NETGEAR Nighthawk Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6E System (MK93S)

Overall this system is great for anyone who understands a minimum about home networking. Out of the box set up was easy for the most part and I had the system running within 45 minutes. I have a gigabit internet connection as well and a CAT 7 wired setup with the two satellites running wirelessly. I wasn’t expecting much as Wi-Fi 6 is new technology but I was surprised by the system despite reading bad reviews. When close to the router I can get about 600mbps and that decreases down to about 400mbps as you are closer to a satellite rather than the router. It covers more than enough of our 3,000Sq ft. home as signal strength was an issue with our previous router. I have yet to experience random wireless connection drop offs, and the wired connection works great without any issues. The app makes it easy to control devices and change settings and is very user friendly. I definitely recommend this system for anyone looking to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6.

UPDATE:
After having the system for multiple months, I still love it. There have been a few bumps in the road but thats expected when first setting up a new WiFi system. The speeds are extremely fast, I can get 400mbps minimum anywhere in my home with my fiber gigabit connection. The app interface is extremely friendly. While the armor security notifications can be a bit annoying sometimes its nothing of big concern to me. The router settings web interface lacks certain usability however, it makes it difficult to change settings and sometimes won’t even apply them. The app however, never fails to do anything. Keep this in mind if you are planning on setting it up using a computer and not a phone. While the connection is always great and stable, I do notice that the system will become extremely slow for a brief moment or sometimes randomly reboot. This has only happened a handful of times but I would expect this to not happen on a system this pricey.

I hate to be critical on this product as it is an extremely wonderful product that does its job and then some. If you’re willing to work through some bugs from the start, this system will not disappoint.

I was having problems with my cable internet. Too slow and very sporatic. Called Comcast and they checked my system. The Technician told me my modem was too small for a house of my size. She told me to get this system. I ordered it and when it came, I had my Daughter install it like the Tech said. It works perfect! Speed it very, very fast and with the additional programs built in, it protects all my different computers against malware and spyware and ransomware attacks! I am very happy with this system. It notifies me all the time of different emails that are bad. Protection for just a few dollars! GREAT PRODUCT! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY ME!

I wouldn’t wish this piece of crap router on an enemy. The problems were beyond endless. I’m not some grandma that barely knows my way around Microsoft word. I am a software engineer. I can set up a router without instructions if needed. I know what the best polling intervals are for high interference areas are and what the best frequencies for 5ghz and 2.4ghz are. I can designate a specific IP range for a VPN client passthrough on advanced tomato firmware using CIDR notation, and I can tell why I’m getting an APIPA address. I’m not a dunce when it comes to computers or networking.

So let’s begin with problem #1: the app. This router attempts to coerce you into using their buggy phone app every step of the way, and tries to make it near impossible for even average users to log into the web terminal it without the app. Now, this wasn’t a problem for me and I kind of expected this with mobile culture so I just ran an ifconfig and entered the default gateway IP after hardwiring my laptop in, and logged in.

But OH no, that’s unacceptable on this router. They want you to be forced to go through their security shield and parental control subscription ads in their wizard, and they even have popup ads on the router control panel and in their app. This was only a minor annoyance however, and was merely indicative of the headache that was to come. This does however annoy me to no end. Any product that builds ads into it’s firmware or default software very quickly gets flashed and custom firmware is installed in this house.

So I connected this monumental piece of crap to my modem, restarted it like instructed, followed along with the wizard prompts. It started asking me for the static IP address and credentials assigned to me by my ISP to connect to the internet. I thought this was rather amusing, since my ISP uses DHCP. Off to a great start so far. I tried rebooting, running through the initial setup, and again nothing. FINALLY to get it to register the modem’s connection, I had to plug my old Netgear Nighthawk R7000 in, retrieve the dynamic IP and MAC info assigned to my old router, and input what was assigned to my old router as static IP and MAC information and spoof the new routers mac address to get the new one to even detect an internet connection.

All good right? Nope, we’ve just begun. After it FINALLY detected an internet connection, I switched it back to DHCP, and it re-connected, and then prompted me to update the firmware. Fine, that’s understandable. I did so, because firmware updates are good practice.

