Netgear Releases Nighthawk X4 Successor: The R7800 Nighthawk X4S

Netgear's enthusiast Nighthawk line is known for offering excellent performance and features, and the R7800 Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi Router, which was released during CES, illustrates the company's intention to maintain appearances.

The newly released R7800 Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi Router offers performance and features comparable to the previously released R8500 Nighthawk X8 AC5300, but with one less band. The R7800 is intended to be the successor to the R7500 Nighthawk X4 AC2350 Smart WiFi Router, which was released in 2014, delivering higher maximum speed at a more compelling price.

Not only does the R7800 deliver up to 2.53Gbps wireless speeds (1733Mbps on 5GHz and 800Mbps on 2.4GHz), but it is also an 802.11ac Wave 2 enabled router, meaning it provides the benefits of MU-MIMO functionality to MU-MIMO capable endpoint devices. This means faster speeds for connected devices since the router doesn't need to service each device one at a time. Although the R7800 supports up to four data streams, since mobile devices typically have support for up to single or dual-streams, the R7800 provides up to 160MHz bandwidth for devices.

The R7800 features a 1.7GHz dual core processor, four external antennas with amplifiers and Beamforming technology for excellent coverage, one Gigabit WAN and four Gigabit LAN ports. Storage access is handled by two USB 3.0 ports and one eSATA port using Netgear's ReadySHARE suite.

Netgear's Genie app is used to monitor and control the status of the R7800, as well as establish parental controls. Using MyMedia, the R7800 may play stored media, such as music on DLNA enabled devices. Finally, the R7800 is both application-aware and device-aware, allowing it to optimize connections in a case-by-case fashion.

Netgear's R7800 Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi Router is available now for $269.99 through major online and brick-and-mortar stores.

Alexander Quejado is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware and Tom’s IT Pro. Follow Alexander Quejado on Twitter. Follow us on  Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.