NETGEAR has long been a global leader in the router industry, and its products are highly favored by users worldwide. As the first AC5300 router from Netgear, the R8500 (Nighthawk X8) is packed with cutting-edge technologies, making it a true masterpiece that has garnered significant attention since its release. Recently, our editorial team purchased one of these routers during the JD.com 618 shopping festival, offering an unboxing review and initial assessment.
During the 618 event, the R8500 saw an unprecedented discount, sparking a massive buying spree. However, soon after, a wave of issues surfaced. Communication platforms like Post Bar, Koolshare Forum, and the official community began filling up with complaints from dissatisfied customers. Many reported that their purchased R8500 units were losing wireless signals and failing to meet expected speeds. Some even experienced infinite restarts, leading to suspicions of a potential quality defect in this batch of products. Starting from the 618 period, I noticed the most severe issue – infinite restarts. After reaching out to the official after-sales service, they confirmed that there was no technical solution to this problem, advising us to return the product and seek a replacement. Reluctantly, I had to go through the replacement process, hoping that Netgear would address these quality control issues moving forward.
The Nighthawk X8 (R8500) router is a highly sought-after product among consumers. It features a tri-band Wi-Fi setup, with a 1000 Mbps 2.4 GHz band and two 2166 Mbps 5 GHz bands, providing an overall bandwidth of 5.3 Gbps. The router boasts a luxurious 8-antenna configuration, including 4 active antennas and 4 built-in antennas. Additionally, the R8500 supports advanced services such as Link Aggregation, ReadyCloud Cloud Service, and Net Ghost remote access, incorporating technologies like MU-MIMO and dynamic QoS.
First, let's take a look at the product appearance:
The R8500's dimensions are quite large, measuring 316×264×61 mm with a weight of 1.68 kg. The wavy design at the top offers a unique aesthetic, though its appeal may vary depending on personal taste.
One of the standout features of the R8500 is its four active antennas, which support multi-angle rotation adjustments. This flexibility allows for optimal signal coverage in large spaces or multi-story environments.
On the front right side, there are three physical buttons: "LED," "WPS," and "WIFI." These shortcut switches come with lights to indicate their status, making operation straightforward and intuitive.
On the back, you'll find one WAN port and six LAN ports, with support for link aggregation on one or two ports, catering to users with higher transmission rate requirements.
The right front end houses both a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port, enabling simple NAS storage services and facilitating the creation of a home data center. Additionally, the router supports ReadySHARE for easy printing via USB-connected printers.
Non-slip mats are present in the bottom corners, and the label records essential product information.
Accessories include a power adapter, a Gigabit cable, product manuals, warranty cards, and more.
Next, let's explore the router settings:
The background home page provides a quick overview of the router's current operational status:
Detailed wireless network settings are also available:
However, some common settings are located under the "Advanced" tab at the top of the page. For instance, Link Aggregation is found under "Advanced" → "Advanced Settings" → "Terminal Port Aggregation":
Firmware upgrades can be performed through the "Advanced" → "Manage" → "Router Upgrade" tab, either by uploading downloaded firmware to the router or clicking the "Detect" button in the upper-right corner to search for updates on the server:
NETGEAR genie:
The NETGEAR Wizard is a client application that enables most common router settings:
At the same time, NETGEAR ELF is also available as a mobile app, offering rich functionality and supporting both Android and iOS devices.
Now, let's delve into the product features and related tests:
The R8500 comes equipped with several advanced wireless transmission technologies. Let's first introduce these technologies briefly and then conduct some direct tests. However, before starting, there is an important setting that will significantly impact the strength of the wireless network.
Effect of Regional Selection on Signal Strength:
Despite its robust hardware configuration, the strength of wireless signals is still influenced by regulatory limitations. Each country has different regulations regarding wireless transmission power. Compared to countries like North America and Australia, China’s legal limits are relatively lower. Prominent router manufacturers typically adhere to these regulations when entering the Chinese market, restricting power accordingly. In contrast, some smaller domestic brands may not strictly comply with national standards, allowing their products to operate at higher-than-permitted power levels. This discrepancy leads some consumers to mistakenly believe that international routers perform better than domestic brands.
NETGEAR R8500 products also strictly follow the relevant regulations in China, limiting wireless transmission power within specified parameters. Domestic products have certain restrictions on regional selection. While increasing wireless transmission power by changing the area selection is technically possible, Xiao Bian emphasizes that any consequences of enabling this function must be borne by the user. The tutorial methods described below are intended solely for learning and communication purposes.
