At first, our WiFi remained stable.However, after only a few days of stability, the WiFi once again began going out.The connection would just continue to drop randomly throughout the day, and it seemed to get worse at times.

I thought perhaps it was our ISP, but after a few visits and discussing the issue with the ISP, I discovered it wasn’t the ISP.It was both of my Netgear routers.

To be sure, I did some research to find out what was going on and discovered that Netgear has had this issue for quite some time.It has to do with their firmware for their routers.After a certain version, this issue began popping up and has constantly been rearing it’s ugly head, regardless of them trying to get rid of the issue. It has been an issue for quite a few years (wasn’t one for me with the old router due that I hadn’t updated the firmware until late last year, which was right around the time the WiFi dropping issue began).I saw fixes for the issue but it involved rolling back to older versions of the firmware, which I really didn’t want to do.

In the end, I decided to get an Arris DG2470 Cable Modem, which has WiFi built into it.Suddenly, the WiFi randomly dropping issue stopped being an issue.It only confirms that Netgear has an issue still with it’s firmware to me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice router, but for me, dealing with a constantly random WiFi connection dropping is not worth it.Perhaps if the firmware can be corrected, it would be a good router, but otherwise, it’s junk to me.

Hope this helps, if you don’t get it, your loss.

-Vince

I'm an electrical engineer with great troubleshooting skills and I've eliminated every other possibility. I'm experiencing simultaneous dropping of the wifi to two Kindle Fires, a Fire TV Stick, two Acer laptops, a Dell laptop and three Android phones. None of them are immune and they all lose their connections at the same time while the cable connected PCs keep humming along.

It's too bad, too, because it has twice the range of the Linksys router it replaced.

This one is going back, I'm afraid.

I am generally technically competent and able to get into the guts of various device's control software and get them working as I want. I had initially set the AC 1750 up and it was working normally. For some reason, it then quit connecting to any wireless devices I had in my house. I could only use the router with Ethernet cables. I tried changing various settings, but could not get it working. Since the device was new and had a 90 day support warranty, I called Netgear - bad mistake. Apparently, the main purpose of their tech support is to sell contracts for paid support .

The technician asked if he could take control of my computer and I agreed. He then proceeded to tweak the same settings on the router that I had tried earlier. He then tried updating the driver for my wireless adapter. It was up to date. He then told me (after more than an hour of poking around) that I had a problem with my wireless adapter and why didn't I pay for support so that they could fix theproblem. I told him that my adapter seemed to be working properly and that the AC 1750 could not connect to FIVE OTHER WIRELESS DEVICES and how was changing drivers on my laptop going to make all these others work. He never understood what I was saying and kept trying to get me to buy support. I asked for a supervisor.

The supervisor got on the phone and immediately gave me another pitch for paid support and that my wireless adapter needed service. In the process of talking, he finally asked if the other tech had suggested factory defaulting the AC 1750. (OK, yes, I should have thought of that and saved myself lots of pain), After the device was returned to factory default, it worked fine, connecting to all of my devices wirelessly. The supervisory tech, who still had control of my computer, opened NotePad and proceeded to lay out a sales pitch for paid tech support with "big discounts" that would cover all of my equipment for only $400!! Amazing - The router was only $180.

This was a truly shocking experience. I would expect much better from a well known name like Netgear. The first support technician was not competent and the second was barely so. Both were extremely pushy and more interested in selling me something I did not need than in helping me with my warranty support. If you are technically competent, this router is probably fine, but if you feel that you might need technical support, you should buy something else.

First, connections have been generally quite reliable.I have connected desktop computers and printers by both CAT5 and WiFi.I have also connected a variety of smartphones, tablets, laptops game consoles and my smart TV without difficulty.OS connections have included Windows versions from XP through Win 10, iOS, Android, OSX, Nintendo's Wii/Wii U OS and whatever drives my 50" Panasonic plasma TV.

