I have been impressed with the Netgear equipment I have purchased in the past, so Netgear had an automatic leg up in the Court of Router Selection. It has worked flawlessly for a couple of months, and for that it gets five stars.

The Netgear Nighthawk X4S AC2600 WiFi VDSL/ADSL D7800 MU-MIMO modem router is aimed at ticking all the boxes for gamers and heavy users as well as for those who are keeping an eye on tomorrow's needs.

The Netgear Nighthawk X4 R7500 is an 802.11ac router rated at providing combined throughput of 2,300Mbit/s across its 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. That breaks down as 600Mbit/s on 2.4GHz and 1,730Mbit/s on the 5GHz band.

Modem routers need not be chunky things, and Netgear intends to prove it, letting us play with its Nighthawk X4S, a network device designed to keep the speeds up with the size down. Does it pull it off

Small size; fairly standard footprint; Not chunky at all; and wouldn't look strange in a home; Stickers for antenna locations makes for no confusion; Great locations for accessory ports; Excellent reception range

Painfully slow browser setup; Forced to run two network names if you want the full 2.5Gbps connection; with no way of banding the two together

The Nighthawk X4 has plenty of speed but to take advantage of the higher throughput you’ll need extra equipment

Netgear's Nighthawk X4S blankets even large houses with blazing-fast Wi-Fi.

2.53Gbps of wireless bandwidth; Two USB 3.0 ports; and an eSATA port; MU-MIMO directs signal directly at your devices

Confusing software interface; Divisive design

The Netgear Nighthawk X4S is a super-fast, high-end router. Available in two versions, the R7800 is a router only while the D7800 includes a modem, which means you can get rid of all the kit ISPs deliver – unless you're on fibre broadband.

High-speed 5GHz rates; Can plug into multiple HDDs; Good 5GHz range

Some long-range 2.4GHz reliability issues; Expensive

Having used Netgear products in the past, this unit was very easy to set up and configure. Since we are using this in an office, I like the ability to schedule wifi to turn off during our non-business hours. Just adds a little more security to our environment.

Quite a paradoxial heading for couple of reasons. Did not buy the product from Amazon due to extremely high price from its vendors. Amazon deleted my comments twice due to my rants. Please check the ma. re. pr. before buying from here. Hardware shops are selling them much cheaper.

This is one to avoid. Full featured with a nice web interface, everything looks great at first for this modem/router. Sadly, there has been more spent on fancy names and weaponised looks than on the firmware of this thing. I have had frequent DSL disconnects ( between 1 and 5 a day) .