Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking WiFi 6 is a great way to free up wires in your home, while still not compromising on speed, latency and overall reliability. And this is exactly where the Netgear Nighthawk XR1000 steps in – an upgrade to the not-so-old XR500 – to tempt gamers, particularly, into a router upgrade. But there are perks that even non-gamers should appreciate. If you prefer a digital copy, you can find the XR1000 user manual here and the XR1000 installation guide here. There aren’t any trick steps here; just follow the prompts. You’ll need to power cycle your modem before connecting the Ethernet cable to your XR1000 and powering it on, but initial connection only took around 10 minutes. Additional configuration was a few minutes more (there was a firmware update), but it only took around 15 minutes to have my internet and main local wireless network details seamlessly switched over and ready to use. As a WiFi 6 router, the performance is great at offering Ethernet-like speeds for wireless devices, and it even does a great job of boosted handling with WiFi 6 devices. I ran internet speed tests across a WiFi 5 (Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus) and WiFi 6 device (Samsung Galaxy S21), and the benefits of WiFi 6 were made quickly apparent. At short range on the XR1000’s 5GHz band, upload speeds, latency and jitter were negligible, but the S21 had a close-to-20Mbps edge over the S9 Plus for download speeds. Shifting the tests into the bedroom, where there’s a thick concrete wall between devices and router, both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz tests were taken out by the WiFi 6-capable S21, convincingly so when it came to the 2.4GHz tests. The final test was conducted in the study, which can only be wirelessly reached by the 2.4GHz signal and, even then, that’s through two thick concrete walls. WiFi 6 had a commanding 70% edge over the WiFi 5 device for download and upload, with a 60% improvement in jitter. While far from ideal networking situations at 36/14Mbps speeds on an NBN 100/40 connection, it makes for viable WiFi 6 networking in an interfered space that’s usually only wirelessly accessible with a WiFi mesh system. Conversely, if you want to tinker, there’s an incredible range of settings to dig into as part of the DumaOS 3.0 dashboard. It’s more refinement than revolution compared to DumaOS 2.0, but there are fantastic gamer-centric features including an improved Geo-Filter, a Ping (latency) Heatmap, and old-faithful Quality of Service to ensure you have enough bandwidth for latency-sensitive tasks (gaming and VoIP, specifically) when others start trying to hog the bandwidth. I personally appreciated how easy it was to forward ports, switch my router’s IP address, change my DNS to something faster and more private, and to enable a network-level VPN service. Despite my knowledge when it comes to tweaking with router settings, I love that the Nighthawk app lets me know when there’s a firmware update, which benefits XR1000 owners of all networking experience levels.
