NETGEAR Mesh WiFi Extender – Covers up to 2000 sq ft and 40 Devices with AC2200 Tri-Band Wireless Signal Booster and Repeater (Upto 2200 Mbps),…

I bought this Netgear Extender just before 5 days. I was afraid if it would really meet my expectations. It did meet my expectations. I had already purchased a smaller version couple of years back and it was a total failure.

I have my router on my first floor. It is a Nokia router provided by Airtel for 300 Mbps speed. I stay on Second floor . Even though I can see a good Wifi signal in my Laptop, uploading and downloading was a nightmare for me. If I had to upload large files to Udemy or Skillshare i need to go downstairs. Now the uploading and downloading is a breeze.

The Extender is very easy to operate. Just plug into the wall outlet and press the WPS button and then press the WPS button on the router and the connection is established. You can then take the extender in to any room where you work.

Now I am able to stream 4K movies with ease and I am very happy with the purchase.

The only downside is it will take a few min to boot up. you need to wait for all the lights to turn green, and its also good to switch it off during night and when not used.

It’s not extraordinary but is a decent extender for weak WiFi signal spots.
Had a bit of a problem connecting it to my router. The customer helpline was useful but it took a few trial and hits before it worked.
Signal strength is about 60% to 75% of the original and variable across the home but if you have a 100mbps or more original speeds it should be ok even with the drop. Don’t have any comparables as its my first.
Definitely not as strong to reach all corners of a large 2 floor house as its made out to be.

Customer care is full supported. Best products and network accessibility is superb compare other products. Netgear is best products

It has been my long time wishlist to convert my existing wifi to mesh technology and I never dreamt that wish will come to true without migrating to Mesh routers. Mine is the 2-floor building where I placed my Netgear X6 R8500 router on the first floor and Netgear WNDR4 in the ground floor. Every time I go to the ground floor my SSID will change and I have to wait 5 mins for the switch. I don’t want to migrate to Mesh routers coz my existing router is a beast with awesome features that most of them are missing in Mesh routers, so my wish was a dream.

Thanks to Netgear for the technology, with this Extender my dream is fulfilled and now my entire house is on single SSID.

The package was received much earlier than expected delivery date (I ordered on Dec 13 Expected deliver date was given as Dec 16 to Dec 19 but was delivered on Dec 15). There is only router, Indian adapter and some paperwork inside the package.

Setup: Since I already own Knighthawk R6 router which can be set up using the Nighthawk app, setting up this router has become damn easy. I just plugged in the router, let it boot and select “New setup” option in-app and rest of the wizard has completed the setup of the router. After completion of setup, I placed the router on the ground floor and is connected to my existing router and started working.

Performance is awesome and I have a seamless experience while switching between routers.

If you can afford ₹11K, I think this is one of the best extenders in the market which can convert your existing router to mesh network.

So far I did not find any cons in the device. I’ll update the review if I find any.

Product purchased in Jan 2021 and got out of order just after warranty period of two years. Contacted Customer Care but it was useless being Hardware issue as confirmed by them. Interestingly , Customer Care confirmed with widening their chest that there is no Hardware Support available in India. As per Law of the Land in India, no foreign company can sale their products without having After Sales Service in all respects in India. This is the case of customer betrayal and challenging the law of the land. My since advice to all those propective buyers of India for not going to such products which can not be repaired or replaced for any software or hardware issues. This product is made in CHINA and having been imported by Indian firm. The instant product has proved again that China made product works till their warranty period hardly and after it through away such high cost items……

This is a review of the NETGEAR Wi-Fi Mesh Range Extender EX8000. I give it four stars (or if I could 3.5) because, when it works, it is brilliant and I would thoroughly recommend it. [Aug-21 downgraded to three stars – see below. But I would still recommend if you can live with its issues.] Twelve months ago I would have given 5 stars and an unreserved recommendation. Read on for why I still recommend it provided that you can live with the annoying flaw.

