EX8000

UPDATE: I've been using this for almost two weeks now with absolutely no issues. It continues to do exactly what it claims to be able to do. Awesome!I have a Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi Router Model R7800 that I've had for awhile now and it's connected to AT&T's provided ARRIS BGW210-700 modem. My 2500 SqFt two story home was built back in 2007 with a sort of central box where all the wires come in and go from which happens to be located upstairs at the very front of the house in our walk in closet. This has not been the greatest place to have a wireless router, in fact it's been terrible!Recently AT&T was finally able to send greater speeds through our fiber optic lines in our area so we went back to them and bumped our speed up to 300Mbps. Well almost immediately we were suffering with very low speeds down stairs, on the sides and the back of our home. We were consistently only getting speeds from 1 to 28Mbps...seriously. Everything was lagging or not connecting at all.I'm fairly good when it comes to getting everything hooked up but I fall short when it comes to solving these problems. Several times I almost called out a service tech to try and troubleshoot it but I didn't want to spend the money to find out it was something simple. My research led to trying a whole house mesh type product but I didn't want to fork out the dough for a bunch of extenders all over the house just in case it wasn't needed.Finally I came across this device here on amazon and it's was on sale and had great reviews. I liked that it's a Netgear product and should connect seamlessly to and truly become an extension of my existing router. I wouldn't even have to manually reconnect everything to it or change passwords, etc.Well no lie, I took it out of the box, walked it upstairs and plugged it in to power next to my Nighthawk router. The quick start instructions were very simple explaining to hit the WPS button on the extender and then on the router...within minutes it connected to the 2.4Ghz signal. Then I repeated the same process to connect it to the 5Ghz signal which again only took a couple of minutes.After that was done and all the lights were lit properly I walked it downstairs and plugged it in to a central location in the living room on a faux fireplace mantle. Within a couple of minutes all the lights came on and showed all was connected properly.I then sat down and ran my usual test Googleing 'speed test' from my favorite chair in the living room where I have been consistently getting those awful slow speeds. WHAT?! See the attached image with the white background of the test results. I almost wanted to cry tears of joy! I am finally getting pretty darn close to the speeds that my router is getting from the modem (see black background speed test from the router)! And this is with having 25-35 devices being connected...outdoor and indoor security cameras, multiple iphones, ipads, a few video game consoles, 3 apple tv devices, a couple of smart tvs, 5 computers, a couple of Amazon Alexa devices, multiple guest devices and so on and so on.Now I know this is my set up and my experience. A lot of people have different modems and routers from different manufacturer's even and I can't speak to how this will work with them, but I can honestly say this was worth every penny and the slow speed/terrible signal thing is a thing of the past! Woohoo!!

Better than Orbi. Two months ago I switched out a Nighthawk X8 Router for Orbi AC2200 with 3rd additional RBS40 Satellite. The Nighthawk worked great and rock solid Router. My issue was limited 5G range. My router was placed in basement of a 3000 sq ft Ranch in middle of house. 2.4 covered the whole house and perimeter outside. 5G covered 40% of the middle. After I set up the Orbi and Upgraded my modem to N1000 and Upgrade Xfinity to Xtreme 300 the 5G range and throughput was insane. Most wireless connected 200-360 on 5G. 2.4 speed were the same 40-90. After two months lots of drops due the wireless backhaul from router to satellites. I had to reboot daily to get it the work intermittently. I did all the firmware upgrades, etc I did process of elimination of removing Satellites to determine if defective units and did not find any. I had spotty connection especially with IOS and Mac OS devices which is like 70% of what I use. After one of my kids sleepovers and lots of complaining Youtube would not load I returned my Orbi back to big box store. I ate the Satellite I bought from Amazon. I then swapped in newer Nighthawk X10 from big box store. My old X8 already was up-cycled to friend. The new X10 worked just as well as old X8 with same limits on 5G, but no drops and rock solid connections. I then bought two of the Mesh X6s extenders to created in essence a wired Orbi. 5G coverage is great again with no drops like the Orbi. The wired backhaul makes all the difference. My house has lots of interference and prolly why the Orbi failed. I have multiple routers running (xfinity security, Netgear Arlo, etc) and everything is basically smart in my house (Garage, Lutron Lighting, XMAS lights, Water Sensors, Phlips HUE, Universal Remote Control Mrx-10 automation for AV, etc). The 4K streaming devices all wired up through cat6 through 3 netgear prosafe switches. Main wireless devices include ipads, iphones, samsung tablets, imac, macbooks, chromebooks, URC remotes.I cannot comment on extender mode since I am running them in AP mode using same SSID as router with smart connect turned off. The extenders have two 5G bands and my X10 only has one 5G since 3rd band is worthless Ad band. I named both 5G bands same ssid as router. Originally I thought smart connect combined only the 5G but was wrong. In extender it combines all bands into one ssid like an Orbi yuck!!! My old X8 router let me combine the two 5G bands into one that’s how I got confused with the X6s.