NETGEAR Dual Band Gigabit AC1750 Smart WiFi Router (R6300v2)

I chose this router after reading various reviews online about it having good performance. I wanted consistency and speed for our connected devices; speed that our current (older) router wasn't providing. I did not care much about how it looked, although, I did need to pick something that would fit nicely on the small corner shelf of my desk. This one is so sleek though, I found myself rearranging and cleaning up the shelf to match. No reason to hide this baby!I have done quite a bit of minor "IT" work over the years; setting up new computers, installing hardware/peripherals, etc. so I was prepared for anything with the setup. I probably could have set this thing up without any directions, but I followed them. I easily swapped it out for my older router and since I already had a web browser open on my computer, as soon as I did the last step, the confirmation page popped up in a new tab. That was it! Connected! I wanted customized settings so I logged into the router and changed network names and passwords, but you wouldn't have to do that. I immediately noticed a difference in Internet speed on my home computer (which is connected via Ethernet cable) and my smart phone. We have a 1600 sq ft home and I have full signal in all rooms; including the basement. That's on the 2.4GHz speed since my phone is older but it is also enabled with 5GHz for the newer devices. This router also has parent controls for the Internet built in but I haven't taken time to explore that yet. It also has some additional ports for peripherals that I am not using. Overall, this is probably more router than my family needs but I wanted to get something on the newer end so we wouldn't have to replace it again so soon.PROS:easy install & setupsleek designfantastic speedCONS:shiny surface = shows dustHa ha... only thing I could think of!

First Impression August 2017...Could NOT have been easier to get it setup to replace my now-dead 4 y/o NetGear router. I'm a diehard NetGear fan after a dozen years. And no matter what the brand, these lower priced guys only last about 4 years. But, when you do the math, you can get two of these over 8 years for the cost of a high-end one. Which will likely last only 5 years. Plus you get new features more often. Unless you have some EXTREME network requirements, going this way makes more sense.Pros:Easy SetupThe Genie Android app for testing and managing. GET IT! The two best parts are the signal strength meter and the channel diagnostic. I was able to change the channel on my 2.4 band and improve it. I'm not a fan of the Auto channel setting. Had issues with it in the past. Maybe I am painting it with an old brush but I like choosing my own channels.I am getting the same throughput on 5G wireless as I get hard wired.I tested signal strength around the property. 2,500 sq. ft. house and 50x100 ft. yard. At the farthest point, with 3 walls and a metal garage door between me and the router, it dropped to 56% signal. No worries!Beamforming+ really seems to work. We'll see over time but I'm getting amazing signal on stationary devices.Cons:Amazon lists the SHIPPING size NOT the router size on their site. The router is actually 191 x 198.5 x 65 mm (7.5 x 7.79 x 2.55 in). Amazon does this a LOT. I got pillows once in two huge boxes because of the finished size. They actually came compressed in shoe box size boxes and 4 of them would have fit in one of the AMZ shipping boxes. Sigh...The light-up NetGear logo on the front. I've even searched the interwebs... no way to turn it off. It is BRIGHT! So, keep that in mind. Put your router behind something or put black tape over the logo. It'll drive ya nuts if ya don't :O)If I don't update this review it's because nothing changed. I'm pretty confident I won't have to.

Got the R6300v2 recently to enter the AC world. The connecting to the Internet part works smoothly enough, and if that's your only concern, then this device should work fine. I'd been using a Netgear WNR3500L for many years and liked its vertical design, which is why I got this slightly older model instead of a newer one.What I really wanted to do however was create an easy NAS setup using the USB ports on the R6300v2. I have an NTFS-formatted disk in a USB 3.0 NextStar enclosure. From reading around, I suspected that I would not be able to get the router to recognize it, and it didn't. Fair enough. I don't know WHY the router can't see the enclosure -- it's not like USB is an exotic, experimental standard -- but it didn't come as a shock.So I bought, separately, a 4 TB Seagate USB 3.0 Expansion External HD. Right out of the box, I connected it to the router and -- success! The router detected it. I then disconnected it, attached it straight to my PC because I had over a terabyte of stuff to copy to it, and then re-connected it to the router. IT DIDN'T DETECT IT. Same disk! I didn't reformat it or anything. But now the router wasn't detecting it.A firmware update eventually solved the non-detection problem. "Eventually" -- I couldn't convince the router that it was actually connected to the Internet, so it refused to update its firmware automatically. I had to go to the Netgear website, download the latest firmware, and then manually upload it. But, it worked. The router detected the disk again. For a brief moment, I even got a reasonable amount of throughput over the wireless LAN to the disk.But the connection to the disk is proving to be incredibly unreliable. One moment, the performance is reasonable. The next, the router drops off the network COMPLETELY. This is incredibly frustrating.If I had it all over again I would have just gone for a real, Ethernet-based NAS solution like Synology. But now that I've blown $100+ on the Seagate disk I feel compelled to hope that it works out.UPDATE (3/26/2017): After a few weeks of use, an amendment to my original review is in order. It was indeed very troublesome to get the USB disk connected to the router. But now that I have, it's working pretty well. Throughput is pretty reasonable. It's not noticeably better when I'm on the 5 GHz band than when I'm on the 2.4 GHz band, but I'm not incredibly surprised by this.I haven't had to reboot the router or experienced a power outage or anything yet, so I'm praying that I don't have to deal with the initial configuration mess again. But, as of this moment, it's working pretty well.On the other hand, I now am encountering the same issue others have reported, of devices on the 2.4 GHz band not seeing devices on the 5 GHz band within my humble local network. I'm only now experiencing this because it was only a couple of weeks ago that I got a new AIO desktop that's 802.11ac; before that my devices' adapters were strictly 802.11g. I've heard that this could be a problem with the Netgear firmware, which doesn't offer a way to disable the "wireless isolation" feature. It's a little unfortunate, but my "workaround" is just to leave the AIO on the 2.4 GHz band -- there's not too much for me to be gained from being on the 5 GHz band, especially if reads/writes to the NAS disk aren't any faster.