Netgear Nighthawk RS200 Review
DISCLOSURE -THIS ITEM WAS GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW. ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE THE REVIEWER’S OWN.
Reviewed by Steven Osborne
We currently own the Netgear Nighthawk RS100 but we’ve recently upgraded our broadband connection to a 2.3Gbit connection and in order to take full advantage of this we needed to upgrade the router to one which had a 2.5Gbit WAN connection and the RS200 fits the bill perfectly.
The Netgear Nighthawk RS200 arrived really quickly, was well packaged and I couldn’t wait to get the box open. Inside I found:
– RS200 Netgear Nighthawk router
– AC adapter 12v/2.5A
– RJ45 Ethernet cable (2 meters)
– Quick start Guide
The router arrived in a well‑designed, compact box that holds the device and accessories securely without relying on excessive or wasteful packaging. Everything fits neatly into the box, giving a premium unboxing feel while still being environmentally friendly, which to me is a win-win.
The router boasts a 1x 2.5Gbps WAN port, 1x 2.5Gbps LAN port and 3x 1Gbps LAN ports plus a USB 3.0 Port. As well as the wired connection the router is WIFI 7 capable supporting both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Bands which are capable of covering 2500 Sqft which is around 185 Sqm.
From my research I was able to find that the router has a Broadcom BCM6766 2Ghz Quad-core processor which supports up to 320MHz channel bandwidths that are required to achieve the 6.5Gbps of combined bandwidth on the BE6500 WiFi 7.
The specification means that the router can support up to 80 connected devices while providing a smooth responsive experience allowing capacity for all your home IOT devices, online gaming or all your streaming video devices, which is ample for everyday life.
The WiFi is provided by 4 high performance antennas which utilize MU-MIMO that improves simultaneous streaming capabilities and OFDMA that improves the experience of the WiFi in multi-user environments by stabilising the wireless connection allowing higher capacity and reduced latency.
The WiFi can be secured using WPA, WPA2 and WPA3 With 128bit AES encryption offering backward compatibility with older devices but allowing for the ability for the most secure encryption options.
Setting up the Nighthawk RS200 is relatively straightforward, thanks to Netgear’s well designed Nighthawk app. Once downloaded, the app takes you through the entire process with clear, simple prompts. All you need to do is scan the QR code printed on top of the router, and the app immediately begins the basic configuration. Within a couple of minutes, the router is online and ready to customise.
Once connected you can configure the WiFi, view the connected devices on your network (wired and wireless), run an internet speed check, perform WiFi analytics, check your data usage and enable and configure the Armour security subscription which allows you to also install the Netgear Armour app on 50 devices to help keep your home and data as secure as possible. There is also the ability to configure parental controls, which is a subscription service.
For the more advanced users after the basic configuration is completed via the app you can browse to the web interface on the device typically this will be on https://192.168.0.1 . This allows for more detailed and custom configuration of the router, which in my case was the requirement for the VLAN to be configured for the WAN connection. There are also a multitude of options that you would typically expect on a network device. These include the ability to configure the file sharing capabilities, the security settings such as access control, site, and services blocking, configuration backup options and more.
Running speed tests with the default ISP DNS settings I’m achieving near perfect speeds even with other device active on the network and a latency of 5-7ms which I’m more than happy with. We stream all our TV services and since installing the router we’ve seen no jitter or buffering issues.
Conclusion
The router could have had a 10Gbps Ethernet connection to future proof the device, it could have been tri-band and therefore offer 6Ghz and the device could have supported MLO which is typically enabled on WiFi 7 devices. However, the router is a nice design, it offers some specifications that you wouldn’t see on many other routers in the same price range. The fact it offers WiFi 7 BE6500 alone makes this great value for money. At the time of writing this review, most UK households will not be using WAN speeds above 2.5Gbps so it is more than capable of supporting most requirements. It’s great to see that this is also coupled with an equivalent speed LAN port meaning which allows a wire connected device such as a mesh access point the ability to achieve 2.5Gbps point to point over the WAN if the connected endpoint is able to achieve this speed.
Nighthawk RS200 | Dual Band WiFi 7 Router| 6,5Gbps
https://www.netgear.com/uk/home/wifi/routers/rs200/
RRP £199.99
Rating: 4.5/5