Closer Look

This page will be short and sweet, just like the NETGEAR Nighthawk MR2100 mobile router. It is easily the smallest WiFi router I have used to date, intended for portability first and pure performance second. Weighing under 250 grams and ~10 cm square with all of 20 mm deep, it is arguably easier to carry around than many wallets or even some foldable devices today. The top surface has a glossy finish, so it is a fingerprint magnet that needs wiping ever so often, and has a black inset around the display itself. There is a NETGEAR logo up top, just in case you forgot who made this, in addition to three touch-sensitive capacitive buttons (Power, Home, and Back). Turning it around, we see a matte gray plastic panel with the NETGEAR logo in the middle and four raised feet that lift the MR2100 off the resting surface ever so slightly.

Three of the four sides are bare, but the side nearest the power button is where all the I/O is housed. NETGEAR includes two RF connectors on either end as well as a full-size USB Type A port, a full-size RJ45 LAN/WAN Ethernet port, and the now-expected Type C port in the middle. The Type A USB port allows for connection to a storage device or even charging another device, such as a smartphone, in an emergency. The Type C port, in addition to charging the internal battery, allows for a tethered connection to a PC, which is of course also possible with the Ethernet port, but takes a separate cable.


A very handy notch gap between the plastic panel and the rest of the body on the back makes for easy internal access. First up, we see the internal 5040 mAh battery with a NETGEAR logo, which is promising for long sessions on the go. There is another cutout here for battery removal, and we finally see where the 4G LTE SIM card will slot in (nano SIM only). There is also only one obvious way for the nano SIM card to slot in.

Powering the Nighthawk MR2100 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon X24 LTE modem, which allows for the aggregation of up to five downstream LTE bands and two upstream LTE bands, and how NETGEAR advertises the maximum throughput of 2 Gbps down and 150 Mbps up, similar to standalone WiFi routers, where throughput is the sum of the individual channel capabilities. 4x4 MIMO antennas are onboard as well, and specific battery/performance modes to tune antenna strength. Of course, this depends on whether your mobile network provider supports everything, and your network plan is eventually the biggest equalizer even if all the LTE bands are supported. The RF connector covers are easily removed if you get external antennas, such as these, but again, it is not a first-party offering as with the Orbi LTE router we saw before.