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Although Wi-Fi 6 may provide a significant speed increase on the current 5Ghz band, performance is often hindered due to Wi-Fi network congestion and annoying radar, which creates a demand for DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) channels .
Wireless 6E It is the next generation of Wi-Fi that we have been waiting for. This extends the Wi-Fi network to the latest 6GHz frequency band, which is completely separated from 5Ghz, with significantly reduced congestion, more channels, and fewer DFS problems.
Similar to the original Wi-Fi 6E, the introduction of hardware has been slow. Quite a few devices were announced last year, but availability is scarce and prices are astronomical.Recently launched Netgear Orbi RBK853 AX6000 Will bring you back to Netgear’s Shanda direct sales, currently not available elsewhere.
This NETGEAR Nighthawk RAXE500, Announced as CES 2021, is still unavailable in the UK, but it was launched at a price of $600.
However, the situation began to improve. At CES in 2022, Netgear released the new and more affordable Netgear Nighthawk RAXE300.
Netgear Nighthawk RAXE300 and RAXE500 specifications
Similar to the Wi-Fi 6 Nighthawk router, it offers very similar performance to more expensive routers, reducing the available flow, and many homes won’t even notice.
The new router has a 2×2 hardware specification on the latest 6GHz band, which means it can only reach 2.4Gbps instead of 4.8Gbps.
This sounds like a massive downgrade, but client devices can only use 2×2, so you can only connect at 2.4Gbps anyway.
The 4×4 router still has some advantages. If you are in a large home or office, it can handle more Wi-Fi 6E clients at full speed at the same time. I suspect this is very rare for most home users.
Netgear also reduced the 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi 6 specification. This is also the 2×2 frequency band and 4×4 frequency band of RAXE500.
Then you lose a USB 3.0 port and only give you one.
The processor has been degraded and there is less memory and flash memory. I doubt this will make much difference. RAXE500 may require more processing power to handle additional streams.
One important thing that remains the same is the Ethernet port. RAXE300 reserves the 2.5Gbps port, which may be used for WAN, but it can also be used for LAN. Then you have an additional 4 Gigabit LAN ports.
With 2.5GbE ports, when using 6Ghz channels and 160MHz channel widths, you should be able to easily achieve Wi-Fi speeds exceeding gigabit.
Price
So you won’t miss a lot of things, you can get it at a 33% lower price than RAXE500, with an RRP of $399.99 to $599.99.
Availability is declared as the first quarter of 2022, but who knows if or when it will arrive in the UK.
