Product on Review: Netgear AX8 (AX6000)
Manufacturer: Netgear
Street Price: GBP £279.99 / USD $298.00 / AU $599.00
Netgear’s Nighthawk range is aimed towards multiple users, often with gaming-orientated features, aiming to improve overall network performance for everyone. The latest in the Nighthawk range is the AX8.
The Nighthawk AX8 is an 8-stream router and is part of an initial offering within Netgear’s WiFi 6 range. WiFi 6 is the latest confirmed standard within the WiFi standard; WiFi 6 and 802.11ax are interchangeable, however, to make wireless transmission technologies easier to understand for the general public. This latest standard improves 2.4GHz & 5GHz operation and supports the newer 160MHz channels, and in doing so broadly increases support for multiple high-bandwidth devices.
The AX8 supports eight spatial streams (2.4GHz 4x4 and 5GHz 4x4) for a total supported bandwidth of 6000Mbps. Streams are dynamically allocated to devices depending on their needs for more efficient operation in homes and offices with high numbers (typically 10+) of concurrently connected wireless peripherals.
Like other members of the revised Nighthawk series, the AX8 supports a number of new features deemed integral to successful adoption of Wifi 6: OFDMA and 1024-QAM. OFDMA allows full-duplex operation with compatible peripherals, while the 1024-QAM scheme is a forward-thinking standard that significantly increases available bandwidth in zones particularly dense with compatible connected devices.
While supporting the latest WiFi 6 standard is important, wired performance certainly doesn’t take a back seat, with Netgear incorporating Gigabit port aggregation for 2Gbps connections; these connections can be used for direct connection to supporting PCs but also for multi-gig internet connections, allowing more than one ethernet connection to your ISP-provided modem/router.
While the internals are of a high importance, as is the appearance. The AX8 sports a striking, starship-like design that we believe would look fantastic almost anywhere.
Netgear on the AX8:
The NETGEAR® Nighthawk® 8-Stream AX6000 WiFi Router (RAX80) supports the new 802.11ax (also known as Wi-Fi 6) WiFi standard. Engineered to deliver up to four times more data capacity than previous standards, AX WiFi features advanced technologies like OFDMA, MU-MIMO, 160MHz channel support and 1024 QAM to vastly improve network efficiency. The Nighthawk AX8 is powered by a 64-bit 1.8GHz quad-core processor designed to transfer gigabits of data with almost zero CPU load. 160MHz channel support doubles the speed offered by 80MHz channels to provide gigabit speed to compatible devices. This router is the industry’s first home router with Multi-Gig internet support, achieved by aggregating two gigabit Ethernet ports. It’s a router that’s ready for the Multi-Gig Internet wave coming in DOCSIS® 3.1.
