Netgear's New Routers Have Badass Looks, Insane Speeds

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The looks of these beastly routers match the specs.

Netgear’s Nighthawk AX8 and Nighthawk AX12 routers not only look like stealth fighters from Area 51 or a First Order shuttle, but are also built for crazy speeds of up to 6Gbps.

In theory, these devices will get you multiple 4K streams without trouble — if your internet connection supports it or if you have a local video server.

According to Netgear, the routers’ evil Galactic Empire styling — which apparently is a thing now — has a technical reason: they house eight high performance antennas in the right position to guarantee maximum coverage in “very large homes.”

The company claims that the Nighthawk AX12 has 8 x 8 MU-MIMO to deliver faster streaming performance to multiple devices in a Wi-Fi network. To distribute the traffic, Netgear claims that the router comes with a quad-core 2.2GHz processor that is optimized to work with Wi-Fi 6 and “boosts wireless, wired, and WAN-to-LAN performance.”

The AX8 offers less performance with 4x4 MU-MIMO and a 1.8GHz processor, and less streams.

It also has multiple Ethernet ports, including a 5Gbps Ethernet port to connect to your fiber internet connection and use as much bandwidth as it can suck from it.

The AX8 is available for $400 at Amazon now. No price for the AX12 yet, but it’s expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2019.

Credit: Netgear

Jesus Diaz
Jesus Diaz

Jesus Diaz founded the new Sploid for Gawker Media after seven years working at Gizmodo, where he helmed the lost-in-a-bar iPhone 4 story and wrote old angry man rants, among other things. He's a creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, and currently writes for Fast Company and Tom's Guide.