What you need to know
- Netgear has announced the new Nighthawk RAXE300 WiFi 6E router.
- Transfer speeds of up to 7.8Gbps are supported.
- The router will cost $399.99 and will be available this quarter.
Netgear, the maker of all things networky, has announced the new Nighthawk RAXE300 WiFi 6E router — and it's quite the looker. The Nighthawk range has never been shy about standing out from a crowd, but the RAXE300 does so without the usual array of antennas sticking out everywhere and this thing could definitely take pride of place in a living room. If it does, its proud owner can expect some speedy bits and bytes, too.
Announced via press release, the new router has support for tri-band WiFi 6E which should enable transfer speeds of up to 7.8Gbps. Unfortunately, no Apple hardware supports that just yet although things are likely to change eventually. Not even that hot new iPhone 13 or fancy notch-laden MacBook Pro will max this thing out, unfortunately.
There's more beyond that super-fast WiFi, too:
The router's elegant design houses six pre-optimized antennas for unmatched WiFi signal strength, coverage and performance. It also has a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port that can be used to provide Gigabit+ Internet connectivity by connecting to an Internet modem or to connect on the LAN to a high bandwidth device such as shared network storage. There are also 5 more Gigabit Ethernet ports for wired connections to other home devices and IoT hubs.
Netgear lists the router's key features thus:
- WiFi 6E from the WiFi Leader—Future-proof, cutting-edge WiFi 6E expands WiFi speed, capacity, and bandwidth by up to 200% over WiFi 5.
- Exclusive NETGEAR Engineering & 6 Pre-optimized Antennas—Get unmatched signal strength, coverage, and performance from NETGEAR's proprietary WiFi optimization and six antennas hidden within the RAXE300's wings.
- Built for Multi-Gig Speeds—Use the 2.5G Ethernet port or 2Gbps link aggregation for Internet connectivity to your modem or connect your high-bandwidth devices on LAN side.
- 8-Stream Tri-Band Speed & Coverage—8 WiFi streams (two streams of 6GHz, four streams of 5GHz, and two streams of 2.4GHz).
- Award-Winning NETGEAR Services—Get robust, best-in-class protection from hackers and viruses for all the devices in your home network with NETGEAR Armor and easily manage content across your kids' devices with NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls, right in the Nighthawk® App.
If this all sounds like something you want to add to your network, you'll need to wait. Netgear says it isn't ready to go yet but will ship in the first quarter of the year. It'll set you back $399.99 once it's ready to go.
