Netgear D6200 review

On paper, the Netgear D6200 offers an impressive array of features. It has dual-band, concurrent network support over 802.11ac and 802.11n, an integrated ADSL2+ modem, support for cable connections with a separate Gigabit WAN port, four Gigabit LAN ports on the rear panel, plus a USB 3 port for sharing storage and printers. Read on for our Netgear D6200 review.

If the specification raises hopes, testing thoroughly dashes them. It starts with a sluggish, outdated web front-end. Where Linksys, AVM and Asus have been working hard at crafting usable, powerful on-router software, Netgear is stuck in the past.

You can get everything you need done with it, but it’s slow, unattractive and needlessly complicated. It’s just as well there’s Android and iOS app support to help with management and configuration.

Netgear D6200 review: performance

Its performance is equally disappointing. Although the D6200’s 2×2 stream MIMO configuration appears to offer a top link speed of 867Mbits/sec 802.11ac speed and 300Mbits/sec 802.11n speed, in practice it’s impossible to achieve both at the same time – for full speed on one network, you have drop the top speed of the other network, or vice versa.

For the best compromise, we reduced the speed of the 2.4GHz 802.11n network to 145Mbits/sec; if we left this network set to 300Mbits/sec, 802.11ac speeds at close range nearly halved.

Even with these settings in place, the D6200 disappointed. Testing at close range on an 802.11ac 3×3 connection, speeds hit only 29.2MB/sec, and this fell to 12.2MB/sec on 2.4GHz 802.11n.

In the long-range, 30m tests its transfer rate over 802.11ac held up well, falling to 25.1MB/sec, but in other tests it was sluggish, gaining only 3MB/sec over 2.4GHz 802.11n when tested with our 3×3 stream PCI Express card, and providing terrible long-range speeds to our 2×2 stream iPad Air.

Storage performance fared little better, and the D6200’s single USB 2 socket saw shared storage speeds max out at an underwhelming 14.1MB/sec.

Despite its comprehensive list of specifications, then, the D6200’s performance and range aren’t up to scratch. We’d expect much better at this price.

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