R6230

This router is a great buy that offers excellent "bang for your buck". For such a low price it is hard to find a router of this high a quality that has such an impressive feature set. Setup was easy after power cycling our cable modem, and the internal settings GUI is very intuitive and simple to use. This router supports Beamforming, dual band and has full gigabit ethernet. The range and signal penetration of the wireless N are excellent. (I recommend using that in place of the 5ghz ac when you need more range and penetration and don't mind sacrificing the speed of the 5ghz.) Using the 2.4ghz I can still watch HD YouTube videos while well outside a house with exterior brick walls. Thank you Netgear for providing such an outstanding product at an incredibly fair and honest price.Edit - I'd also like to mention that the NETGEAR email support has been fantastic. There was a web server error having to do with a link they emailed me not working; I reported it to their support team, and they worked on it several days until the problem was fully resolved. After support solved the problem and contacted the appropriate department, that department then emailed me a new link today which worked perfectly. I want to give a big shout-out to Jehan at NETGEAR for handling the case so well.

I bought this router to replace an aging cable modem/wireless router combo that had exceeded its usefulness. Actually - I kept the cable modem/wifi combo and just added this router to one of the ethernet ports and configured the wifi. Before replacing, wireless performance around my 2,300 sqft, split-level home was pretty bad. I actually called the cable company to complain and they had me walk through a few simple steps to confirm that the problem was with my wirelesss, not their cable modem service. In one of the poor performing areas before I upgraded to this router, I was getting 10MB down/1MB up from my wireless devices. After upgrading to this router, I am getting 100Mbps down and 10Mbps up, which is the rate of service that I'm paying for from my cable company. The router has lots of features that I probably won't use. It's great. We're not talking NSA quality security or anything - this is a Netgear device, after all. I'm very pleased, though. Netgear has made is very easy to set up and configure. Even though I'm a seasoned IT pro, I can see how their included "NetGenie" would make it super easy for someone without any experience to quickly get this router up and running. My only caution to non-techies would be to CHANGE THE DEFAULT admin password. The default is "password" and it doesn't prompt you to change it. Don't leave this default password - it's just begging for trouble. I'm totally satisfied with the price and performance of this device. Solved a big problem for me.

This review is for the AC1200, R6230 Router.While setting up, it gave indications that the wireless thru-put internet was iffy. Worked- over and eventually all came together and had internet (wireless and hardwired) to all devices. Some hours into the first day, some of the wireless-connected devices lost internet, but not network. Re-booted everything, changed some cables, and after several hours and lots of foul language from me, everything was back up and functioning. Three days into it, things were iffy off and on, with some devices getting errors/notifications of poor internet connection, but only wireless-connected devices--all wired (ethernet-connected) devices worked perfectly. Did some testing and found a 90% drop-off in internet speed (wireless vs ethernet)--tested with two different computers (one laptop and one desktop) using wireless then ethernet then wireless. Tests run with all devices within 36 inches of the router and used Ookla Speed test, all back-to-back. Huge degradation between ethernet and wi-fi speeds. Completely unacceptable. Returned (today) and Amazon is shipping me a replacement, which should arrive tomorrow. I'll install the new one and report back right here, adjusting my rating as necessary based on the results obtained with the replacement item,. More later...…9/12/2018....It's now "later", and I received the replacement router , installed and put it into service. Quite a difference from the first one---the installation was smooth, much quicker and with only one small problem which I believe I caused, so really, no problems. Up and running, all functions working, much less difference between wireless and wired speed and over-all, just what I had expected when I originally decided to replace my existing router with this model. I'm now (at least for the moment), quite happy with the device. I have had no problems, no indications of weak or unstable internet (as I had on the first one), so I'm raising my rating from one star to 4 stars, deducting one star based on the first one being bad out of the box. I'm also recommending this as a good buy, price-wise, notwithstanding my initial problems..If anything changes, I'll be baaaaack!!