Feature Request - Smart Connect

While that is not a feature yet, for desktop PCs, as well as laptops, this is an area where you have control. While smart connect is a really good feature, and over the years, Netgear has put in a massive amount of development into, but there are times when it is good to have direct control over a specific device.

Since band steering and roaming is still largely reliant on the willingness of the client device to move, the ultimate decision on roaming and band steering is still up to the client device, and if the client device does not want to move, then the wouter will not have may ways of forcing it.

On your PC, you can use the preferred band option to exercise some control over the band steering.

Link to image as often attached images will fail to load on the forums for some reason: https://i.imgur.com/HRglKG8.jpg 

By default the WiFi adapter from pretty much all major brands willl not have a preference in which band is preferred. In your case, you would chance the WiFi settings to prefer the 5GHz band, and thus the router will have a harder time putting you on the 2.4GHz band while the 5GHz band is in range.

Aside from that, be sure to benchmark the performance to make sure that the 5GHz band can offer a higher effective throughput given the distance. If you have a modern dual band 5GHz capable client device, then typically smart connect will try repeatedly to band steer the device to the 5GHz band, though if the signal is quite weak, then it will push it to the 2.4GHz band for more consistency and a lower error rate.