Review on 🔁 Renewed NETGEAR R6300V2 AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit Smart WiFi Router by Tim Nicholas

Performance wise I like it; at 2.x GHz it averages 100 Mbps, although advertised as 450, and at 5.x GHz it's a little less than 1300; but overall it works better than the old netgear i have (now as a router without wifi). On the plus side, it can act as an access point (compared to older Netgear routers) so it didn't have to be a hassle to disable DHCP (like pass-through) etc. Just plug it in and set it up as either WPA2 (Enterprise requires the use of RADIUS). So for the price paid as a hotspot, it's worth it. The device came with a lower firmware version (v1.0.4.6) and the current (latest/latest) Netgear firmware (v1.0.4.8) before the model was discontinued, and whatever browser I tried , it will not be updated to 1.0 .4.8 (therefore probably sold refurbished). I don't want to switch to DD-WRT for fear that Broadcomm's WRT driver won't be able to run at 5GHz as Netgear intended (note: using TelenetEnable -> telenet -> nvram -> showed that this device NOT a charter version that cannot be updated). Since I only use it as a hotspot and don't connect to the WAN, I'm not too worried about the security update differences between the two versions, but that's why it's 3 stars. Finally, the device gets warm (not just warm). So unless the device is constantly in an area with a cool temperature, you might want to blow a fan on it :) UPDATE: I got curious and went to Netgear.com to register your device. When I entered the S/N on their website, they identified the device as "R6300-2CHNAS" (essentially CHARTER), so what is reported about NVRAM was most likely (I suspect) changed.