Legit Mods and Ends Reviews

Netgear R6300 802.11ac Wireless Router Review

Manufacturer: Netgear
Product: R6300 (R6300-100NAS)
Date: Fri, Aug 24, 2012 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Ken Brown -
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Netgear R6300 - Under the Hood

Netgear R6300


After opening the package we find the Netgear R6300 router which is much wider than our former king-of-the-router, N900.  The dimensions of the beast are 8.07 in. x 10.04 in. x 3.03 in. and weigh in at 1.44lbs. Along with the router was an Ethernet cable; quick install guide, and power adapter. The R6300 features four gigabit Ethernet ports and two USB ports for attaching wired devices, network storage and printer sharing. The $200 R6300 also has NetGear genie, secure connection, ready share USB access, simultaneous dual band, gigabit wired and gigabit Wi-Fi.

The front of the R6300 doesn’t contain any buttons but does have LED indicator lights.  On the bottom of the front, you will see 4 lights for power, internet connectivity, Wi-Fi status, and USB hub status.  The large “NETGEAR” logo will turn on shortly after the unit boots and is operating normally.
Netgear R6300

On the right side, there are two buttons – one for WPS connection to your wireless clients and the other to toggle Wi-Fi power on and off.
Netgear R6300

Along the back you can see USB port, 4 Gigabit LAN ports, WAN port, reset button, power toggle button and DC power plug.
Netgear R6300 PCB

We cracked the case to get a better look at what exactly is powering the R6300.  Before we could get to the PCB, we noticed the host of antenna placed throughout the inside of the case.  It looks like the Netgear engineers wanted to make sure the user had as much coverage as possible and thus placed antennas “looking” at different angles.  We should see later how this antenna placement affects the R6300’s performance.
Netgear R6300 PCB

Netgear R6300 PCB


Below the two large heatsinks are the brains of the Netgear R6300, Broadcom’s BCM4360 3x3 5G Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11ac chip with 128 MB of NAND Flash memory via a Samsung K9F1G08U0D chip.  The Broadcom chip is designed to handle three simultaneous data streams (around 43Mbps) with QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) 256 giving it a much faster data rate than that of competitors with only QAM16 or QAM64.

Netgear R6300 PCB

Next Page - R6300 Graphical User Interface (GUI)


Review Index
Page 1 - Netgear R6300 - Netgear's Newest Flagship Router
Page 2 - Netgear R6300 - Under the Hood
Page 3 - R6300 Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Page 4 - Netgear R6300 Wi-Fi Performance Testing
Page 5 - Netgear R6300 802.11ac Performance Testing
Page 6 - Netgear R6300 Power Consumption
Page 7 - Final Thoughts on the Netgear R6300