After updating the firmware I went to sync the satellites, and lo and behold… They would not sync. No matter how carefully I followed the instructions, no matter how many times I rebooted, it just didn’t sync. Finally, after doing a 30/30/30 reset, flashing the firmware back, and going through all of the above again minus the firmware update, thinking maybe the update caused some sort of sync issue, I was able to get 1, JUST 1 satellite synced, and never actually got a synchronization confirmation. The connection timed out, but the secondary satellite started showing up on the device map and had a blue light. The other one just wasn’t having it, so I decided to simply deal with it later, as it was going in the least important area. All in all, I was only able to get 1 satellite to sync, and couldn’t even get confirmation through the terminal that it had.

But this headache wasn’t over yet. I decided “maybe the app has some sort of better method of doing this” so I relented, installed it just to see if it would make my life easier, and it did not. The connectivity through the app, was worse than being hardwired into it via a laptop. I was finally able to get 1 satellite connected to the Wi-Fi (it automatically set network authentication to WPA 3, which a lot of older and even new devices do not support depending on theirchipset). And lo and behold: every 10 seconds, I would get an app notification about internet connectivity dropping in the main router, and the app would repeatedly time out when attempting to connect to the router, and freeze my phone. When I could finally check out my network map, sure enough: it would connect to the internet for about 10 seconds, and then drop for about the same. Repeatedly, non-stop, no matter what. The satellite router was up just fine, but the primary router would drop, reset, disconnect, come back up, and then drop. The devices that could connect to the router, couldn’t register a data/internet connection or run a DNS probe, and my SMB enabled NAS (I hardwired it to the satellite that stayed up) was also dropping connectivity, rendering my home media server and functioning satellite completely useless. This also indicated to me, via the OSI layer troubleshooting model, that it was in fact the router that was dropping, not my modem, since my media server was disconnecting from my TV, which wouldn’t occur if it was simply a modem to router issue, or an issue with my ISP, as my media server runs entirely on my local network, and does not rely on an active internet connection.

I’m sending this back. It’s not worth the hassle, and has already taken 6 hours of my life. I will not let it consume anymore. I’ll be getting an Asus mesh instead. I sincerely advise anyone who doesn’t understand some or a majority of what I’m saying in this review to avoid this router. If you’re not familiar with this stuff, you’re going to have an even worse time than I, and I’m guessing support will just assume you set it up wrong and blame you from some of these other reviews. I’m usually a huge Netgear fan, they have great chipsets that run on open source software like DD-WRT or Advanced Tomato, I’ve got the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 that has served me well for 8 years, and a Netgear modem. They really dropped the ball with this one though, and it genuinely disappoints me.

Llegó el 10-3-23 funcuino dando casi los 360 Mbs de velocidad inalámbrico y en zonas las más alejadas de una casa de tres niveles no bajo. El 13-3-23 solo se veía conectado el router aún que los tres dispositivos estaban con el LED el azul, además no tuve conexión internet.

Sincronize de nuevo todos los dispositivos más aún reseteé uno de los satélites y nada solo se ve uno conectado sin tener acceso. Acabe por reactivar el viejo orbi con el que tengo ya más de tres años y pensé reemplazar.

Contacté a soporte de Netgear esperando se solucione con algún firmware o algo sencilloz de no ser así acabaré regresando el producto a Amazon antes del término del tiempo para ello. La verdad esoerama mucho del equipo dado que no es uno barato.

30/3/23

El soporte de Amazon excelente, los contacte mientras esperaba respuesta de Netgear y me ofrecieron de inmediato el reemplazar el equipo a lo cual acepte, y ahora todo esta funcionando al 100. La verdad no tengo mas que reconocer el apoyo de amazon y lo que si es pesimo es el soporte de Netgear, aun es fecha que me siguen pidiendo datos sin dar soluciones.

Estoy súper contento con esta compra, el internet que tengo no se podía disfrutar como ahora con este sistema mesh, es facil de instalar y llega a todos los rincones de la casa incluyendo baños, la casa es de tres pisos con cada piso de 150 mts. En total 450 metros de construcción de muros de concreto y cada piso tiene internet sobrado de 302 mbps de descarga y 102 de carga y tengo 16 equipos conectados al internet y funcionando al mismo tiempo (incluyendo 4 televisores al mismo tiempo con juegos y bajando series) esta súper rápido, el costo del equipo es alto, yo lo encontré por 8500 más gastos de importación, si quieres algo bueno le vas a tener que perder al amor a unos 10 mil pesos pero lo recomiendo muy ampliamente.