I have three EX8000s all bought from Amazon over six months from March 2018. I bought the second two after being pleased with the first following using it for three months. Initially they were used with a Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router (connected to a BT hub modem) that I had been using since June 2015. Now they are used with a BT Homehub 6 and fibre broadband. Between the three extenders and the broadband hub I get fast wifi coverage over most of the house to run several computers, other devices (e.g. tablets, phones, network printers) and TV streaming.

However within the last ten months or so (and I presume because of a problem introduced by Netgear in a firmware update that has persisted if not got worse through several more firmware updates to the present (September 2019)) it annoyingly and seemingly randomly drops the wifi and internet connection (on all three EX8000s but not at the same time). You will see from the negative Amazon reviews, searches online and Netgear’s own forums that this is a common, universal experience. It is not limited to the EX8000s, I noticed it with the R7000 Nighthawk router (similarly after firmware updates and before this was retired when I got fibre broadband).

I bought the EX8000 because it allowed PCs and other devices to be connected by ethernet direct to the extender. I was finding that Windows 10 updates were regularly disabling the USB Wifi adaptors that I was using, meaning that after an auto-update I was having to reinstall wifi for the house computers, so I thought an ethernet connection to a mesh extender would fix the problem. It did and I was entirely happy until… my Internet connection started dropping randomly, sometimes fixing itself but other times requiring all the routers and mesh devices be restarted.

I am not an IT specialist but I do have a fair amount of experience. I would not agree with the other reviewers who say that the Netgear setup is poor or difficult. Although I have noticed one problem reported online that the devices can be unstable (i.e. dropping connections) after firmware updates unless they are hard-reset (after new firmware is installed). However I have spent/wasted unhappy days and hours trying to sort out what was causing the network drop-outs I was experiencing before finally determining my current solution – restart the extender with the power button or by unplugging it from the mains as soon as it drops the Internet connection. The symptoms on a Windows 10 PC are:
1) Internet browsing or email downloads fail midstream.
2) The network icon in the task tray changes from the “tv” symbol to the wire globe symbol and the pop-up message confirms no internet. I run Glasswire as well so I see an alert that the Internet connection was lost or changed. The Glasswire diagnostics indicate that the DNS has changed.
3) Any networks devices attached to the ethernet ports also drop but not necessarily immediately. This confused my for quite a while because it made me think that it was a Windows or PC fault not the mesh extender. For example, I could still see a NAS and another network drive mappings but they “vanished” from the devices control panel in Windows.
4) You cannot log into the administrator on the device even if directly connected by ethernet.
5) The IP address of the extender and any devices wired into it change from the normal internal network addresses. (Glasswire repeatedly reports that the ARP table has been changed as an event).
6) If the network still shows in Windows 10, it will have changed from a private network to a public network with no internet access.
Unfortunately the Netgear administration software/interface does not have a diagnostic or event log that you can review to see what happened.

When I started with the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk in 2015 I had none of these problems. It was connected by ethernet to a BT Home Hub (that was connected to the copper phone line). The Nighthawk had better wifi range and 5G network compared with the BT hub. The Internet dropout problems started with one of the firmware updates following the discovery of network security holes – I think there have been at least two holes discovered. Because my PC was connected by ethernet direct to the R7000 I did not lose internet connections (initially) but other pcs connected by wifi on my home network did. When BT fibre froadband was installed my PC was connected by wifi through one of the EX8000s rather than direct ethernet (since the broadband point was no longer near the computer/phone socket). The Internet drop-outs continued and I noticed them more because it was my PC (previously wired) that was being affected! I abandoned the R7000 because I thought that might be the problem and reconfigured my home network to use the EX8000s directly with the BT hub: which works fine, but…

However, the random wifi disconnects continued and continue. I tried every solution found on the Internet but none worked. I narrowed the problem down to the EX8000s – all of them but not simultaneously – and eliminated other possibilities like bad ethernet cables, Windows 10, Realtek Ethernet adaptor drivers and the BT Hub (which I should add works flawlessly). The only solution is to reboot the EX8000 that has the problem. The restart takes about two minutes. The connection then works for anything up to five days but sooner or later, and for all three EX8000s !, it will happen again.

