Netgear launches ‘world’s fastest router’ Nighthawk X10 for streamers and VR fans

Gamers and big downloaders can rejoice. Netgear is launching what it calls the “world’s fastest router,” the Nighthawk X10, for media streaming, instant backup, and fast gameplay.

The Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart Wi-Fi Router is a follow-up to the Nighthawk brand that the company launched in 2013.

San Jose, Calif.-based Netgear is pitching the router to enthusiasts who like 4K video streams and virtual reality gaming.

The router combines a 1.7-gigahertz quad-core processor — the fastest processor in a home router — and quad-stream Wave 2 Wi-Fi architecture. It can handle the next-generation Wi-Fi known in engineering lingo as “802.11ad” Wi-Fi, with speeds up to 7.2 gigabits per second.

It uses the latest MU-MIMO technology to support simultaneous streaming, and it doubles Wi-Fi speeds to mobile devices. It has four patent-pending external Active Antennae to amplify Nighthawk X10 Wi-Fi signals to maximize range and throughput.

“The superior capabilities of 802.11ad will greatly enhance the user experience when dealing with applications that require the transferring of large amounts of data. [It] also provides approximately one-tenth the latency, as compared to 802.11ac, which is absolutely critical for applications like virtual reality or augmented reality,” said Michael Thelander, president of Signals Research Group.

The Nighthawk X10 supports Plex Media Server with transcoding for smooth 4K streaming, even to remote devices. It is also the industry’s first router to run Plex Media Server without the need for a computer. From locally connected storage, Plex organizes your movies, TV shows, music, videos, and photos, making it easy to find and enjoy the content you love. Smoothly stream anywhere you go, on virtually any device: Phones, tablets, streaming devices, gaming consoles, and smart TVs all support Plex apps.

The Nighthawk X10 is also the industry’s first router designed for the home market that includes a 10-gigabit port, which supports a fiber connection.

“Nighthawk X10 sets a new bar for performance and a new record for speed when moving large video files within your network and to the cloud,” said David Henry, senior vice president for home networking at Netgear, in a statement. “Today’s video files are getting larger with 4k and VR video. Offloading from capture devices and moving these large files within a network often becomes a time-consuming and challenging task. The Nighthawk X10 is powerful enough to move these files at unprecedented speed and provides easy access once the file is stored on the network.”

The router is available now for $500.