In many ways, the market's reception to the NETGEAR Nighthawk XR500 router will speak volumes also about whether NETGEAR was right in creating a new lineup of products under the new Nighthawk Pro Gaming sub-brand. After all, the end user would be rightly skeptical in the treatment of a gaming-branded router in light of how such branding has become widespread in other PC DIY product lines. A gaming keyboard, for example, had nothing really to differentiate it from others until very recently where analog switches and mechanical switches designed to be faster in response helped justify the moniker somewhat. NETGEAR definitely had to do something bold, and I dare say they did more than I gave them credit for when I first saw this router at CES earlier this year.

By collaborating with Netduma and using DumaOS to run the XR500, NETGEAR has offered a well-designed, feature-rich monitoring and control tool as the firmware for the router. One might argue they took the easy route by going with this instead of making something their own entirely, but based on what their other tools do, I would say this was the right move. Indeed, a stark contrast to DumaOS is the confusing pile of mobile and x86-based tools that have a lot of functionality in common, and yet NETGEAR chooses to offer so many multiple venues for setup and more for every single product of theirs we have looked at thus far. The mobile apps in particular are so similar they might as well just be re-skinned versions of a base app. DumaOS looks all the better relatively despite some liberal use of marketing terminology.

Geo-filtering seems like something routers should have had for years now, and yet, it was only recently that this was brought to market. With the XR500, this might well be a first-time introduction to many around the world thanks to NETGEAR's brand presence and retail channels globally. Most other features that are touted for gaming here, including QoS and automatic prioritization of network traffic, are not new and have been around for years now in both wired and wireless networking products. This is not to say that they don't add positively to the user experience with the XR500, however, as a plethora of such features and options all come together to make this a very good router in the true sense of the word.

There are drawbacks to this, however, with so much software-based features having taking focus from the hardware itself. As far as actual performance as a router goes, the Nighthawk XR500 is an AC2600 class router with dual-band operation and four antennas that somehow still barely outperform a significantly less expensive router from years ago in the AC1900 class. Physics is of course a great unifier here, but be aware that you will need to step up to something more akin to a mesh Wi-Fi system if you have a large house or just want the absolute best wireless performance. Four GigE ports and network-attached storage do help sweeten the deal, but there will be serious thoughts on whether this feature set is the best you can do for the price, at least in the USA where the competition is severe, including from NETGEAR themselves.

As it stands, DumaOS carries the Nighthawk XR500 to a strong place. Unless you have no need for the major features here, such as geo-filtering for PC gamers, it does enough to merit a recommendation.