Netgear recently released the Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart Wi-FI router, one of the first routers on the market supporting the latest wi-fi standard – 802.11ad. If you’re looking for a FAST and powerful router for 4K video streaming, gameplay and lightening-fast downloads, the Nighthawk X10 might be just what you’re looking for.
The Nighthawk X10 supports MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple input, multiple output) to allow multiple devices to send and receive (read surf and stream) simultaneously! Now you’re probably saying that you already use multiple devices with your current router so what’s the big deal right? If your router doesn’t implement this technology, and chances are that it doesn’t, it functions in one of 2 ways. It either uses a different antenna for each device (SU) or simply loops through the devices one at a time, delivers some data then moves on to the next and continues to go round and round until all data is served (SU-MIMO).
While those two approaches “work,” the X10 takes the next step. Without going into too many details (I need you awake here) I’ll just say that the MU-MIMO standard allows this new Nighthawk to communicate with each device as if it has a dedicated router. In essence, your network becomes much more efficient even without an increase in the overall bandwidth.
So what does this have to do with the…ohhhhhhhhh. That’s right, since your network is now more efficient, you utilize the 4 CPU cores of the Nighthawk X10 to smoothly stream media to multiple devices.
You can also access the Netgear support portal and perform maintenance tasks like firmware updates.
If you’re looking for something to cover a larger area, check out our detailed review of the Netgear Orbi and learn about Mesh!
