The main chassis is well over a foot across, to which you can add a few more inches courtesy of two of the massive four-strong array of antennae, each one illuminated by integrated LED lighting, natch. Prior to joining Ziff Davis Publishing, John spent six years in retail operations for Federated Stores, Inc. before accepting a purchasing position with Morris Decision Systems, one of New York's first value-added resellers of the original IBM PC. More specifically, you get quad-stream 802.11ac via dual 5GHz radios rated at 1,733Mbits/sec apiece. Cleverly, it works on a per-device basis, so you can apply geo-filtering to your console or gaming PC while leaving your laptop unaffected. There are also two USB 3.0 ports on the right side of the enclosure. The 2.4GHz channel is good for a claimed 800Mbits/sec 2.4GHz, while superfast short-range connections are supported by a 802.11ad radio, delivering up to 4,600Mbits/sec – phew. The product discussed in this article was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of review, Chris cut his teeth on MMOs in the late 90s with text-based MUDs. The XR700’s spec sheet ticks off all the right Wi-Fi buzzwords, but what sort of performance can you expect to see in practice? If you look close at the left side of the grill in the picture above, you’ll see that the XR700 requires active cooling. The Netgear Nighthawk XR700 is the mother of wireless gaming routers, a features and performance monster and also easy to use. The regular network settings haven’t been forgotten, either: clicking the Settings link opens the standard Netgear router configuration interface. At $499 (£450, about AU$724), it’s the price of a half decent PC. Plug in a USB hard disk containing video files, or point the router at a library location on your network, and the XR700 will handle all the cataloguing and sharing features you could ask for, including streaming to smart TVs and over the web. At a distance of 30 feet, the XR700 delivered 308Mbps, squeaking past the Archer C5400X, but not the Rapture GT-AC5300. It’s packed with features to manage your gaming, multimedia and other traffic. In the top of the above picture, you can see a section for to manage its Anti-Bufferbloat settings. You can also take advantage of one of the X10’s signature features: native support for Plex Media Server. Best Malware Removal and Protection Software, Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart WiFi Router (R9000, TP-Link Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router, Netgear XRM570 Nighthawk Pro Gaming WiFi Router and Mesh WiFi System, Netgear NightHawk AX8 8-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router (RAX80), Linksys Velop Dual-Band Whole Home WiFi Mesh System, The Best Outdoor Home Security Cameras for 2020. There is 512MB of built-in storage available for this purpose but we would highly recommend to expand the capacity to make the most of its storage, streaming, and cloud capabilities. Sadly, I wasn’t able to test these because I couldn’t locate a client device that supports the technology. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR700 WiFi Router with 6 Ethernet Ports and Wireless Speeds Up to 7.2 Gbps, AD7200, Optimized For The Lowest Ping at Amazon.com. On the 30-foot test, the XR700's score of 104Mbps was just a few points shy of the Archer C5400X and the NightHawk X10. As gamers, we require a lot from our WiFi routers. Using the 5GHz connection, the improved specs on the XR700 give it the edge in our file transfer testing. The router sports four nonremovable amplified active antennas and a row of 15 LED indicators for power, internet (WAN), all three radio bands (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 60GHz), the two USB ports, the 10Gb port, the six LAN ports, and guest Wi-Fi. In a world where hyper high-end smartphones seemingly appear every 30 seconds, it’s a tough task for superficially more mundane and functional items like wireless routers to stand out. The Netgear XR500 Pro Gaming router has an MSRP of $299.99, and since it is new to the market it's the same price on Amazon: It would be mostly true to claim that the XR700 was like the XR500 software running on the Nighthawk X10 R9000 hardware.