Netgear Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router (RAX80)

Netgear’s Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router (RAX80) joins the Asus RT-AX88U as the first 802.11ax routers to hit our labs. Shaped like a futuristic starship, the RAX80 boasts an impressive feature set that includes five gigabit LAN ports, link aggregation, a powerful quad-core processor, and of course, 802.11ax wireless technology, also known as Wi-Fi 6. At $399.99, the RAX80 doesn’t come cheap, but it turned in some impressive scores on our throughput tests, and its file-transfer performance is top-notch. However, you don’t get the robust game-friendly QoS options and anti-malware tools that you get with the Asus RT-AX88U, and as is the case with the RT-AX88U, you’ll have to wait for Wi-Fi 6 clients to hit the market to take full advantage of all that the RAX80 has to offer.

A Word About Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax or High Efficiency (HE) Wireless, is the latest Wi-Fi protocol. An evolution of 802.11ac technology, 802.11ax promises increased throughput speeds (up to 4.8Gbps), less network congestion, greater client capacity, and better range performance courtesy of several new and improved wireless technologies. Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) improves overall throughput by breaking Wi-Fi channels into sub-channels. This allows up to 30 users to share a channel at the same time. Target Wake Time (TWT) is designed to reduce power consumption by allowing devices to determine when and how often they will wake up to begin sending and receiving data. The use of Target Wake Time is expected to extend the battery life of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets as well as battery-powered smart home devices such as security cameras and video doorbells.

Wi-Fi 6 also takes advantage of previously unused radio frequencies to help boost 2.4GHz performance, and it uses refined uplink and downlink bandwidth management to provide enhanced QoS (Quality of Service). It also offers uplink and downlink MU-MIMO streaming (802.11ac only supports downlink MU-MIMO). 802.11ax is backward compatible and will work with devices that use older 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi tech, but only 802.11ax clients can take full advantage of its enhanced performance and features, and they are few and far between right now.

Space-y Design

The black and charcoal gray RAX80 looks like something you’d expect to see buzzing around in a Star Wars movie. It has two “wings” that fold up to give the router its odd shape, and each wing contains two high-performance Wi-Fi antennas. Fully extended, the router measures 6.7 by 11.5 by 8.0 inches (HWD), and when folded its dimensions are 2.7 by 10.5 by 8.0 inches. It can be placed on a desktop surface or mounted on a wall.

At the rear of the router are five gigabit LAN ports (two of which can be used together for link aggregation), a WAN port, two USB 3.0 ports, a reset button, an LED on/off button, a power button, and a power jack. By way of comparison, the Asus RT-AX88U is equipped with eight LAN ports. On the top of the router, toward the rear, is a thin strip of LED indicators for power, WAN, LAN (five), USB (two), Wi-Fi, and WPS. Here you’ll also find a Wi-Fi on/off button and a WPS button.

The RAX80 is powered by a quad-core CPU running at 1.8GHz, 512MB of RAM, and 25MB of flash memory. It’s a 4×4 AX6000 router that can reach maximum speeds of up to 1.2Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 4.8Mbps on the 5GHz band. In addition to the Wi-Fi-6 features mentioned above, it supports 160MHz channel bandwidth, beamforming, MU-MIMO data streaming, and Smart Connect band steering. It also supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.

The RAX80 is managed using a web console or the Nighthawk mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The mobile app offers…