You should totally buy this router if you like installing custom firmware, having to make the hard choices like: Patch a security flaw, or break one of my features, and would I like to lose advertised functionality.
Netgear releases garbage firmware on the regular. Usually it only breaks a feature you rarely use, but sometimes, it makes you have to completely reset your router to factory settings just to log in. If you want to experience living in the past, sometime their firmware will limit a 5ghz band to 802.11b speeds, just like living in 2008.
Just stay away.
I would definitely go for the RAX120 or RAX80 or maybe wait until the RAX200 hits the market and pick up one of those other two for less than they are now. The RAX80 might drop down from $299 to the low $200s making it not much more than this.
I saw no point in buying anything less than a Wifi 6 capable router, so I got the RAX120 in April and couldn’t be happier with the setup and performance so far.
Not really sure why everyone’s so salty about this router. I bought one of these shortly after they first came out, and I’ve been reasonably happy with it. It gives me solid wi-fi coverage over both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz throughout my house, it very rarely needs a restart, and it supports port aggregation, so I’ve got a super-fast connection to my NAS from anywhere on the network. Provides all of the features that I typically want from a router, many of which seem to be disappearing from some newer routers (NAT loopback, I’m looking at you). Oh, and my home automation system can query it in order to determine who’s at home based on what devices are on the network.
Really my only complaint is that this thing is huge. It’s like the size of a small laptop from ten years ago. You’ll need to devote a lot of desk/shelf space to it unless you mount it on the wall like I did.
Good to know and that feature drop issue is probably the biggest issue I have with the newer Nighthawk.
They have you initially set it up using an app on your phone which doesn’t have nearly the configurability they used to have through a web interface. Although, you can still use the web based interface which I think gives you more detailed control, but I haven’t had the time to play with it yet to compare the differences.