I am considering these two routers. What I am mainly looking to achieve is this:
Best Link Aggregation (I want to use as many ports as possible to increase speed for a new Synology NAS I just bought) Wifi 6 support (I only have my Galaxy S10+ so far, but good to have going forward)
Which router is going to be the better choice? Thank you.
Lot to discuss with a little statement like that. couple of key points.
Rax120 has the option of the 5g port that the RAX200 doesn't. the RAX200 only has 2.5g port.
RAX120 is dual band with the RAX200 is triband.
both have link aggregation
Both are wifi 6 (AX) devices.
so you put that your main goal is best speed over link aggregation for your NAS. In my experience, it hasn't been the link that's slowed my nas down, its been the hard drives/software. Also, does your nas have the option of 2.5g or 5g ethernet? Those are going to be faster than the link aggregation setup. Regardless, whats the max throughput you can put through your nas? if you'll max out the link aggregation, then you need to look towards the 2.5g or 5g ports.
With the wireless, the rax200 has triband. I understand that you're only ax devices is the S10 but both devices allow concurrent streaming. Is tri-band something you need or will dual band be enough with the concurrent streaming?
So its more than just "which will be better", its which will be better for your setup and plans for the future.
Plus, the RAX120's CPU has a speed of 2.2 GHz, whereas the RAX200's CPU is slightly slower at 1.8 GHz. Both are quad core, but I think the RAX200 has the same chipset as the RAX80, hence why they have the same speed CPU and the same 2.5 Gb Multi-gig Ethernet port. The RAX120 uses different chipset with faster CPU and Multi-gig Ethernet port.
Basically, it boils down to this:
Do you want/need A) the fastest NAS storage speeds you can get out of a Netgear WiFi 6 router, or B) the ability to have more the 10 WiFi devices in your household that operate on a 5GHz band without noticeably slowing down during peak hours?
If (A) { get RAX120; } else { get RAX200; }
Sorry, the programmer in me slipped out... 😉
My R8500 AC5300 has been holding up like a champ for 4 years, and I don't ever think I can go back to a non tri-band router.
I’ve had the R8500 (Triband) and the R7800 (Dual Band Qualcomm Based). The R7800 was much better performance wise at all ranges and even with 20-25 devices, dual and was just fine with 3 people streaming in 4K and 1 person gaming (no latency issues), all in the 5Ghz band. Now I’ve got the RAX120 which seems to be its spiritual successor.
I’d pick the the RAX120 for its Qualcomm chipset, QCA usually implements advertised ancillary/extras features in a more stable manner as can be seen with MU-MIMO in last gen chipsets where Broadcom was a mess and actually caused a decrease in performance at times. Also Qualcomm chipsets have far better Open Source support.
Triband in my opinion is over rated with little to no gain for “most” users unless you have like a massive number of devices/people. Even with many devices connected usually only a handful are transmitting actively/being used at any given time anyway so dual band is just fine for most people and families.
