Netgear Nighthawk X10 – quad band router with Plex

Netgear has just announced the next level in their Nighthawk range, the X10.

Following on from the Nighthawk X8 that we reviewed in June there’s a new Nighthawk in town. The Nighthawk X10 router sounds like it has everything you could want in a router.

Netgear says that the Nighthawk X10 the world’s fastest router, but it’s also the first geared toward media streaming.

Under the hood lives a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and Quad-Stream Wave 2 WiFi architecture, supporting 802.11ad WiFi at 60Hz. That all should translate in to greatly enhanced performance when transferring large amounts of data.

802.11ad also provides approximately one-tenth the latency as compared to 802.11ac.

Through that Quad-Stream Wave 2 tech, Netgear says the router is capable of reaching download speeds up to 7.9 Gbps.

Simultaneous streaming to multiple devices will be achieved through MU-MIMO smarts, and four external active antennas. This should all add up to impressive signal strength.

Nighthawk X10 Plex server

Perhaps the neatest addition to the Nighthawk X10 is that it’s capable of doubling as a Plex server without the need for a computer. You also get three months of Plex Pass for free in with the bundle.

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The Nighthawk’s 10 Gbps Ethernet port supports a fiber connection, and the router itself is compatible with network attached storage (NAS) solutions. This allows users to quickly back up to and stream media from their own on-site storage.

Connections

The Nighthawk ships with six Gigabit ethernet LAN ports and two USB 3.0 ports. A pair of those ports can be used in aggregate – very useful with compatible NAS such as the QNAP TS-251 that I use.

Hook up additional storage using the USB 3.0 ports and you’ll be able to remotely manage it using Netgear’s ReadyCLOUD app.

If you’re more of a cloud person, Netgear has you covered there too, offering six months of unlimited Amazon Drive storage as a perk for buying the Nighthawk X10.

Nighthawk X10 price and availability

The X10 certainly reads like a top-tier router and I am expecting a top-tier price tag. As the X8 landed at £380 I am assuming

More news about the release date and official price as soon as I get it.