Netgear N900 Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router with 3.5" Storage Bay (WNDR4700)

Pros: The router is sleek looking. Many good points about the router. The USB 3.0 ports, the SD card port, of course all the LAN are Gb, good range and power, the hard drive bay and the software features. The Gb ports are what they are; speed tests show close to Gb speeds. Have not tried the SD port, but as usual I will be doing testing over 3 months and I will post back. The software's I will also be testing out, but the main one (Genie interface) is really neat and clean. All tabs are labeled and easy to find and read. The overview look of what your router status is a nice touch. The router has a fan which is good and bad. The bad I put in the con section for explanation, but the good is that it will keep the 4700 cool and in electronics; heat is the killer. But I will also subject the 4700 to my heat test; in direct sunlight to see if any performance decrease or any other anomalies. The website forums for Netgear has been updated so finding help or information on this 4700 is much easier. Remember, that is also what you are buying; their help sources. There was a con when this router came out. The hard drive; it had a limitation of 2TB so if you had a 3TB drive, it would only see 2TB. But Netgear heard from the consumer and fixed the problem with an upgrade firmware release. Their latest release also closed up some security holes. But the hard drive thing was an issue where in today's world drives are coming out in 4TB sizes so this shows that Netgear here's it's consumers. My previous router (the 3700) had a short power cord, but this 4700 has a longer one which is great. No more adding an extension cord just for it. The connections are really placed well with the exception of the power on/off button. The LAN ports, just nice to see them below because this hides them very well. Other routers that sit upright; you might see the LAN lines because they are at the top of the router. But because these are very low to the base, I cannot even see them where I have placed my 4700.

Cons: A couple of things. First off there are no lights for the LAN ports. So when you connect LAN lines to this router, you have no idea if they are connected or dead; only by using your computer. Usually they are lighted and color coded; yellow for 100Mbps speeds and green for 1000Mbps (Gb) speeds. So kind of a con there. The power switch on the back, it is located between the power plug and the main LAN line. This makes it a bit hard to turn off the unit if you have big hands let alone find it by feeling around. The feature of turning the wireless off and on per a schedule is not very clear. The way to do this is by first adding the scheduled time and days per frequency (2.4GHz and then the 5.0GHz), save that and then when you are back at the menu you need to add a tick mark to use it which requires another "save". The nomenclature is a bit confusing too' Start and End. Well Start does not mean when the wireless comes on, it means when it should shut off and End does not mean when the schedule should stop, but for the wireless to come back on. So maybe Netgear can fix that wording to remove interpretations. The glossy housing is definitely a fingerprint attractor and you will see dust accumulation. Wear gloves when installing this or be ready with soap and water to keep it clean. The router does have a fan and in my situation it is quiet. If I am about 4-6 inches away you can hear it, but other than that it is quiet from more than 6 inches. In this day and age I would have preferred Netgear to supply a CAT6 shielded cable rather than the low performing CAT5. CAT6 is cheap and allows for faster solid speeds whereas the CAT5 is a "maybe it can" speeds. Don't let the naming fool you. Using "N900" does not mean you get 900Mbps speeds. You only get 450Mbps speeds in either the 2.4GHz or 5.0GHz. Just want to cover that.

Overall Review: So far overall the WNDR4700 is a good upgrade and for people who have no time to do backups. The auto-backup software is a great feature which I will test out in the coming months. It is a bit bigger than previous routers, but the lighting and the design is pretty nice. The logo and the glossy black front looks like a video scene, but it's just a lit logo. The performance tests I have done are showing that this router puts speed on top. Using the 5.0GHz with no adjustments to the setting and pairing it up with a bit slower WNDA3100, I am pegged at 300Mbps. I will be purchasing the WNDA4100 which can match the 450Mbps speed this router does. The "N900" kind of misleads a consumer to think of 900Mbps speeds, but the router only does 450Mbps. But 450Mbps is not a slouching number by any means. For the average person doing backups of files, the WNDR3700 is just fine and still over kill. But if you are backing up videos, movies or even huge images of your system, then WNDR3700 is a must; and this WNDR4700 is just some more power to get that job done faster. I will test this out, the WNDR3700 imaging a system of around 60-70GB took about an hour. But then again I am using SSD's so regular hard drive consumers might see longer times. But I'll report back on the speed difference. Again, so far it is a great router and the auto features just make the 4700 just that much more desirable. Only for some small things and not actual testing it yet, this router is very good for consumers who move huge files around.

Pros: Installing a hard drive is easy, though when I followed the recommendations online and formatted the 2T drive as NTFS before installing it, it showed up as a 289G drive with 117M available space. So, I used the “Format drive” option in the device’s management console, and it’s now fully available and I am backing up files from 3 different computers to it as I type (using Uranium Backup, not the software provided by Netgear). The format took about 5-10 minutes, and there was no option for “quick format”. When you attach a USB drive, it becomes available automatically, which makes it easy. It has an Access Point mode, which was great because I already have a DSL modem/router that I needed to attach it to. You lose much of the router configuration options when in Access Point mode, though. It also has a repeater capability, but can’t see it being used for that. Wireless setup is a breeze if you know what you are doing, and it had a default SSID with WPA to protect you if you don’t. Throughput is more than adequate for my needs (backup and shared network storage, primarily). Controlling access to folders on the unit is easy, but it MUST have at least one folder that is accessible to everyone on the network – you cannot restrict them all. The wireless has both 2.4GHz b/g/n and 5GHz a/n, so that’s a plus. The wireless and the router are really strong suits for this device. Shared storage, particularly on the Internet, is not. The Cloud feature requires an account and installing software to access it. Not a high value for me. As for the printer sharing, you can connect a USB printer and allow access to it by any computer on the network, but you need to install software on each PC to use it. I guess if I really needed a printer on the network, I would use this, but getting a wireless printer is probably an easier option.

