Indeed, even with a new laptop sitting practically right next to the router — and achieving a connection speed of 833Mbps — the setup tends to go remarkably slow, with a good three to four minutes passing by until Google Chrome has found a way to communicate with the setup of the modem router and display its browser-based setup on screen.
This appeared to be pretty consistent, so be sure to be a little patient, as this modem router needs it. We hope it’s worth the wait.
Throughout this time, the modem router will blink at you incessantly, but hold on, because Netgear has provided a thoroughly useful feature: you can turn the LEDs off using a switch.
With this engaged, one light will always stay on — power — but at least your living room won’t look like it’s lighting up with every piece of passing traffic.
When it does work, though, you just enter your settings and wait.
Hopefully, your installation goes more smoothly than ours did.
Aside for the timing problems, we found after we had entered our ISP details and gone through the Netgear modem checks, the setup basically stalled, and even though the modem router’s LED was saying it had connected successfully — white on the DSL LED means you’re connected — the router’s setup was still stuck in limbo at its “quick scan of PVC protocol”, while subsequent reloads just pushed us back into the initial setup stages once again.
Eventually, it got to working, but it took far longer than the expected 10 minutes we expect for these things, reaching more into the 40 to 60 minute bracket, far too long for a modem setup.
When it is completed, you’ll be asked to get software for your computer, and then to update the firmware. The first of these is optional, but the latter you should definitely do, bringing the router up to its most recent version, which should provide any bug fixes that may have popped up.
And then you’re online, though we take aim at part of Netgear’s setup: no encouragement to change the network name.
How peculiar this is, we couldn’t help but feel, because Netgear’s numbering system of calling a network “Netgear” followed by a number — Netgear58 for us — just doesn’t seem all that secure, or even friendly.
To change it to something else, you’ll have to head to your settings in a browser over at http://192.168.1.1 and do it yourself, odd, we think, given out it should be a part of the setup as it is with other modem routers.
In this setting, you also learn quite quickly that while the Nighthawk does include its MU-MIMO technology, it hasn’t devised a way to bring the two network bands together, something you’ll see from other companies.
As such, you’re forced to run two separate network names here if you want that full 2.53Gbps bandwidth.
For many, this won’t come as a surprise, and given that’s the way networks have been for some time, it will just be the same ol’ thing, though in a day and age where you can bring those together, we’re surprised Netgear has not.
Despite this, though, we’ll press on, and be glad we did because once you’re good to go with your setup name, it’s time to test performance, which is one area our tests have revealed some pretty interesting results.
While we’re not huge fans of the separate networks, we found speeds of around 835Mbps were common on the 5GHz 802.11ac network and around 230Mbps on the 2.4GHz 802.11n network, though around the home, we found the router tended to provided relatively decent 300 to 500Mbps speeds across the board.
Those aren’t mind blowing speeds, and certainly not up to the sort of performance we expect out of a router touting 2.5Gbps of performance, but the X4S appeared to juggling the amount of devices in our home better than most routers we test, which revealed that Netgear’s dynamic quality of service tech was doing the job right, even if the bandwidth wasn’t being pushed to its limits.
Towards the back of the house was one of the more interesting results we had seen, because while most routers struggle to provide a connection meters away in the bathroom, the 2.4GHz network offered consistent speeds around 130Mbps, while the 5GHz network jumped between 230 and 430Mbps, keeping devices in four bars of reception the entire way through.
That’s something not even the massive D-Link Taipan could accomplish, and it was far bigger with a potentially larger reach from the three-band network. There are only two bands here — 2.4 and 5GHz, compared to the 2.4/5/5 of the Taipan — and yet the Netgear Nighthawk X4S still feels like it accomplishes just as much, if not more.
Interestingly, the D-Link Taipan — which was our top router for some time — connected at technically higher speeds, revealing gigabit wireless speeds with no problem, but the connections for internet transmissions to networks like Apple’s iTunes Store turned out faster download speeds with the slightly slower connections offered by the Netgear Nighthawk X4S.
Technically, both are super fast, but the more consistent and reliable range appears to be coming from the Wave 2 WiFi offered by the Netgear Nighthawk, and that’s something we didn’t expect.
We still wish that Netgear had opted for a one network solution, binding both of the network bands together instead of leaving them as they are, separate and running as two individual networks.
Still, network performance appears to be very good, with consistent network speeds and an interface that doesn’t feel like it attacks you too much for wanting to control your network, heaven forbid.
Conclusion
If you can survive the excruciatingly slow setup process and don’t mind a network that forces two individual network names, Netgear’s Nighthawk X4S is definitely worth a look, not just because it looks fairly normal and occupies a fairly standard footprint, but because it handles its own juggling all of your devices.
