NETGEAR Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router (R7000P) - AC2300 Wireless Speed (up to 2300 Mbps) | Up to 2000 sq ft Coverage & 35 Devices | 4 x 1G Ethernet and 2 USB Ports | Armor Security (Renewed)

Useful.

As we added wifi devices we didnt think much about upgrading our ~6 year old router. We noticed a great price deal on this nighthawk router so we figured we should give it a try. Our ring camera system works way better with clearer video, and we can use our wifi devices both inside and outside our house which wasn't possible in the past. I would say the signal range increased by approxately 10 yards. Transfer speed also increased on our slow 50Mbs. There were times when speed test sould barely show 20 Mbs. I guess the old router could not keep up with the number of devices hooked up. Now were are solid around 50Mbs and that is what we like.

I have a rancher that when it was built the walls were filled with morter. If you know construction you know it's extremely hard to put a nail through those walls. That being said it is almost impossible to get a good WIFI in the basement. We have a finished basement with a theater room and we do a lot of streaming. Ever since installing this unit I am pleased to say our signal is nompinger spotty. Highly recommend!

I purchased this router renewed from Amazon. It arrived with stickers from NetGear stating it was one of their certified refurbished routers. It didn't have so much as a scratch or speck of dust on it.While I'm not someone who appreciates the ROG Gamer style of edgelord aesthetic, I do have a roommate who loves the design. It feels awfully bulky and the back antennas are looser than they should be, given the cost of the device. I do like the smart controls and am happy to be able to label and track devices that are accessing the network. Using the Smart Connection for our home network instead of the dual band connection has been great. Monitoring which devices are given 5G network priority and which are being allocated to the longer range 2.4 network has been appropriate and MUCH faster than the garbage Zytel 3000c CenturyLink moden/router that they'd stuck me with.I do not have children, but do enjoy that I can use Parental controls or the Nighthawk app to shut down unfamiliar devices. The ability to turn on and off a guest network is useful as well, since I can monitor and boot any devices that might be leeching.My biggest complaints are that there are no individually adjustable notifications for the Armor Protection side of the Nighthawk app. While I am planning to continue my subscription--spam blocking website AND BitDefender for up to 10 devices--I was overwhelmed by the over 50 notifications I was sent for span on just a single device. The device's owner is still learning about device security and was advised to run a malware and Win Defender scan. But I don't need a notification everytime an ad tries to come up on Manga Reader when he's reading a visual novel.Second, the WPS button. For the life of me, I have NO idea why it doesn't just say "WPS" underneath of the light on the front of the router that also acts as the WPS button. While it's a clever and streamlined design, instead of having a non-standard WPS button icon, just put "WPS" below it. Thankfully, there was a button map on the bottom of the router. But that's not instinctively where I would go to look for this information.Last, there's no easily configured whitelisting device utililty. I'm still working through how to whitelist only our household devices so that no other devices attempt to connect to the network. But I don't really have the patience for it after three days of solid troubleshooting between CenturyLink's garbage router and educating my roommates on the new router.Additonally, the range of this router compared to the stock CenturyLink router isn't even comparable. We live in a 1900's home with two floors and very thick plaster walls. So originally we had the stock modem/router combo and one of the higher end NetGear extenders upstairs. With the Nighthawk the extender hasn't been as necessary, but I still have it for when I want to shut the thick doors to my office or bedroom. I will say that doing a factory reset of the existing router and NetGear's confusing online instructions for how to set up the extender through the Nighthawk app were maddeningly unhelpful. Step two was literally, "Connect extender to your router." If I knew how to do that, I wouldn't have been looking for instructions.Ultimately, the Nighthawk app didn't support the extender and I had to set it up through the Netgear Genie. I would have preferred to manage the Netgear extender through the Nighthawk app rather than through the gateway IP access point for the extender. It's just more work when the idea is to elimiate redundancies.

I have a policy of not buying refurbished, and I broke that policy just this time, and boy do I regret it. Beyond the obvious reasons to not go the refurbished route, I just ran into the biggest reason to not buy refurbished tech. These netgear routers are tied to individual netgear accounts, and even though amazon resets them and wipes all the previous info out of them and puts the generic info back in, they're still tied to the previous owners, by the serial number, to their netgear accounts. So for example, I wanted a router that can download and run my vpn. With this one, even though I have my own netgear account, I can’t add it to this router because it sees that the products serial number has already been registered to a different account. So I contacted netgear support naturally, they say if I can provide my proof of purchase, they will delete the previous owners account info from the units serial number and it will be all ready to go. So I get them what they need, the send me an email confirmation stating the previous owners info has been deleted. I try entering my info into the unit, it says its still tied to the previous owner. I figure it needs a little time for the system to catch up. I give it a day, try again, still tied to previous owners info. I contact netgear again, they say its all been deleted and im the only one its registered to. I reset the router, delete the trash nighthawk app, reinstall it, try entering my info again, its still tied to previous owner. Needless to say, I’m absolutely done with this thing. It’s being returned ASAP. Learn from my mistakes and just get a new unit, its worth the extra money to avoid spending a bunch of time trying to get something as simple as your info stored in the unit, just to find out netgear support can’t do anything to remedy the issue and have to go through the hassle of having to return it. Never again will I buy a nighthawk router, not just because of this, but because the app is also garbage that you run everything through. It’s extremely buggy and overall just so slow and unintuitive.

I replaced my current router because it's signal on both 2.4 and 5.0 GHz bands was very weak. The AC 2300 reaches at least twice as far. I have a signal in my driveway, on my deck and in the basement. The Nighthawk is an awesome solution for my application. And Netgear's tech service is great. Set up was a easy but in a week or so I screwed up one of the settings. A call to Netgear was answered pretty fast and the problem revolved in no time. I highly recommend the Netgear Nighthawk AC2300 to anyone who needs more signal, a neat App that allows you to control the multiple capabilities of the router and excellent customer service.