Netgear announced the replacement of its R6300 Wi-Fi Router with the R6400 AC1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router. The new router is the latest addition to Netgear's current lineup, which ranges from AC1200 to AC3200 routers. According to the vendor, improvements in the R6400's amplification, including external antennas and beamforming technologies, boost the new router's long range performance by 80 percent over the prior generation's AC1750 Router.
One improvement that the R6400 features is Airtime Fairness. Without Airtime Fairness, it usually takes longer to transmit a packet over wireless networks using older 802.11 standards, consequently forcing newer devices to lag behind while the router caters to older, slower devices first. Rather than waiting for an older device to finish transmitting a packet of data, Airtime Fairness divides the time allotted to all devices, allowing faster devices to download at their expected speeds without having to wait for slower devices to finish transmitting first. In the end, Airtime Fairness realigns the order of how devices connect to the router, slicing the total network time between multiple wireless devices.
The R6400 can also be controlled via the downloadable Netgear Genie app available for iOS and Android. Netgear Genie allows users to setup and manage the R6400 through their phone in various ways, such as monitoring data usage, allowing and denying Wi-Fi devices, making Wi-Fi capable printers AirPrint compatible, configuring parental controls, and streaming media on your system over the network. According to Netgear, more than 5 million Netgear customers currently use the Genie app to manage their devices.
Netgear's latest offering includes three external antennas which, along with its beamforming technology, improves the router's range, and with its AC1750 speeds (450 Mbps at 2.4 GHz and 1300 Mbps at 5 GHz), it allows multiple home users to comfortably game and stream HD content.
On the back, the router contains four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, a WAN port and a USB 2.0 port, and there's a USB 3.0 port on the front.
Although Netgear presents a suitable replacement to the previous generation R6300, with added features such as Airtime Fairness and OpenVPN, the R6400 falls under Netgear's mid-level class of routers, sitting alongside the R6250 AC1600 Router. Both of these routers fall one classification below the company's fastest routers, including Netgear's R7000 AC1900, the R7500 AC2350 and the tri-band R8000 AC3200.
The Netgear R6400 AC1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router hits the market today at an MSRP of $149.99.
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