Well i got bored so decided to buy a Netgear D6400 at the weekend, that combined with having a £10 voucher for a certain PC/electricals high-street store burning my wallet
Things i like...
Its pretty stable from what i can tell thus far and certainly connects quicker than the POS Openreach ECI modem i had before.
Guest "features" are disabled by default (a pain IMO when they are not)
5Ghz wifi is pretty good speed and distance wise for AC wifi, better than most AC wifi gear with no external antennas.
Initial setup is very simple, no complicated IP etc settings for regular people to comprehend just a simple wizard that works.
Interface is pretty snappy with exception of one thing we will get to
Things i dislike...
The biggest pet peave with it is when doing initial setup and tweaking (especially to things wifi or network related) is it wants to restart/reboot an awlful lot. Changing just the wifi channel or password means a 60 second wait and silly blue progress bar while you wait for it to reboot, not a big deal you may say but it means the xDSL side also disconnects and resyncs.... NOT good for the UK and silly DLM systems.
It does not fully recognise certain things on your network fully. The access control section needs work (kinda silly idea as it allows things by default anyway), right now in the house i have 2 android phones, one it will identify by both name and IP the other IP only, both work fine but its a quirk, same goes for any other router you connect to act as bridges, switches etc, it only recognises my WDR-3600 TPlink by IP not the device name in the "access control" section.
Build quality, it feels cheap and is light, the base is also not the strongest feeling in the world but it stands up with all LAN ports occupied just fine.
Its LAN ports also seem to have a design or poor molding issue, one of my lan cables would not click into place on any of its ports (yet it does on 4 other devices and its clip is in good condition) i re-crimped the cable 3 times before it was happy with the 8P8C (RJ45) connector i put on the cable and it finally clicked into place. Only thing i can think is that particular cable is slightly thicker CAT6 than the rest. Again though thats grasping as it and its connector was fine on all my other devices.
Really minor stuff that irks...
Lights on front all of them green except for some reason the wifi which they went with blue for lol. Oh and the illuminated Netgear logo. (does not affect me as its not on my desk glowing in my face
).
Verdict...
Overall its a pretty good device, the interface is ok not the best of worse ive used the basic and advanced split is a good idea in it. Its reliable (thus far). If it stays reliable id recommend it.
I would had liked to have seen the build quality a bit better for a £150 device the plastic case just feels very thin, also the ports issue i had with one cable/connector on the other hand for the features included its pretty good value.
Ill keep mine unless my connection goes to pot on it, which from 3 days of testing now i do not think it will, all seems reliable. I MAY also get a Billion 8800NL or 8800AXL not for a direct compare per say of things like wifi but general user friendliness, interface function (how quick it is and any quirks rather than direct features) and build quality to see how they compare. A family member wants an AC router so just got to convince them to buy the Billion AXL instead.
IPTV issues
A friend with youview had this on gear they swapped out which i had to configure, ill check what i did tomorrow to make it work
