Even with multiple streams going at once, the X8 is more than up to the task. Where the Netgear Nighthawk AD7200 Quad-Stream WiFi router makes sense for power users is when it comes to in-house HD video streaming. If all you do is listen to music from music from Spotify or watch video via DISH Netflix streaming or VUDU, the Netgear X10 may be overkill. Plenty remains to discuss on this more-than-capable $499 flagship router. It also means we didn’t test it as we had no compatible hardware on-hand-but that’s OK. For 60GHz that pretty much means line of sight. Of course, as frequencies go up, transmission tolerances and distances go down. You can buy some hardware cards that add it, but the only place I’ve seen it is with some obscure short-range wireless HDMI systems. This is the 60 GHz band that, for the most part, doesn’t yet exist.

One other feature adorns the new Netgear Nighthawk X10 router: 802.11ad technology. For most, the upgrade won’t make much sense, but if you plan to stream lots of media in-house, the added horsepower and integrated Plex Media server (a first for a wireless router) may pique your interest. On the old Netgear R8500, one of the dual USB ports was 2.0. Next, you get an updated 1.7 GHz Quad Core processor, integrated Plex Media Server, and dual USB 3.0 ports.

It also supports four data streams per WiFi band and has one more LAN port (7 in case you wondered). The Netgear X10 router has the same Tri-Band wireless transmission, MU-MIMO support and four active antennas.

The Netgear Nighthawk X10 Router (R9000) improves upon the X8 in a number of subtle ways. Have upgraded from the Netgear Nighthawk X8 router, I found the transition to their newest model simple.

Plex media server update r9000