By using the Telnet command, you can enable the R8500's locked area selection function and query the current maximum transmit power. Therefore, the Telnet functions of both the computer system and the router system must first be enabled.
For Win7/8/10 users, the Telnet function can be enabled through the Control Panel → Programs → Turn Windows Features On or Off → check the "Telnet Client" option.
After completing the above steps, you can open the Command Prompt (CMD) application on the PC and enter the Telnet test port command: telnet router IP and enter the Telnet interface.
On the router's debug management page, if the regional selection is gray and cannot be operated, in the Telnet interface, enter: cd sbin and then enter: burnsku 0x0004 to enable the area selection function. After the router is restarted, the background setting interface will look like this:
In the Telnet interface, enter the command: wl txpwr_target_max to query the maximum power of the router working in the current mode. Although there is no unit after the value, the value is enough to show the huge difference in different regional settings. For example, when the "area selection" is set to "China", the maximum transmit power of the R8500 is 12.00 12.00 12.00 12.00.
To understand the router's working mode more comprehensively, Xiao Bian tested the maximum power of all regions in the R8500 "area selection" one by one through the Telnet command and summarized the data in the following table (since the information fed back by each region is four identical values, Xiao Bian only lists one here to indicate):
(The order in the table is sorted by numerical value in ascending order. There may be slight differences in the above values for different versions and batches of products)
It can be seen that the launch power in North America, Australia, and Taiwan is relatively high. To confirm that this setting does affect the WiFi signal strength, Xiao Bian used the Wifi analyzer to test the wireless signal strength received by the mobile phone before and after the R8500 "zone selection" was switched from "China" to "United States" over a certain distance. The changes are as follows:
Because the wireless signal environment of Xiao Bian's area is more complex, we specifically show each change of the R8500 tri-band signal as follows:
At a further point further, similar results were measured:
It can be seen that after the “regional setting†was changed from “China†to “United Statesâ€, the routers were briefly adjusted and the signal strengths of the three bands were improved to varying degrees (where the 2.4G signal seems to have undergone a restart process. Therefore, there is a short-term signal loss. Among them, the signal strength of the 2.4 GHz band is the most obvious, followed by 5G-1, and the 5G-2 is only slightly improved.
From this we can basically confirm that the router's "area selection" does have an impact on its transmit power and signal coverage strength, and the tests later in this article will also be based on the router's best working status.
Product main features:
1. 4 active antenna + 4 built-in antenna design
One of the biggest selling points of the NETGEAR R8500 is the first active antenna design. It has 4 external active antennas and 4 internal antennas to expand the signal coverage. In general, a passive antenna refers to an antenna that only includes a receiving antenna module, and an active antenna refers to an antenna that integrates a receiving antenna module, a low-noise amplification module, and a power supply module.
With the introduction of the official website, the development speed of the router is very fast, and its WiFi transmission power is also getting stronger and stronger, but the WiFi signal transmission effect of mobile devices lags far behind the router. Such a huge gap makes the WiFi network trial experience greatly reduced. The active antenna technology can effectively improve the situation. The netware moves the WiFi amplifier from the main board position to the top of the antenna. These active antennas can reinforce the signal strength transmitted from the mobile terminal within the antenna to avoid the antenna and the mainboard. Loss of signal between, improve WiFi performance.
Signal strength test:
A. 1 meter in front of the router is unobstructed:
B. 90° to the left of the router, 6m, two non-load-bearing walls (wooden walls)
C. The left front of the router is about 45°, 25 meters away, and it is separated by three non-load-bearing walls (wooden walls)
As a result, even if the R8500 is deployed in the corner of the company, all regions of the company have very good signal strength. Such excellent signal coverage is truly amazing. It can be seen that the 8-antenna design does provide a solid hardware-level guarantee for the signal coverage of the R8500.
2, 3 band 5.3Gbps transmission
Tri-band and quad-stream are another big selling point of NETGEAR R8500. R8500 has one 2.4GHz frequency band and two 5GHz frequency bands (5G-1 is 5.2GHz frequency band and 5G-2 is 5.8Ghz frequency band). All three transmission frequency bands use 4x4 transmission technology, in which the highest wireless transmission frequency is 2.4GHz frequency band. The speed is 1000Mbps, the highest wireless transmission rate of 2 5GHz frequency bands is 2167Mbps, thus the overall speed reaches 5300Mbps.
