As time and technology advance, our home is filling more and more wireless devices that require an Internet connection. Just think of all the home automation devices, Smart TVs, Consoles, our beloved smartphones,… in a short time we found ourselves having an impressive number of wi-fi devices around the house. Connecting all these devices simultaneously with a single router often causes signal instability or even disconnection of some devices. To overcome this, companies are starting to push towards what will be the new standard of wireless communications, that is Wi-Fi 6 802.11 AX. Today we are here to tell you about Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80, router with excellent potential that can manage any wireless device connected to it, while ensuring high transfer speeds.
The package that encloses our router is extremely basic: on the front, on a black and blue background, we find an image of the product followed by its name.
On the back we find the main technical characteristics of the router. The extremely essential bundle contains everything necessary to connect the router in cascade to our modem. In addition to Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80, the package includes the power supply, equipped with both European and English plugs, an Ethernet cable and an instruction manual that briefly explains the steps for installation.
Netgear's router design is as unique as it is beautiful to look at. The Wi-Fi antennas will not be the usual ones we are used to seeing on other routers, but they will be an integral part of the structure and it will not be possible to directional. They, as you can well guess, are placed vertically, in order to guarantee the greatest range of action, and run along the entire depth of the router.
Due to the generous size of the antennas, Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 is very reminiscent of a bird during the maximum opening of its wings, or a stealth-type military aircraft. On the front, however small it is, we find a gray ventilation grille that also continues on the upper part.
In it, in addition to the grid, we find two plastic plates, gray in color, which will join the two huge antennas. In the lower left corner there is also the initials Nighthawk in black. The status LEDs are also present, which will provide us in real time with the situation of our router, indicating which ethernet ports we are using, if the Wi-Fi connection is active and if the Internet connection is working. Below them there are also two buttons, one to activate or deactivate the Wi-Fi network and one to activate WPS, in order to connect our devices without using a password.
On the back we find all the Ethernet ports, to be precise 6 in all: 5 intended for the connection of our wired devices, while one dedicated to the connection of our modem to the router. Lan ports 1 and 2 also support Link Aggregation technology, giving us the ability to use two ethernet ports with a single device, in order to double the transfer speed. This particular technology is especially useful in NAS or servers, where access to the data contained within them is frequent. Also on the back of Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 we find two On / Off switches: one to turn off the status LEDs and one to turn off the modem. As in any good self-respecting router, we also find two 3.0 USB ports to be able to connect mass memories or a printer and project them within the network. If we need to reset all router settings and do not remember the access data, Netgear has implemented the reset button. We will need a pin to be able to press it, so as not to crush it by mistake.
As already explained, the strong point of Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 is precisely the Wi-Fi, because it is able to support the new 802.11 AX standard, as well as being backwards compatible with all existing formats. Thanks to this new standard, the 4 antennas placed inside the wings and the 8 Wi-Fi streams, four dedicated to the 2,4 Ghz network and four dedicated to the 5 Ghz network, the router is able to reach speeds of impressive transfer. A single device, which obviously supports the new AX standard, can reach the maximum speed of 1,2 Gbps, while on multiple devices, the router is capable of deliver up to 4,8 Gbps of speed. The new AX standard includes advanced technologies such as OFDMA, MU-MIMO, 160 MHz channel support and 1024 QAM, which greatly improve network efficiency. We will be able to connect over 30 Wireless devices without any problem, and our Wi-Fi line will not suffer from percussion. To be able to manage all these connections, however, you also need a lot of power. Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 is equipped with a CPU with 4 cores 64 bits at a speed of 1,8 Ghz, able to allow the correct transfer of files within our home network. There is also an additional quad-core coprocessor, whose job is to manage all MultiGig LAN-WAN traffic, ensuring the availability of the main processor for all other applications.
Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 installation is extremely simple and we can do it in two ways: by connecting to the router via PC or by using the smartphone application. All we need to do is access the internet page shown in the instruction manual to perform the configuration. All this is extremely simple and a guide will explain us in detail what to do. Once the connection between the modem and the router is established, you will be able to configure the Wi-Fi network. We can choose whether to separate the 2,4 Ghz band from the 5 Ghz one, or connect them together in order to let the router decide which one to assign us. Both networks support 128-bit AES encryption with PSK, in order to make our network safe and impenetrable. If we have guests at home, we can also create a guest Wi-Fi network and assign limitations, either as maximum speed or as maximum connection time.
Once the router is properly configured, we can finally access all the settings. Once inside we can configure every aspect of Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80. We can manage every single connected device, choose the priority, or completely stop sharing the network. It will be possible to manually assign a specific IP address to each device and enable the opening of certain ports in order to make our PC or NAS discoverable even outside our home network. Netgear also offers us the possibility of using DNS servers other than those provided by our ISP, in order to have an even more efficient connection. Included in the package there is also a free VPN service that will allow us to hide our true identity, in order to make our browsing even more secure and above all incognito. From the router interface we can also configure USB devices as storage units or printers. If we connect an external Hard Disk, as well as make it available throughout our network, through the ReadySHARE function we will have the ability to manage our files even remotely.
On paper it's all very nice, but how does the Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 perform in everyday use? With the Wired connections we have not encountered any kind of problem. When transferring files between one PC and another, the transfer speed has always remained constant, hovering around 98 MB / s. With Wi-Fi the situation is different, because unfortunately there are too many factors that can affect the maximum transfer speed. Finding a device that can support Wi-Fi 6 is difficult these days, as there are few. For our tests we used ASUS ROG Phone II, a smartphone that supports the new 802.11 AX standard. Placing ourselves in the same room where the router is present, when transferring files we reached a maximum peak speed of around 110MB, completely consistent with what is declared by Netgear. Moving to another room, the transfer speed suffered a noticeable drop. Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 has excellent Wi-Fi coverage, especially when it comes to the 2,4 Ghz network. We managed to completely cover a house of about 400 square meters, obviously at the ends of the house the 2,4 Ghz signal was extremely weak, while the 5 Ghz signal was practically absent. The Wi.Fi 5 Ghz network, on the other hand, has a decent coverage: we can maintain the signal for almost three rooms without any kind of problem.
Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 is a router with truly excellent qualities, with a really excellent Wi-Fi coverage, able to reach even the most remote points of our home without any problem. With this router we will be able to connect any device to our network, without incurring connection problems. Netgear claims to be able to use up to 30 devices simultaneously, we were able to use 23 without incurring an instability of the Wi-Fi network. The router is easy to install and can be used by anyone, even the less experienced.
If you are looking for a router with excellent potential, cutting-edge and able to keep an exaggerated number of devices connected simultaneously, all without spared any expense, Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80 is the router for you. You can buy it for about € 300 including VAT.
