next month, NETGEAR’s AC1750 Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR300 WiFi Router will round out the Nighthawk Pro Gaming Wi-Fi series’ bottom-end (same family as NETGEAR's AC2600 XR500 and AC7200 XR700) at an MSRP price of $199.99.

 

[Internet Man]

Interesting choice not to include MU-MIMO in a $200 router in 2019. That's a pretty good profit margin for Netgear if they're mostly reusing the same hardware that can be found in the Netgear R6400 v2 / Netgear R6700v3 taking out a USB 2.0 port and doubling the RAM to 512 MB to handle DumaOS. This is just speculation though.

 

[thiggins]

MU-MIMO inclusion would be primarily for marketing buzzword purposes. The conditions required to have it deliver measurable benefit are not commonly found in most users' networks.

 

[Internet Man]

MU-MIMO inclusion would be primarily for marketing buzzword purposes. The conditions required to have it deliver measurable benefit are not commonly found in most users' networks.

I was just thinking that it would be weird for Netgear to use old chips which don't support MU-MIMO but it probably just allows them to build the hardware at a lower cost while charging "gaming" level prices. It would also be weird if the device actually does support MU-MIMO without Netgear adding that buzzword to the box.

 

[thiggins]

It would also be weird if the device actually does support MU-MIMO without Netgear adding that buzzword to the box.

According to WikiDevi, both R6400 and R6700 use BCM4360, a 3x3 device that doesn't support MU-MIMO.

 

[Makaveli]

So looks like they are reusing BCM4709A0

should have put the BCM47094

1.4Ghz would have looked nice I would still buy this without Mu-Mimo.

However I now have a 1Gbps Fiber connection via PPPOE so would like to see the hardware acceleration numbers on it.

Heard good things about NetDuma’s DumaOS and it should be used on all of their customer routers their old firmwares are horrible.

 

[Internet Man]

According to WikiDevi, both R6400 and R6700 use BCM4360, a 3x3 device that doesn't support MU-MIMO.

Yeah. The R6700 v1 came out in 2014 and has received a few cost-reducing refreshes with a MediaTek design for v2 and a newer Broadcom CPU variant for v3. The first R6400 came out in 2015 and its v2 refresh added a newer Broadcom CPU. These are low-end devices which pre-date Broadcom's "successful" implementation of MU-MIMO so it makes sense to exclude MU-MIMO. It would be disappointing if Netgear used these old models as the base for its newest router at the $200 price point as they seem to have done.

So looks like they are reusing BCM4709A0

should have put the BCM47094

1.4Ghz would have looked nice I would still buy this without Mu-Mimo.

This really just seems to be a low-end device dressed up with gamer flair.