NOTE: Since Amazon lists the AX8 and AX12 as one product, this review covers both in one. This may help you for comparison.It's October 2019 and I've now had the pleasure of working with both an AX8 and an AX12. Both represent a new standard for WiFi called "Version 6" that should change everything. It's designed for larger spaces, stronger signals, higher speed and more importantly taking the "Internet of Things" idea into account and handling lots of small-scale devices in the home.While my experience with the AX8 was pretty good, it didn't quite match up to my expectations. I was surprised to find the XR450 to be a close contender--it's much less expensive but older and more technically complex than the AX8, so depending how knowledgeable you are, the AX8 might be the easier choice. It's also possible that the AX8 will improve down the road with a firmware update or two.Despite the very close similarities to the AX12 (which has one more set of antennas), I did find the AX12 to be a very good router--though not significatnly better than the AX8 or XR450; thus a huge drawback to it is the Ferrari-level price point.I bought the AX8 for my father's house. He was using a Netgear R6300 router with a Netgear EX7500 extender. He has a large single-story home, over 3,000 sq ft, with high ceilings and a large outdoor space and the R6300 & extender system was starting to drop out a lot more. His ISP requires him to put the router in a far corner of the home, so we needed strong coverage to get around concrete walls and travel all the way to the opposite corner of the house.The AX8 was extremely easy to set up, even though I needed to tell it to take the same name and password as my father's old system to make things easier on him this wasn't hard to do at all. We were ready to rock in minutes.The AX12 was a little more flaky about this, with the Router and the instructions both saying I should use the Netgear Nighthawk app on a mobile device to set up the Router. That went well until it hung on the last step and I had to fall back on the traditional route of using "routerlogin.net" on a PC, start over from scratch, and it was as easy as the AX8.The AX12 is in a two-story 3,000sq. ft home on the top floor, and the ground floor is concrete walls, the bane of Wi-Fi.One strange thing about the hardware though: the "wings" that make up the antennas need to be snapped onto the body of the router, upright. It's not hard to do, but you do have to pay attention and make sure everything is lined up, then push down pretty hard to get the "wings" to click into place. Despite that, I found they kept detaching themselves if anyone picked up the router or moved it. This doesn't affect performance but it's worth noting when you put together or handle the device. For both the AX8 and the AX12, it was strange that one "wing" would clip into place and the other wouldn't...but both slip right back out again at the slightest touch.I also didn't see a wall-mount capability in the AX8, but I did have it in the AX12. This can be a problem for newer homes like mine where the Internet is pre-built into a utility panel that's on one wall of a small, tight space. The AX12 is for me, and wall-mounting was relatively easy. One caveat to be aware of: the wall-mount pegs/screws you use will need to stick out from the wall a bit because the router sits atop thick rubber feet--you need the screws to reach deeper towards the mounting holes to properly fit. These feet also make it nearly impossible to see where the holes are and line them up, so I had to use my fingertips to feel for it and fumble it into place.Once all was up and running, I wandered around with the Netgear mobile app testing signal strength.For the AX8 I had some dropouts I didn't expect and the range only went a little farther than the much-older R6300. That said, the coverage still works for most of my parents' home and was much more stable.One weird thing happened that may only affect Xfinity customers: we'd had Xfinity disable their built-in Wi-Fi years ago. After connecting the X8, the Xfinity modem/router detected the AX8, read the network name/password, turned its WiFi back on and started broadcasting itself with the exact same name & password, creating a confusing mess of two identical networks broadcasting side by side and fighting with each other. I had to get Xfinity tech support to work with me to get their WiFi turned off again. I've never seen this happen before, but keep it in mind if you suddenly start to have your new router disconnect you or refuse to let you through to the Internet--check your ISP's modem/router to be sure their Wi-Fi isn't turned on.For the AX12, I found the coverage to be just as good as the XR450 but the speeds to be a bit better.For both, the Admin console is more like your traditional routers: no DumaOS. I liked the look and feel of DumaOS, but despite being a gamer I didn't end up needing the granular device-level traffic controls, so I don't mind that it's missing here.Overall, the AX series are supposed to be a big step forward for Wi-Fi. If you're on a router that's problematic and/or 3 years old or more, I'd suggest upgrading. However, it's only the highest bandwidth consumers that will see a big difference between the AX series and the cheaper XR series. XRs actually offer more tweaking capability while AX is more user-friendly.First impressions of the new NETGEAR Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream AX6000 Wi-Fi Router. Previous situation: AT&T DSL service over landline with an old Speedstream modem. My devices were hardwired (via CAT5 and a Linksys 10/100 switch model EZXS55W) and others Wi-Fi to a Linksys WRT1900 AC router. The AT&T service provided a max of 6 Mbps download and .8 Mbps upload. AT&T did not provide any better service to the area so I needed to go with another (Spectrum) provider. This new service was for 100 Mbps download and 5-10 Mbps upload. Considerably better than what I had. I decided that I would go all out and try to get the maximum benefit from the service and a little future proofing. I had purchased a Netgear CM600 modem instead of the supplied modem and router from Spectrum. I also ordered a new switch (Netgear 8 port 10/100/1000 model GS108) for my wired devices. I also pre-ordered the NETGEAR Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream