At a Glance: Netgear XRM570 Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router and Mesh WiFi System Review
Setting up a home Wi-Fi network can be a quick and easy experience, but unfortunately, sometimes it just isn’t that simple. You may encounter dead zones in your home that aren’t getting good reception due to interference or your signal simply not reaching far enough.
Netgear’s XRM570 Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi router is a new high-end networking system that tackles this problem. The router comes with an EX7700 range extender, which allows you to set up a mesh networking environment to extend your network coverage over a larger area.
Specs & Design
The main unit in this networking system is the Netgear XR500. Don’t get confused; this review is discussing Netgera’s XRM570 mesh networking system, but the XRM570 comprises two existing Netgear products including the XR500. Technically, if you already own an XR500 router, you could buy the EX7700 range extender and set up the exact same network.
The XR500 router itself is fairly powerful with support for a dual-band 4×4 802.11ac Wi-Fi network. The router also has a dual-core 1.7GHz processor and 512MB of RAM to help it process Internet traffic and manage network resources.
The Netgear EA7700 is also a relatively high-end networking solution. Its peak bandwidth is somewhat lower than the XR500, but it can operate on three network bands simultaneously. Using both devices together, you can cover an area up to 5,000 square feet.
Benchmarks
Our sister site PCMag tested one of these networking systems against competing solutions from Nokia, Merku, and TP-Link. Starting things off with a 5GHz throughput test, the Netgear XRM570 returned strong performance results. At a distance of 30 feet, it beat out all of the other tested products by a wide margin.
The Netgear XRM570 also led the pack in the next serious of tests. It was almost tied by the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus when tested at 30 feet, but at close proximity, none of the competition stood a chance.
Conclusion
Currently, you can get Netgear’s XRM570 system from Amazon for $374.19, which is down slightly from its MSRP of $399.99. But this networking solution appears to offer excellent performance from the test results, and it also can cover a wide area, which helps to eliminate dead zones around your home.
In general, I would recommend it as an excellent networking solution, but it should also be noted that routers that support the new 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard are already available on the market. You may not have a computer that supports 802.11ax yet, but in the near future you might, and it may be better to consider a router that supports that new technology instead.
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