I don't know whether it's a permanent reduction, or just due to the holiday shopping season. But if you jumped on the R8500 when it first hit the shelves, you paid $100 more than you can get it for as I write this.

In all honestly this Router/WiFi is everything the average person would want.But in my case, tri level and a 2" concrete floor it was just a bit under sized for me. I did have to upgrade. But this is a great unit.

The router game is heating up once again, after being dormant for what seemed like an eternity, thanks to new iterations of the Broadcom platform. We first examined this platform for 802.11 AC routers back in October when from Netgear, D-Link, TrendNet, and Asus.

The Nighthawk X8 is one of the best Wi-Fi routers you can buy.

Intuitive back-end; Top-notch performance; Easy setup; Loaded with features

Steep price tag; Large size

Netgear is one of the very few companies that continue to churn out high-quality products time after time. Since I have been reviewing routers, we have gone from seeing the launch of consumer 802.11ac with the first Nighthawk R7000, to several Nighthawk routers later the biggest and possibly best of...

Brilliantly easy setup and it just works; No extenders needed even for our 1920s thick walled house; Anyone want a defunct homehub5 with 2 dual band BT extenders? :

The price

I purchased the router new, used it for a week and then it started rebooting and never reconnected. There are hundreds of other customers with the same reboot loop/Amber power light error according to Netgear Community Forum.

6 LAN Ports

Hardware Failure

I have 1 time black out issue, except that overall very satisfied... I am not sure this black out came from internet vender issue or this router issue yet...but booting time take more than 20 sec.

very fast, wide range, 1; speed wise #1; wify upto 2.5 (compare previous 1.5 even same 5.0MHz zone, 2; range : previous at master room some phone cannot capture wifi..; but it works no issue at all

very slow booting; some limitation of 5GHz connection..(look like max limit; and it has the function 2 wire NAS connection service; but cannot find any benefit came from this except stability

Big and bruising, Netgear's Nighthawk X8 AC5300 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router is a networking behemoth that has it all, with a price tag to match. The router has everything from built-in amplified antennas and the latest MU-MIMO technology for more efficient traffic management to six high-speed wired LAN...

Many LAN ports; with support for data aggregation; Active amplified antennas; Triband operations produce impressive speeds; Lots of customization options

Expensive; Bigger than most routers; Sometimes sluggish interface

The Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 is the current flagship 802.11ac router in Netgear's lineup. Packing in three Wi-Fi bands, plus the latest MU-MIMO and quad-stream technology, it's the fastest AC router the company has ever made.

Very fast Wi-Fi; More Ethernet ports than most; Smart Connect for 5GHz bands

Smart Connect doesn't cover all three bands; USB ports hidden under flap; Very large