In the tri-band architecture, the 2.4G and 5G-1 signals are placed on the positive and negative poles of the active antenna, and the 5G-2 signal is placed on the built-in 4x4 patch antenna.
3, dual-core processor
In the general usage scenario, the configuration of the data processing unit of the router product will not become a short board, and a single-core processor is sufficient, but since the R8500 has three-frequency and four-stream performance, multi-user MIMO technology, six Gigabit With a series of technologies such as LAN ports, the operating power of the processor under a large workload is still very high, so the R8500 uses a 1.4GHz dual-core processor to meet more demanding usage scenarios.
4, Smart Connect
Smart Connect is a function often provided by multi-frequency routers. It allows multiple frequency band signals of a router to be combined into one SSID. When a user connects to the network, the router allocates the signals based on the distance and maximum bandwidth of the mobile device. Excellent frequency band.
On the R8500, Smart Connect can merge two 5GHz networks into one wireless network name (SSID). When multiple devices are connected to the network, the router will automatically assign wireless devices closer to the router to On the 5G-2 network, because the built-in 4×4 antenna used by the 5G-2 network has the best connection quality in the near-field small-scale unobstructed case; at the same time, the router will be far away from the wall and block the wireless The device is preferentially allocated to 5G-1 because the external 4x4 active antenna used by the network has a wider coverage and better through-wall performance.
The advantage of doing so is that users do not need to consider which network should be connected to get a better signal. Just connect the network and the router will automatically allocate the user equipment to the most suitable frequency band.
The Smart Connect function's switch is under the "Wireless" tab. It is a relatively inconspicuous position. It is turned off by default. Check it and apply it to open it.
5, Dynamic QoS
The dynamic QoS (dynamic QoS) provided by the NETGEAR R8500 is optimized for games and video streaming tasks. When there are multiple devices and many different tasks use the network at the same time, dynamic QoS will determine the user's ongoing tasks according to different devices and different applications, and then use bandwidth allocation and priority delivery techniques to automatically serve such as online games. Applications that are particularly sensitive to network latency, such as video streaming, are allocated more bandwidth while ensuring that low-priority applications continue to operate.
In fact, there are many similar technologies. Almost all aspects of the entire data transmission have similar technical applications. For example, the "Killer" network card that is popular with players has the same distribution of game data priorities. The system software for mobile phones and some notebook computers is also available. There are similar optimizations at the usual level. The R8500's official QoS feature advertises application-level monitoring and bandwidth allocation, so Xiaobian also tested how effective Dynamic QoS can be in several common usage scenarios.
Settings interface:
This function can be enabled under the Dynamic QoS function tab on the left side of the background, and the database is optimized due to Dynamic QoS function and bandwidth and update performance.
At the same time, after the Dynamic QoS function is enabled, you can click the device name from the link at the bottom of the page or the "Connected Device" tab on the left side to view the main program that each device on the network is running.
It is noted that Blizzard Battlenet's "Battle.net" has been identified, and that NetApp claimed that program level monitoring is not a boast. However, several major processes of Thunder are identified, but the download process that really occupies the bandwidth is classified as "Others". It seems that the mastery of domestic software data is not perfect.
Scene measurement:
1. Open the game when downloading at full speed on a wirelessly connected computer:
Turn off Dynamic QoS:
Open Dynamic QoS:
Conclusion: There is no difference whether Dynamic QoS is enabled or not. The game is disconnected from the server. In the above picture, it seems that the Ping value has improved, but it is not. Whether or not Dynamic QoS is enabled, the game will be delayed after the Thunder starts full-speed download mode. The game will be unable to operate and will disconnect the server after a few seconds. Therefore, the Ping data in the above two figures does not have a comparative significance, but Xiao Bian's interception before the game disconnected, witnessing the delay in the process of soaring (here also had to be filled with emotions that Thunder snatches the terrifying power of bandwidth).
2. Open download tasks and games between the two devices with network cable connection and wireless connection
Conclusion: In the two devices respectively using network cable connection and wireless connection, no matter which one is playing at full speed and the other is playing, whether or not Dynamic QoS is enabled, the game runs smoothly, with two network cable connections and wireless connection. Equipment does not seem to affect each other.