So, if you read this far… Would I buy the EX8000 again? Yes, probably. I have not found a better solution for a high-speed wifi home network (but see below). I have some older powerline network connectors that work well but they are not fast enough for realistically working with the NAS server. I have looked at Amazon reviews and online reviews for other mesh extenders. They all seem to have similar issues to the Netgear with Internet drop-outs. I think it is a problem related to the technology rather than simply a design flaw in the EX8000 or the firmware. Having said that, we use a “professional” mesh wifi network in the offices where I work and this does not have any of the problems I see reported for Netgear and others.

Would I recommend the EX8000? Yes, provided that you can live with the flaw. It is expensive but in my experience it works really well and reliably (except for the dropouts flaw of course). I live in hope that a new firmware update will materialise to fix the flaw – but I am not holding my breath. If I discover a new and more affordable solution (other than rewiring the house for Gigabyte ethernet – [and, reader, I did – for one room] I will probably write off the previous investment and move to it.

[Update 15-Nov-19] Since writing the above I changed the mesh settings for the three EX8000s, which may have “fixed” (or rather avoided) the annoying flaw of dropping connections. Rather than try to make a true mesh where all the repeaters have the same SID (which would be ideal, and is surely the aim so you move seamlessly from one to another) I made the router, each band and each extender have a different SID (but all have the same password. So, for example, the main BT router is “Router”, the first extender is “Router-A” and “Router-A-5” for the 5 GHz, Router-B and so on.

My reasoning was that perhaps the connection drops were the extenders randomly switching connection to another extender instead of the router as they tried to make the best connection and all had the same SID. Not very scientific but… it appears so far to be working in that my wifi network is much more stable. All the extenders have been up for several weeks without dropping a connection. The downside is that you have to manually switch SID with your tablet or phone as you move around the house. That is, the existing connection persists no-matter how slow or weak until the tablet cannot connect any longer whereas a proper mesh would seamlessly switch to the stronger signal as you moved around. Static PCs and devices (e.g. smart TV) are OK, they just remain connected to the nearest extender or the router that they were connected to.

[Further update Oct-20] The “fix” noted above has not solved the problem. Working from home during COVID-19 has probably increased Internet usage massively. I have to reset my (local) Extender probably at least once a week. Once the ARP table (DNS) settings on my PC start changing it is only a matter of hours before I loose Internet access!

[Further update Aug-21] I now use two of the EX8000s as access points rather than extenders and drop-out problems have (all but) vanished. One access point is directly connected via ethernet to the router and the other via a powerline adapter. The two main domestic computers are wired to the router (one directly and the other via a new high-speed powerline adapter). My work computer is used entirely with wifi through the access point (still working from home because of Covid). It no-longer suffers dropouts or loses connection as described above. Nor do other devices when connected via wi-fi.

I conclude that the issues with the EX8000 were/are caused by the limitations of extenders generally as I suggested above. That is, eventually, the DNS settings are “lost” or exhausted and the extender has to be restarted. The third extender is still used as an extender but it is connected by wifi to another extender in the next room that is used as an access point. It does not suffer from the disconnections as previously described. My educated guess is that it is sufficiently close for the wifi backhaul always to be 5G – I think that the DNS changes and disconnections may be related to the backhaul switching between 5G and 2.4G because the 5G signal is not quite strong enough. (Signal strength or connection distance also seems to vary with time of day or night!)

So I would recommend the EX8000 used as an access point (i.e. connected via ethernet to the router) or if it is positioned close enough to the router as an extender such that it always uses 5G for the backhaul. If I were starting all over again I would always go for a direct ethernet connection (I eventually bit the bullet and paid for an ethernet connection from the BT router to be installed to my work room). If that were not possible I would buy hi-speed powerline adapters rather than this EX8000. The newer TP-link powerline adaptor I bought provides three ethernet ports and 5G wi-fi (acting as an access point). This is a better solution than the EX8000, although the cost is about the same.

This worked for less than 1 year, since i work from home… i wanted to use in in my office to extend the wifi signal