Netgear R6300 802.11ac Wireless Router Review

Netgear R6300 802.11ac Performance Testing

Since the true usefulness of this new generation of router is in the AC performance, we set up a couple of experiments to test how good this new standard is. Because most people who purchase this router will have legacy devices that still run with Wireless-N or G, we tested what would happen when we connected a 802.11n device to the 5G Wireless-AC on the Netgear R6300. We did the same thing that we did in our previous speed test and looked at two different sized packets at the same distance away from the Buffalo router. As always, our results turned out to be pretty interesting:

Test Results: While the Buffalo WZR-D1800H was first out of the gate with their 802.11ac router, Netgear leads the way in this test. The speeds shown here are pretty amazing and equate to a 30% increase in Read speeds over Wireless-N speeds. Remember, this is a legacy device connected to the 5 GHz AC channel on the routers. Both the Buffalo and the Netgear show a measurable increase in speeds. Your existing arsenal of equipment should give you a very nice bump in speed.

Test Results: When looking at our ‘multimedia’-sized packets our results are consistent as the Netgear R6300 outperforms the Buffalo WZR-D1800H in Read and Write speeds. The Netgear shows a 21% gain in performance over its own wireless-n results. Again, very nice performance even if you don’t have a bunch of “AC” devices.

Next, we turned off the built-in Wi-Fi on our laptop and then paired an additional Netgear R6300 802.11ac Router configured as a bridge to our Netgear R6300 that we were testing. We are now ready to see what a true 802.11ac wireless network can do. Again, we used LAN Speed Test to check the throughput of our 1MB and 100MB data packets.

Test Results: Our minds were blown when we first tested the Buffalo WZR-D1800H AC router, but the Netgear R6300 takes it to a new level. The Netgear R6300 increases its Read/Write speeds with 1MB data packets in a pure 802.11ac setting by more than 194%! It’s very rare that we report anything with a 194% increase in speeds, but there you have it.

Test Results: The average Read and Write speeds of the larger data packages really
do tell the tale. Another measurable performance jump – this time the Netgear R6300 improves on its Wireless-N speeds by 185% outpacing the very sound Buffalo WZR-D1800H 802.11ac router. We really can’t get over some of the speeds we we saw in our tests. Remember, we are showing you the the average speeds!
During our testing, we measured speeds that topped 400 Mbps and only varied
when we adjusted the angle of the router! Pretty incredible.