You can’t simply live without a gaming router if you plan on playing heavy online games on the internet. Thus, comes the Netgear’s XR500 to the rescue, which is specially meant for the gaming minded.

Courtesy the NetDumas’s DumaOS on the router, gamers can customize the router the way they want. Not only can you reduce the latency of your network which shall smooth network performance, you can also choose geofiltering on the router. This will ensure that you only connect with those nearby you or on local servers. The best thing is that the router comes with a price tag of $300. Considering the features, such as top performance, speed and coverage it offers, it is worth the price.

Design

With an aggressive design, it surely attracts eyes. It appears as if aliens have landed on earth, as that is more relatable to gamers. Overall, the design is wide and flat. The difference between other NightHawk models and this one is that is rather sharp angles around it. Though the lights on the front can distract you with their brightness, you can easily turn them off with a switch on the rear. It isn’t something you would want to hide away, but the beauty of the router boasts of itself.

Specs

With 4 dual-band antennas, the Wi-Fi coverage around your place shall be excellent. Though you need to make sure that you put in the antennas into the slots as labeled. Else, you might end up facing connectivity issues.

Other than this, there is not only one, but two USB 3.0 ports on the side of the router. This can be used to connect to external storage medium enabling access of files over the network at any time. Along with the usual 4 Gigabit LAN port, is the usual WAN port. The router is powered by a 1.7 GHz processor, which is excellent in handling multiple tasks at the same time. Moreover, courtesy the 512 MB of RAM, rest assured of a smooth network experience.

Features

The router supports Beamforming, in which signals are targeted to where they are needed the most, instead of just spreading them around. Courtesy the MU-MIMO technology, expects great speeds without any network lags since this is the technology of the future. Thus, you are also future proofing yourself this way. Courtesy Smart Connect, both the names of the router’s bands can be same, thus router will automatically choose the best available band for you to surf the web on.

Netgear Genie App

Both the Netgear Genie and Netgear Up app work with the router though there isn’t much you can do through them. If you really want to configure your router, you would have to open the router’s settings manually on a computer. The most you can do on the app is check the wifi name or password, along with keeping a watch on who is connected, file sharing, testing signal strength, or set up a guest network. Though, a gamer certainly demands more.

DumaOS

Don’t worry if lack of features on the Genie App disappointed you, since the native browser settings running on the DumaOS, offers you the best features you want. There are parental controls, apart from gaming tools and also the usual network settings. With geofilter, you can play with your local buddies instead of going international. Also courtesy the Anti-Bufferbloat, you can restrict bandwidth for devices which aren’t gaming. Thus giving you the best gaming experience you ever wanted. Furthermore, you can also allocate the amount of bandwidth to devices as well.

With $300 price tag, the router is surely worth the money and is a dream for any gamer.