NETGEARNighthawk Tri-band Whole Home Mesh WiFi 6 System (MK83) – AX3600 Router with 2 Satellite Extenders, Coverage up to 6,750 sq. ft. and 40+ devices

Contrary to some other reviews previously left about this mesh solution, I found using the Nighthawk app quite easy to initially configure and get the devices up/running. Make sure to remove power from your old AP/Router prior to configuring the new device(s) otherwise the NH app gets quite confused; error verbiage is not helpful in determining the problem. If you need more granularity in AP/mesh configuration, following the initial setup, you can manage the AP via the onboard web portal. If you have experience manually configuring other Nighthawk devices, new portal has same look/feel.I upgraded from a 10+ yr old Nighthawk R8000 (which I loved) but was WiFi5 (not 6) and didn't support WPA3. I was cautious purchasing this new Nighthawk based on a few of the negative reviews, however my experience was quite good and had the mesh setup in less than 30 mins (including unboxing). Had no issues with the satellites connecting; never had to sync - the app found them immediately and added to mesh.Now getting over 1Gbps throughput over Wifi. Nice.

Doesn't get easier. I haven't fiddled with the app and the extra features, yet, but it was literally plug and play to set up. Great coverage over a large distance (we needed a long straight line to get to multiple buildings)...maybe 100'? Would recommend. I did buy on sale, so also a plus.

I wouldn't wish this piece of crap router on an enemy. The problems were beyond endless. I'm not some grandma that barely knows my way around Microsoft word. I am a software engineer. I can set up a router without instructions if needed. I know what the best polling intervals are for high interference areas are and what the best frequencies for 5ghz and 2.4ghz are. I can designate a specific IP range for a VPN client passthrough on advanced tomato firmware using CIDR notation, and I can tell why I'm getting an APIPA address. I'm not a dunce when it comes to computers or networking.So let's begin with problem #1: the app. This router attempts to coerce you into using their buggy phone app every step of the way, and tries to make it near impossible for even average users to log into the web terminal it without the app. Now, this wasn't a problem for me and I kind of expected this with mobile culture so I just ran an ifconfig and entered the default gateway IP after hardwiring my laptop in, and logged in.But OH no, that's unacceptable on this router. They want you to be forced to go through their security shield and parental control subscription ads in their wizard, and they even have popup ads on the router control panel and in their app. This was only a minor annoyance however, and was merely indicative of the headache that was to come. This does however annoy me to no end. Any product that builds ads into it's firmware or default software very quickly gets flashed and custom firmware is installed in this house.So I connected this monumental piece of crap to my modem, restarted it like instructed, followed along with the wizard prompts. It started asking me for the static IP address and credentials assigned to me by my ISP to connect to the internet. I thought this was rather amusing, since my ISP uses DHCP. Off to a great start so far. I tried rebooting, running through the initial setup, and again nothing. FINALLY to get it to register the modem's connection, I had to plug my old Netgear Nighthawk R7000 in, retrieve the dynamic IP and MAC info assigned to my old router, and input what was assigned to my old router as static IP and MAC information and spoof the new routers mac address to get the new one to even detect an internet connection.All good right? Nope, we've just begun. After it FINALLY detected an internet connection, I switched it back to DHCP, and it re-connected, and then prompted me to update the firmware. Fine, that's understandable. I did so, because firmware updates are good practice.After updating the firmware I went to sync the satellites, and lo and behold... They would not sync. No matter how carefully I followed the instructions, no matter how many times I rebooted, it just didn't sync. Finally, after doing a 30/30/30 reset, flashing the firmware back, and going through all of the above again minus the firmware update, thinking maybe the update caused some sort of sync issue, I was able to get 1, JUST 1 satellite synced, and never actually got a synchronization confirmation. The connection timed out, but the secondary satellite started showing up on the device map and had a blue light. The other one just wasn't having it, so I decided to simply deal with it later, as it was going in the least important area. All in all, I was only able to get 1 satellite to sync, and couldn't even get confirmation through the terminal that it had.But this headache wasn't over yet. I decided "maybe the app has some sort of better method of doing this" so I relented, installed it just to see if it would make my life easier, and it did not. The connectivity through the app, was worse than being hardwired into it via a laptop. I was finally able to get 1 satellite connected to the Wi-Fi (it automatically set network authentication to WPA 3, which a lot of older and even new devices do not support depending on theirchipset). And lo and behold: every 10 seconds, I would get an app notification about internet connectivity dropping in the main router, and the app would repeatedly time out when attempting to connect to the router, and freeze my phone. When I could finally check out my network map, sure enough: it would connect to the internet for about 10 seconds, and then drop for about the same. Repeatedly, non-stop, no matter what. The satellite router was up just fine, but the primary router would drop, reset, disconnect, come back up, and then drop. The devices that could connect to the router, couldn't register a data/internet connection or run a DNS probe, and my SMB enabled NAS (I hardwired it to the satellite that stayed up) was also dropping connectivity, rendering my home media server and functioning satellite completely useless. This also indicated to me, via the OSI layer troubleshooting model, that it was in fact the router that was dropping, not my modem, since my media server was disconnecting from my TV, which wouldn't occur if it was simply a modem to router issue, or an issue with my ISP, as my media server runs entirely on my local network, and does not rely on an active internet connection.I'm sending this back. It's not worth the hassle, and has already taken 6 hours of my life. I will not let it consume anymore. I'll be getting an Asus mesh instead. I sincerely advise anyone who doesn't understand some or a majority of what I'm saying in this review to avoid this router. If you're not familiar with this stuff, you're going to have an even worse time than I, and I'm guessing support will just assume you set it up wrong and blame you from some of these other reviews. I'm usually a huge Netgear fan, they have great chipsets that run on open source software like DD-WRT or Advanced Tomato, I've got the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 that has served me well for 8 years, and a Netgear modem. They really dropped the ball with this one though, and it genuinely disappoints me.

I just received and set this up last week, so it's early days, but so far it's the best internet that I've had in a long time, and that's at a time when my needs are the greatest that they've ever been.1) Both my wife and I work from home so need reliable video calling.2) We run a 5-acre farm with 4 out buildings, so we need the internet to reach at least an area of about 2 acres (86,000 square feet).This would have been the first thing I did but an IT professional friend of mine recommended against it. That caused me about 18 months of trying many different things that all failed. Either they couldn't reach, or they could but the signal was 5mbps at the final location. Finally, on Black Friday, I just decided to ignore that advice and grab the Nighthawk system (this plus a Nighthawk CM1200 cable modem) and replace everything.I'm amazed. We have the router and one satellite in the house, one satellite in the barn (250 feet away), and another satellite that I bought separately in a studio (150 feet in the opposite direction from the house. In both the barn and the studio, we get 80mbps down/20mbps up. That's about what we were getting in the house before upgrading to this system. In the house, we're now regularly getting 320 mbps down/38 mbps up, and it's been totally consistent since set up. Literally zero issues for the first time in probably over a decade.The only problem worth mentioning is actually on the part of Comcast Xfinity, not Netgear. I had to spend over an hour and 20 minutes on the phone with them to connect the CM1200. They confirmed that the problems were on their side and had nothing to do with the equipment. I only mention this because if somebody has the same issue, they might think it's the hardware and return it, but if it's going to work as well as mine does now, then it's 100% worth that time.