the router of today for the home OF THE FUTURE
What's a "tri-band" router? In extremely rudimentary, lay terms, the Nighthawk has the strength of three routers. It can handle three times the number of connections a single-band router ever could (presumably), yet all the devices are able to "see" one another and play nice together. So, yeah, it's expensive. It's quite possible, in fact, that you don't really even need a tri-band router.
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And then there's us.
I just walked through our apartment; between my husband and me, I count 25 web-enabled devices. That number doesn't include light bulbs. Most of these gadgets are connected to the Internet *at this moment.*
Our friends make fun of us because we have totally embraced the concept of the "Internet of Things." Besides the usual gadgets (iPads, phones, game consoles), we use a Nest thermostat, a Nest Cam, Philips Hue bulbs, an Amazon Echo on our kitchen countertop, and a Sonos.
Far from automating our home, we've instead created a TON of headaches for ourselves. We live in a waking nightmare. The "Internet of Things" is here, and it's miserable.
But by far the biggest hassle has been the simple fact that our trusty old Linksys router just could not handle the workload. When you have this many gadgets and gizmos connected to the 'net, it's pretty easy to bring the whole home infrastructure down. And when the wireless is down, there goes your fancy Sonos-equipped stereo, your home security, your thermostat.
After a couple years of frustration, my husband and I agreed to go with a beefier router. At that point, we didn't care if we paid through the nose for one. Initially we went with a top pick from Wirecutter (which is a tech review site that is almost always right about everything). And, not to disparage Wirecutter here, but the router we ended up with was EVEN MORE MISERABLE. Maybe we just had too much stuff connected to it? We tweaked the router's settings, upgraded its firmware, downgraded it again, and ultimately returned it after maybe a week—and we rarely return anything, okay.
Desperate, I took to the Internet for advice. About a jillion of my friends (all of whom work in tech) endorsed the Netgear Nighthawk without reservation. It was almost unanimous. A lot of folks were really passionate about this! So I overnighted one.
Twenty-five devices connected simultaneously? No problem. In the month+ that we've had a Nighthawk, it hasn't needed to be restarted once. It lives in a closet. I never look at it. I don't even know it's here. I'm sure the UI is terrible but I've rarely needed to use it, since it worked out-of-the-box. We live in a city, halfway up a high-rise building, and we can still get a signal from downstairs on the street. Beat that.
Sitting here, I just ran a speed test, and on my wireless connection I'm getting 58.37 Mbps download speeds—not too shabby, considering we pay for 50. (Never mind there are literally 200 other wireless routers in our building!) I barely remember that Netflix and Hulu used to stutter and stagger. Multiplayer gaming connections don't drop or lag. Great stuff.
Anything more than $100 is a HUGE investment in a router, I feel; anything non-commercial over $200 is probably criminal. But the Netgear Nighthawk really works for us, especially when literally nothing else would do. For that alone, it's worth it.
I hope I don't need to buy another router for many years.
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