It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No, It’s the Netgear Nighthawk Smart Router to Save the Day!

So I have a slightly embarrassing story to tell about our experience with our home internet connection.

Netgear Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router received.

Recently we received for review the Netgear Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router and it solved a big problem for us. Over the past year, I have called my internet provider multiple times because we would have moments where there would be glitches or 2 – 10 second outages of our internet signal. That is annoying when you lose your home WiFi signal on your laptop or tablet, but it’s much worse when your TV blanks out on you!

I set up yet another visit from a tech, and after he was here for a couple of minutes he asked how many devices are connected to the home WiFi. I started rattling them off and named more than 10, then when he went to look at my router settings thru the computer and saw that there were 26 currently connected and 38 total existing connections (friends, family, etc).  Well, our router, like many base routers provided by your internet provider is set up to support 10 devices. We were nearly tripling that and that was the cause for our sporadic WiFi service.

Many people think that all wireless routers are the same, well if you are a family with a number of WiFi devices, or if you like to stream movies or gaming online, it is a must to upgrade your router.

When I opened the box for the Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router, I was a little surprised. It is still your average router size, but the first impression of the Nighthawk was very fun. I took it out of the box and it instantly reminded me of the Stealth Fighter, the super streamlined, invisible to radar military plane. The Nighthawk router has similar angles and definitely earns the cool name just with the appearance.

Let’s talk about the technical stuff real quick and then get into the applications. The Nighthawk router has a Dual-Core 1GHz Processor which allows it to act “smart.” It will prioritize your connections and downloads and uploads, and wow is the connection fast. In addition to that;

– The Nighthawk uses Beamforming+ to connect to your devices

– Includes 3 external antennas for a amplified signal

– Has 2 USB ports (one 3.0 and one 2.0) – which you can use ReadySHARE – allows you to share your printers and USB hardrives across your network  (think having your music on one portable hard drive, connected to      your router and all your devices could have access to it)

– Security – Supports VPN, Guest Network, WPA/WPA2-PSK, Double Firewall protection and Denial of Service – if all this is a foreign language to you, just realize it’s top of the line and very secure!

The Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router will accelerate your WiFi experience. Our experience with the Router has improved our streaming dramatically, Netflix and YouTube load so fast, we don’t have enough time to get back from getting our snacks before the show starts. This is due to the Beamforming connection for coverage of the whole home in HD. The Nighthawk is smart and will prioritize your home WiFi experience which is great for shows and music.

The other area we noticed a HUGE improvement was with our mobile connections and laptop connections. We are able to get coverage outside, where our old router wouldn’t reach that far. The amplifiers and external antennas increase the range significantly, and like I said before, it’s fast. The other bonus of the Nighthawk is that it can make any printer AirPrint compatible, which is great for printing from your iPhone or iPad.

The last major application is for you gamers. Online gaming is so popular now that you do not want to be the one with the slow connection. The Nighthawk assures you will have all the speed you need, up to 1900 Mbps. This router will automatically prioritize your Xbox One/360 (or other device) to ensure lag free gaming. We didn’t have a chance to try this one because we aren’t really into gaming (I would love to be, but I would need more hours in the day), but if it’s anything like the quality of the streaming, you will be impressed.

So now that you know some of the limitations of your current home router, and once you consider that the number of wireless devices in your home is just going to keep expanding, the Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router is the solution to ensure trouble free, accelerated WiFi in the home and keep everyone happy. Our 38 total WiFi connections are no problem for the Nighthawk because it is able to prioritize the connections to keep everyone at top speed.

Netgear makes the Nighthawk specifically for streaming and gaming, they also have a large number of other networking related products you can check out.

We have phones, tablets, laptops, game systems, Rokus, TV,  printers and a couple of other wireless devices, how many do you have? I bet you are missing a couple when you count them!