Netgear Trek n300 Travel Router and Range Extender Review #travel Gadget

Paula — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 21:26:24 +0000

For those of you who travel, for business or pleasure, like I do, and for those of you who actually need a bit of a boost for your wifi range at home, also like I do, the Netgear Trek is a great idea. I was sent a Netgear Trek to test out here for a few weeks and I have been working hard on getting used to the gadget. I had high hopes for this, maybe too high. The Netgear Trek is a travel router and range extender. It doesn’t come with cables or any extra parts. The Netgear Trek has a built in antenna you can easily flip up to increase performance. I have been struggling with my Internet connectivity lately. I was exploring where this works best in my home to increase range. It doesn’t seem to be helpful inside the office at all. I assumed that was because it was too close to my existing router. But upstairs in my daughter’s room it worked a bit better. Please note I have given this gadget multiple tries in multiple areas of my home. The N300 Travel Router Trek Model PR2000 is very small as noted and it comes with built in USB port and one micro USB port as well. When the Wifi antenna is open you can easily see the four LED lights beneath. (Power, Internet, Wifi and Wired) There is also a reset button and two Ethernet ports. I tried connecting directly to the Ethernet ports as well but that didn’t work from the Mac in my office. You can use this as a firewall in public if you are connected at a coffee shop in public for instance where the security is low. That would be a useful application of this gadget. Netgear Genie Interface makes setting up Netgear products fairly simple. Netgear Genie is also available as an app for iOS and Android users. I think the Genie interface is great and I love the parental controls. But this gadget fell short on functionality for me. The Trek took too long to get activated when it was in my home being used as a range extender. Time is money when you run a business and that was a problem for me. I attempted to use the Netgear Trek in my office in both a wired through Ethernet and wireless capacity with WIFI and had no luck. In fact the entire experience was frustrating. I recognize that this is a relatively small, compact and fairly affordable device but I expected more from it. The Pros: It doesn’t come with any extra bits. It is affordable and compact. Netgear Genie Interface is great. The Cons: This should work and connect almost effortlessly to make me want to use it. It didn’t ever work well enough as a bridge within my home or a range extender. I had high hopes for this but they weren’t met unfortunately. I was provided with a Netgear Trek for purposes of this review. My opinion is my own.

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The Cadillac of Connectivity – Netgear Router #Giveaway

Paula — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:04:14 +0000

Excellence in connectivity. I may have mentioned once or twice that we moved this year. Why do I mention it so much? Well because moving your entire family is a big life change and it comes with numerous other small and sometimes tedious changes that can linger, prolonging the experience for months. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good and it’s worth it. But there are often tiny things that crop up all year after the move. I mean first there’s the unpacking of course and then the settling in and getting reoriented. The reason for my move was twofold. We had outgrown our old house and we also needed a home office space for me. We got both when we moved here to my new house with a home office. Now setting up this home office was also a big deal. I wrote about that too, because it took a lot of time this year to get things the way I wanted them. I am almost 100 % pleased with the outcome. But the one strange little, but important thing, that we hadn’t really considered was the connectivity in a larger home. Having a bigger space means we need a better, more reliable Internet service and provider and a top notch router that reaches every corner of the house and doesn’t crash often or let strangers hijack my security settings. So when I was offered a Netgear router with a giveaway for my readers I thought it timely and worthwhile to share here. Keep reading to find out how you can win. First the price, because it’s substantial. This is not a cheap router. It’s around $200. I have seen it listed at Best Buy for $200 and also at times for $269. That’s a good chunk of change. But it’s also not horribly out of range from some of the higher end Rogers units I priced there. A couple of the Rogers routers are $200. The Nighthawk X6 is better than the Rogers unit in my opinion. If you pay attention, you will have a chance to win a Netgear router Nighthawk X6 here so follow the instructions at end here. And even if you don’t win, I need you to understand why it might be worth it to upscale your router. If you have gamers in your house, this router is a necessity. This particular Netgear router is called the Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band Wifi Router. It comes with an ethernet cable. (You can see that in the picture below), a quick install guide and a power adapter. Smart Connect means the Nighthawk Netgear router selects the smartest fastest Wifi connection for each device you plug in. We often have a lot of devices here because we are all connected and I have a teenager. Fast, efficient and reliable is essential here at my home and most especially in my home office. Connecting the Nighthawk was relatively simple. Follow the installation instructions given with the product. There is also a link to a video, and a QR code provided, so there are several ways to access the installation details. One of my primary frustrations with technology is when tech writers assume everyone knows how to do this and follows instructions in the same manner. I also hate when the information is only provided on line. If I am already having trouble getting on line which is why I have a new router then how does having the instruction manual on line make anything simpler for me? Happily Netgear has ample instructions here to guide almost anyone through this process. The Nighthawk X6 has six powerful external antennas for better connections and multiple devices hence the X6 name. The Netgear router also has upto 3.2Gbps wifi speed. The Netgear router Nighthawk X6 also boasts a dual-core 1GHz CPU. All that put together means that this is a powerful package that will give you lag free connectivity throughout your home, regardless of the size of your house. If you have a space in your home where wifi is glitchy or tricky to access then this Netgear router is the one you need to fix that. We don’t have any dead zones, so to speak, but I do find that there are lags when everyone is on the Internet and I also find that when I take my home office on the road, as in move downstairs to the basement couch where I can watch the kids, and TV, and work at the same time, there is often a lag. With the Nighthawk X6 that is gone. I almost took a pass on this review because I thought it might be too hard for me to setup. Although it took me awhile to get around to it, this was not a challenging process at all. Netgear comes with Netgear Genie App for your smartphone. From the smartphone app, you can monitor usage and parental controls and several other things. It’s pretty awesome actually. This is your chance to win one. I received product in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is all my own and it is 100 % honest. Entry-Form

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Netgear Trek n300 Travel Router and Range Extender Review #travel Gadget

The Cadillac of Connectivity – Netgear Router #Giveaway