The router is located in my basement office/man-cave and the 2.4 GHz connection still reaches nearly to the street.That means through the floor, a couple of interior walls and a brick exterior wall.The 5 GHz connection is, of course, more range restricted.While it will make it through the floor and walls within the house, it is damped enough that I generally get better throughput with the 2.4 GHz connection.I typically keep the 5 GHz reserved for equipment in the basement where I can take best advantage of the speed.

As far as throughput?Ok, it's "rated" at 300/300 Mbs, but the reality is those numbers are typical bogus for ANY router.It just gives you a benchmark to compare products.Don't expect anything close in the real world where physics intervenes unless you are in line of sight at just the right distance, temperature and humidity.Depending on current conditions, my wife's laptop, with a floor and a couple of walls in between will still pull 95-100 Mbs.Prevailing conditions can push her over 100 or as low as 54, but both are unusual.My desktop, when I use wireless instead of CAT5, it will pull 150 Mbs on the 5 GHz channel, minimum.On CAT5, it screams.

As I said, though, numbers don't mean so much in real world.It's actual performance is what matters.It has had HD video streaming on the TV, heavy internet browsing with frequent WiFi printing, multiple smartphones (one running YouTube) while I was on Facetime with my tablet recording a podcast on the desktop (which was also running YouTube for clips).And lately, I've had my son adding in running CoD on the Wii U's gamepad to the mix (i.e. while watch a streamed movie and using YouTube on his iPad for a level walkthrough), often on top of some of the above.I can't complain about the performance at all.

I will note that I do have to reboot it every several months, however I do know already that the problem is almost always the cable modem rather than the router.I have found, though, that I typically get better results when I reboot both together.Some IT guys do this regularly as routine maintenance, however, I only do it when I see a persistent performance compromise.As I said, though, it is almost always related to the cable modem and most typically after Charter has an outage or service interruption.The web-based control panel does seem a bit sluggish, but it does what perform acceptably for its intended use.That's not something you should have to get into very often, if at all.

I haven't had any experience with the Genie apps or the Readyshare software, though I'm in the process up doing a variety of home computing upgrades and will likely add these features over the next couple of weeks.If I do so, I will update this review.

Overall, I've been quite satisfied with this router and will strongly consider Netgear again.

I ordered this on June 29, 2016, received and installed it on July 1, and received the above response less than 12 hours later. I sent them my Amazon receipt but today received another e-mail saying that since they had not heard from me, they were closing the support ticket. Now, seriously, it was in new packaging and sold as new and it seems to me that any company ought to support what it sells. Given this experience, I would recommend almost any other company BESIDES Netgear.

As an aside, I managed to solve my connectivity issues on my own, no thanks to Netgear. They may make a decent product but their support is non-existent.

The stock NetGear firmware is flaky and slow. Signal power was very poor inside my house (brick and concrete, not drywall) not being able to connect two rooms away from its location. There's no way to set the router's time and date by hand, and it tries to use NTP (Network Time Protocol) in order to fetch time from remote servers. This would be okay, however it only tries to use the hardcoded Netgear's servers (that are usualy down or broken), and there's no way to pick alternate NTP servers. The access restriction, firewall, and VPN setup were also quite limited. Five firmware upgrades since I bought it didn't improve nor solve my issues.

Fortunately, this router is compatible with DD-WRT. After reading DD-WRT's on-line documentation, I was able to replace Netgear's firmware with DD-WRT in an easy to follow, ten minutes, two-stage process. It is now faster, properly in sync with global NTP servers, and there are waaaaaaaay more features you can control. In particular, I was able too boost transmission power: not only am I able to use it anywhere in my apartment, but I can get a good signal from the ground floor (I live on the 7th. floor) also.

It is a good piece of hardware with a lousy firmware. Plan to use DD-WRT if you want to enjoy it thoroughly. If you feel that installing DD-WRT is way over your abilities, and don't have a friend nearby able to help you, don't buy it.