Cons: Con: You need to have one folder that everyone on your network can have access to without a password. I set this “must include” access up on an empty folder so that all other access requires credentials, but why it forces me to have one folder that everyone can access is beyond me. It does not make things easier for the novice, and it gets in the way of an experienced network admin. Other than that, the LAN access configuration is easy and well-featured. When it comes to allowing access from the Internet, it let me down. Big time. I have not yet got the FTP working, because apparently it needs to have “/shares” on the end of the server to be accessible, and I don’t know of a client that allows that (both IE and FileZilla fail to connect). FTP services from the Internet is a bust at this point. Next comes the HTTP access from the Internet. It does not allow for complete access control. Remember that “everyone has access” default required folder I mentioned? Guess what – that folder is accessible via the Internet if you turn that feature on. No username, no password. Just a URL and it’s wide open. Now, it’s read only, and I left this default folder empty, but so what? I should be able to control access to EVERYTHING if I want to. Finally, an annoyance with no resolution – the admin login times out in about 5 minutes and I have not found a way to adjust it. When experimenting with the settings and remote access, it’s just plain a pain to have to re-enter the name and password so often.

Overall Review: It’s a solid value for a great router and shared storage that’s easy to configure. The Internet accessibility works for read-only but lacks features to make it a secure and flexible solution. It has several other features that come along for the ride. I like it for what I wanted it for (good wireless and shared storage for backups), but if NAS storage is your priority, getting something with RAID capability would be better.

Pros: * Internal HDD Bay * Great, Strong 2.4GHz Signal * Fast Processor * Great NAS Storage Performance (Internal Bay) w/ NTFS

Cons: * No more firmware updates!? Seriously!? * Router will crash with certain SMB/CIFS activity. * So-so on the features * No DD-WRT .. yet, or maybe ever? The bug causing the router to crash (yes, using the lastest firmware) is a problem. While very basic file copies and such seem to work fine, don't try to use this thing as a torrent destination. I found that having too many simultaneous (not really that many at all) operations on the file shares causes the router to crash/panic and reboot. I had this happen to me while using the DNLA from media device and having two torrents writing to it from a Windows 7 client. It's not random, I can crash it on demand. Netgear probably will never update the firmware again, and so I'm stuck with this issue.

Overall Review: If I could do it all over again, I probably would have bought another router. Unfortunately I was hoping it would only be a matter of time before DD-WRT was supported on this, but it doesn't look like that is probably going to happen. This hardware is too one-off. That said, it does work well for me overall and I've come to live with some of the issues, even though I shouldn't need to.

Pros: Good feature set, if only the router worked reliably.

Cons: Unreliable. Died after a week!

Overall Review: Worked fine for 3 days. Then started to randomly and intermittently disconnect from the internet. Requiring a power-off, power-on cycle to recover. Then the frequency of disconnects increased steadily. After a week, it reaches 1 disconnect every 2 or 3 minutes! Basically unserviceable as a router. This has got to be the WORST router I ever bought. Totally disgusted and disappointed with Netgear.

Pros: 3.5" bay is cool, ive never owned a router with nas built in. which is the main reason i bought it. unfortunately, it is probably the worst router ive ever owned.

Cons: wifi range is horrendous, both bands. the 2.4Ghz is bad and 5.0Ghz is darn near useless unless you are right next to it. neatgear firmware interface is slow and laggy. it will screw up your hard drive (if applicable) i wouldn't advise putting one in there. hard wired is ok at times after several resets but ONLY if Wifi features are turned off. which defeats the purpose of this router.

Overall Review: netgear tech support is non-existent, im sorry im not fluent in Bengali, Telugu or whatever Indian language they outsourced the support to. i speak english. in conclusion. dont waste your money or time on this router. if you have unfortunately bought this i would save all the packaging and invoice you will need it. it will come in handy when you return it.

Pros: Built in NAS, high transfer speeds

Cons: WAN port failed after 9 months. Kind of important

Overall Review: I bought this router because it had the perfect combination of things I'm looking for: hard drive bay, USB 3.0 ports (perfect for a media center PC storage), N900, decent range. I did NOT expect that, after 9 months, the WAN port would be deceased. I have a support ticket in to Netgear, but after seeing the negative experiences by others here, i'm not overly optimistic.

Pros: None

Cons: Failed within one year of ownership. Netgear refused to honor their own warranty and replace product.

Overall Review: I will NEVER gain own a netgear product. I strongly advise that you avoid buying anything Netgear. This router has been nothing but a huge problem since the get go. It is loud, runs very hot, and often requires hours of down time in order to "reset." The software that came with the router caused extreme system lag and connectivity issues often reducing ISP speed by up to 40%. When I contacted Netgear about the issues and tried to obtain and RMA, I was given the run around for months. Now the unit is out of warranty and they won't even discuss replacement.

Pros: It is great having nas storage and a router in one unit. The storage has less issues then the router did.

Cons: Doesn't work as a router. There are so many times when even the wired machines on my network would not work. Even after many reboots.