3. In two devices connected to the same wireless network, one starts full-speed download and the other opens the game:
Turn off Dynamic QoS:
The game's Ping value is basically above 300, and game operations are obviously stuck. This is "fatal" for FPS games.
Open Dynamic QoS:
When the download task is almost full of speed, the game equipment operates smoothly and is almost unaffected. After the other device pauses the download and restarts the download, the Ping value briefly rises for one or two seconds, but the maximum does not reach 100, and only lasts for one or two seconds, then quickly falls back and stabilizes below 30.
Conclusion: When multiple devices are connected to the same wireless network, enabling Dynamic QoS can really improve the network bandwidth allocation and make the gaming experience basically unaffected by other devices.
6, MU-MIMO
MU-MIMO is called Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output, which is called "multi-user Multiple Input Multiple Output". It allows wireless routers to communicate with multiple wireless terminals at the same time. In contrast, SU-MIMO (Single-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output), which is currently widely used, allows only a single antenna to communicate with a single device at the same time. When the device is connected to the network, the SU-MIMO device needs to switch the communication with multiple devices in a very short time. In comparison, MU-MIMO communication efficiency is much higher, and it is also more effective in fully utilizing network capacity. This is also the mainstream direction of future development.
However, MU-MIMO requires not only router support but also mobile device support. Therefore, when buying long-distance mobile devices such as routers and mobile phones, you can focus on devices that support MU-MIMO.
The setting of MU-MIMO function is hidden deeper, and it is also enabled after the router is in the "Advanced" - "Advanced Settings" - "Wireless Settings" tab at the bottom of the router.
7, easy to share
The easy-to-share ReadySHARE feature allows users to provide shared storage on a local area network via a USB connection to a USB flash drive, or to connect printer devices for convenient printing. The ReadySHARE Vault feature provides automatic continuous or scheduled backups of your Windows computer.
The easy-to-share ReadyCLOUD feature allows users to remotely access the USB storage device connected to the router's USB port from the Internet and easily build a personal cloud disk.
Below, we simply use U disk to test easy sharing. After connecting a USB 3.0 USB flash drive to the router's USB 3.0 interface, enter the router's back-end “easy-to-share†tab to see some basic information about the newly connected storage device:
Users can click on "Edit" to perform detailed function settings, and can see that sharing is easy and provides multiple ways to access this storage space:
Test the USB3.0 U disk on the computer connected to the network cable to achieve the speed through sharing:
Read data about 85MB/s:
Write data about 41MB/s:
It can be seen that this speed is still considerable. Easy sharing can indeed meet the needs of shared storage to a certain extent for ordinary home use.
Fourth, summary:
The Netgear R8500 router brings amazing signal strength and coverage with powerful hardware configuration, and it also adds many top-notch technologies and powerful features.
4 active +4 internal antenna design with dual-core processor, to achieve a tri-band 5.3Gbps ultra-high wireless transmission rate; Although the background setting interface still has room for optimization, but has a good desktop, mobile client software support, it is worth Certainly; Smart Connect has realized 5G frequency band communication intelligently allocating the frequency band, let users be more relieved; Dynamic QoS function can't realize the "program level" Precise control bandwidth allocation, but when a plurality of apparatuses use a certain wireless network at the same time It is impressive to noticeably improve the network delay. MU-MIMO is more of a future-oriented design. When more and more mobile devices begin to support this technology, the utilization efficiency of the network will be extremely high. Land promotion; user-friendly easy sharing can also bring more convenience to ordinary users to build simple shared storage, cloud storage, etc.
All of these make the NETGEAR R8500 more adaptable and more playful. At the same time, this flagship product released two years ago knows that today it can still be a leader in its class.
Static Pressure Liquid Level Meter
There are several types of level gauges, including:
1. Transparent sight glasses: These are simple glass tubes or windows that allow operators to visually see the level of the material.
2. Magnetic float level gauges: A magnetic float moves up and down with the level of the liquid, activating a magnetic indicator on the outside of the gauge.
3. Radar level gauges: These use electromagnetic waves to measure the distance between the gauge and the surface of the material.
4. Ultrasonic level gauges: These use sound waves to measure the distance between the gauge and the material's surface.
5. Differential pressure level gauges: These measure the pressure difference between two points to determine the level of the material.
6. Capacitance level gauges: These use changes in capacitance to measure the level of the material.
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Kaifeng Chuangxin Measurement & Control Instrument Co., Ltd. , https://www.kfcxflowmeter.com