D-Link AC3200 vs Netgear Nighthawk x8

Don't get conned by the marketing guy, understand what the numbers mean, bigger is not always better.

First no router will ever run faster than your internet. Unless you have a internet connection over 100m even inexpensive routers can handle it.

The other problem with these high end routers is your end devices will likely limit you ability to use the features.

So first even though a router may say its tri-band or whatever your end device can only use a single radio. You would have to find a way to manually allocate multiple end devices over the radios to use the router so called speed.

Many of these routers support 4 antenna connections. End devices...especially portable ones..only have 2 antenna so those extra on the router are a waste.

Running tri band routers guarantee you will conflict with your neighbors. 802.11ac uses block of 4 contiguous radio channels in your router. There are only 2 of these blocks for everyone to share. A tri-band router will use both. In addition it uses 2/3 of the 2.4g band on 802.11n. This means a single tri-band router will attempt to use almost all the radio bandwidth for itself. If you live in a high density area with lot of people using these routers everyone will just stomp on top of each other.


In general unless you know why you need better the optimum cost performance router is a 802.11ac router that say it runs at 1200. ie 300+900 This is the speed that matches most end devices.


Picking a router by ratings is almost a waste of time. The environment it is placed in make much more difference that hardware differences. Many routers with the same features/speeds use exactly the same internal chips just with a different brand on the outside. What you see are people reviews of their house more than the review of a router.

Stay with larger name brands and you will generally be ok. The main difference will be software features not router performance. You of course need to look for reports of routers that fail after a short time. All manufactures have models that seem to die quickly but other that have no issues.