STACK #139 May 2016

TECH FEATURE

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Next-gen Nighthawk

Are you part of a bustling home and on the prowl for a new router that’ll give you insane speeds and a longer range?What about one that looks – and runs – like the Enterprise ? The NETGEAR Nighthawk X8 - R8500 AC5300 SmartWi-Fi Router is a great place to start.

T he Nighthawk X8 refers to itself as three separate, dedicated Wi-Fi outlets for your devices to connect to; theoretically, if you’re running three different devices with three different modes of Wi-Fi connectivity, they can all do their thing without impairing the connection of the others. The router uses a feature known as Smart Connect to optimise and intelligently assign each device to the band best-suited. You can stream a 4K movie to the Smart TV in the loungeroom, while your son starts his road to Challenger on League of Legends in his bedroom, and your daughter Tri-band, but don’t let that confuse you. All it means is that the router offers

TECH

Skypes with her boyfriend in the

kitchen; it’s good to see antisocial is the new social. The Nighthawk X8’s dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) is perfect for

optimising which devices should attain the best connection to the net. This means that those streaming or gaming online will maintain the steadiest connection, however it doesn’t jeopardise the connection of the other devices. Clever, innit? As far as speed goes, how does 5.3gb of data per second sound? Granted, that’s the combined speed on offer, but that’s still ridiculous. The Nighthawk X8 also has 6 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Ports, as opposed to the usual 4, but the ability to aggregate two of these ports to your NAS will allow much faster file transfers and downloads. The Nighthawk X8 includes industry-first Active Antennas, incorporating Wi-Fi amplifiers

router's wireless range is boosted to extremes that, until

in the top of the device's four external antennas, whilst still retaining the existing amplifiers in their normal location on the router motherboard itself. With four internal – as well as four external – amplified antennas, the lower drop-out rates, almost non-existent lag, and ridiculously fast download speeds

recently, seemed impossible. One of the most intriguing aspects of the X8 R8500 is its inbuilt cloud storage capabilities. Simply plug your USB (2.0 or 3.0 – it has both) storage device directly into the router itself, download the ReadyCLOUD mobile app (or use the web portal), and you have immediate access to your files anywhere, anytime – yeah, it’s really that easy. With lower drop-out rates and extremely fast download speeds, the NETGEAR Nighthawk X8 - R8500 Smart Wi-Fi Router is perfect for those hunting for one of the best you can buy.

MAY 2016

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