AX6000 Wi-Fi Router. My house is around 1700 sq. ft. with a finished basement. Most of the equipment is in the basement. The previous modem/router was in the basement. It covered the whole house. However, it did not cover any area outside of the house such as the garage and outside the front door. I particularly wanted the range to go out the front door to potentially add security cameras without having to use Wi-Fi extenders. I was lucky enough to be able to get the Spectrum cable fished directly from the outside box to the same location as my previous modem/router. I hooked up the Netgear modem – all good. I connected a PC directly to the modem (CAT 5) and speed tested at 118 Mbps download and 11 Mbps upload. Since I did not have the new router yet, I just reconnected the Linksys WRT1900. The testing PC was then connected to the Linksys WRT1900. It still speed tested at the same. However, other PCs hardwired to a switch and then to the Linksys WRT1900 speed tested around the 60 Mbps download and 9 Mbps upload. Mobile units tested anywhere from 60-90 Mpbs and 11 Mbps upload. I figured the old switch had a lot to do with the hardwired slower speed. When the new switch came in, I installed it and that cleared up the speed problem (now 118 Mbps download and 11 Mbps upload) on the hardwired PCs. Once the Nighthawk AX8 came in, I replaced the Linksys router. Speed on the mobiles tested in at 117 Mbps download and 11.94 upload. The overall range of the Wi-Fi increased. It now covered the whole garage and only started to decrease in strength after moving about 15 ft. from the front door. As for specifics about the Nighthawk AX8, the unit is stylish. May remind you of something that would come out of a Star Wars or Star Trek show. If you are looking for an easy set up of a typical home network, it is very simple. Just follow the instructions in the provided Quick Start guide. If you need more advanced customization, you need to go to the Netgear support site and download the manual for this unit. The only instructions included in the box is the Startup guide and a note about upgrading the firmware. Unit comes with a power supply, network cable and startup guide. The “wings” (antenna units) were folder flat in the box. They simply lift up and then push the wings down to snap into place. Connect the network cable to the modem. Power up the device. I downloaded the app on my phone. The app connects automatically when it is started. Once connected the app prompted to upgrade the firmware. I walked through the rest of the setup on my phone app. Piece of cake. Having been able to max out the provided service from Spectrum on all my devices was icing on the cake. The extended coverage was even more so. I have seen several comments about the fan running on this unit. It did NOT start running when the unit was powered on. It has not yet turned on so I cannot comment if it has a noise issue or not. Firmware level is at 1.0.1.40_1.0.22. The unit seems to be well made and sturdy. There were two caveats to the good experience. Both are concerning the USB connections on the back of the unit. The first is that the USB connections on the back of the unit are too close to each other. I usually, put in two 128 GB sticks in the Linksys with no problems. The ones I used were about 13/16” wide. Way too wide for the Netgear. I would say if you have USBs to use that are wider than 5/8” (maybe 11/16”) two will not fit. My solution will be to see if I can find a couple of short USB extensions with a narrow end. Purely a poor design issue. The other caveat is that there is no information included concerning how to use and configure the USB connections. You must download the manual to get any initial setup and network mapping information. Otherwise, I would have given the unit a 5 star on “Easy to Use”. It is a little pricey at $399. However, I believe it will take me into future a good way and support any speed and protocol changes for a while. As long as there are no immediate performance issues that come up, I would readily recommend it.Installing a router takes some network understanding. That said this is a very good router for the money. However their strong arm policy of pushing unwanted security under the guise that what you have is insufficient is very insulting and annoying almost making the purchase not worth it. 1. Netgear nearly mandates a phone app as a requirement to setup and manage the router and alludes to the industry standard web management app with only one sentence in all of it's documentation. 2. Locks you into Netgear web security with no way to option out where I am expecting to have to pay for a month of or more of Netgear Armor before cutting it lose. And if that was not a enough I have to suffer a barrage of Bitdefender SPAM Nag wear to find the email to stop the Netgear Armor 30 day free service which is illegal and will likely as soon as some money hungry lawyer will start a class action lawsuit. Yet Netgear will likey continue this policy of blackmailing us into the spider trap of purchasing security software as the penalties the courts are likely to impose are nothing compared to what is plundered from us in purchasing a better then average router. I want to love this router but Netgear's sales tactics and policies make this purchase a bitter sweet buy.Set up pretty easy. For some reason I can not connect to the router from my desktop.The first one I got was defective but a replacement was very quickly sent to me. The replacement worked very good and very pleased with it's performance. Only minor complaint is that the maker supplys very little written instructions or explains what button is what on front. Go to the maker's website and carefully read about it. Maker's website is somewhat poor, move about site slowly and read carefully.Their product doesn’t last. It does work well for about a year then needs replacing. They do not offer support unless you pay $139Quería un router estable para la casa y tengo que resetearlo manualmente 2 veces al día por que se queda sin wifi y no regresa automáticamente, una porquería no se puede confiarNo me agrada que en repetidas ocasiones se cae las redes de 2.4 y 5Mhz aun cuando se cambio de canal y realizo troubleshooting y se auto actulizó el firmware.Très bon routeur je recommande