The RAX200 is suppose to be a high end / all encompassing router that will brush your teeth if wireless toothbrush is compatible.
Who spends $500 on a rocket that doesn't have WPA3? I won't. Cmon Netgear, your lower / less expensive routers have WPA3 - communicate with us when available.
WPA3 is probably not stable on the Broadcom chipset yet, I know Asus also only had betas with WPA3 for basically the same hardware ie the GT-AX11000 last time I checked.
As for the less expensive model having WPA3:
The RAX120 actually is the superior model chipset wise and Qualcomm usually does a better job of implementing features in its chipsets.
The RAX200 is pretty much just an RAX80 (effectively the same CPU & chipset as the RAX200) with an extra 5Ghz radio and a 2.5Gb Eth port slapped on for which you pay the premium over the RAX80.
The extra 5ghz radio on the RAX200 makes it superior to the RAX120. Hence why the RAX200 costs more. Sure, not everybody needs/wants an extra 5ghz band but for those that have tons of wifi clients (like me), then a tri-band router like the RAX200 is a great choice. No issues at all with my RAX200, love it to bits. And no, i didn't pay $500+ for it either 🙂
I should also add, its becoming a bit of an outdated myth that Qualcomm chipsets are still vastly superior to Broadcom units. Sure, that may have been the case when features like Mu-Mimo were first released a few years ago but Broadcom chipsets have finally caught up in the last year or two. As an example. my RAX200 performs just as well as my R9000 (QCA based), if not better.
I think SNBs testing of 6 AX routers shows the QCA still had a big lead if you look at the 5Ghz downlink/uplink plots it was pretty bad for the BCM based routers. In my testing 4 MU capable clients that I’ve done the QCA chipset still shows a superior throughput gain. On the BCM unit at least on the RAX80 there’s still a severe occasional loss in performance though better than the AC BCM chipsets, which I assume is why on the RAX200 it’s off by default. Where Broadcom really caught up is in their QoS implementation which is now pretty good and is now doing a better job than the QCA routers.
Is BCM terrible, no, just that they’re usually behind in implementing the ancillary features like MU or OFDMA in properly functional manner.
Also yeah nothing wrong with needing an extra 5Ghz band. Just note that unlike what marketing makes people believe simply having numerous devices doesn’t mean as much, as most clients are usually inactive/occasionally syncing. What matters more is how many clients are actively using a lot of bandwidth. Like let’s say you have 4 people at home using their laptops actively streaming video, that usually means their phones 4 phones and tablets most likely are idle. Also if you have a lot of older WiFi clients and a lot of newer gen ones having separate bands can make a difference there too.
This is bull. QCA is still leading BCM. The latter doesn't even offer hardware dedicated network processors for offloading network traffic and still depends on **bleep**ty CTF which gets turned off the moment you need to inspect packets. QCA not only has a much better SDK (based on OpenWrt) but also leads in WiFi 6 chipsets and drivers, while BCM is still messing around. As avtella mentions, read the articles on SNB
Most people on here don't give a rats patoot about chipsets and offloading data.
What they care about is performance, and in that regard Netgear is a failure without doubt.
Ive used two different AX routers with intel chipsets and both were garbage. So you can have all the great hardware you want but if the firmware is trash it doesn't make much of a difference.
The issue is Netgear promises the sun, moon and stars and they failed miserably.
These issues are over a year old with some of these continue to this day with no fixes and no acknowledgment that they even exist, the reason my AX8 is in its box.
I see you use a AC router, I guess not so much confidence in those intel AX chipsets?
I don't need an AX router regardless of what brand. A lot of ASUS routers are plagued by the same issue and they're supposed to be to of the line. Thing is, most people rush to buy an AX router hopeing it'll deliver them the start. What they don't get/know is that currently all AX routers are not fully WiFi 6 compliant as they do not implement the full specification of the standard. Firmware-wise they're also not mature enough at this point, so have fun beta-testing. But I guess a lot of marketing people are right; idiots only look at numbers and the latest greaters thinking it's the best instead of doing a bit of research before throwing a new mortgage at it
