Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was weary of some negative reviews at first, but after reading online reviews from reputable sources, and trying it for myself, this modem is simply amazing! First off, setup was super easy. In a nutshell: 1.) Power it up. 2.) Connect Ethernet cable from modem to laptop and go to xfinity.com/activate 3.) All you need to do is login like you're about to pay a bill and that's it - no account numbers or anything! 4.) CALL XFINITY TO ACTIVATE YOUR EQUIPMENT!!! Do not skip this step! 5.) Tell them the Serial Number and MAC Address (DOCSIS 3.1, not the DOCSIS 3.0 - look closely on the unit, not on the box, there are (2) MAC addresses, provide the 3.1 number). 6.) Connect modem to router via Ethernet (Cat 6 minimum), connect phone line, and you're gucci. Literally all those steps took me less than 15 minutes, including the call to XFinity. I had been wanting to switch to my own modem and start saving $11 per month (plus taxes) for a while, and finally decided to go for it. I hated paying the rental and then I also found out another little detail, you know that free XFinity hotspot thing they keep talking about, ever wonder where that comes from, that's right, your rental modem/router. That sucker is turned on by default and XFinity is using your electricity to power up a public XFinity hotspot. Totally lame, I killed it ASAP in the XFinity My Account application as soon as I realized that. Next thing I did with the rental was turn off the WiFi by switching the unit into Bridge mode. Just some advice for people still renting. I highly recommend switching to bridge and using your own router, it's way better than theirs. Better yet, buy your own modem and route. Ok, rant over, back to review. It is easily two times, if not three times smaller than the rental modem/router unit. Kinda goes as a given since it's one device replacing two. And to that point, it is better to have two discrete devices than two devices in one package for reliability and ease of diagnosis. The device is also very discrete looking and sufficiently aesthetic, at least to me, to be in plain sight. Overall, the build quality, construction, and overall perception does seem to line up with the price tag. I feel like I'm getting my money's worth for the time being. Reliability will ultimately solidify or uproot that. It boots up way quicker than the rental (~1-2 min) and performs better. The latency on my speed tests went down from 12-15 to about 7-9ms aand I'm getting just slightly better downloads but not by much. However, this is one of two of the only XFinity approved DOCSIS 3.1 modems - think up to 10Gbps connection. Now I'm on blast - 250mbps (getting all 250 and then some) but am thinking of going to 1Gbps. And while we're dreaming, this modem will do 2Gbps with link aggregation, but the software update is still in the works. Basically two Ethernet cables from your modem going to your router, each 1Gbps but acting like a "single" cable to provide 2Gbps of total throughput. Way out of the league of most people, but XFinity does have a 2Gbps option over coax so I figured I'd throw it out there. I have only had it for a few days, but was so thrilled with the easy set-up and exceptional performance, I decided to leave a review. I will update ofcourse over the years with reliability and how it holds up, but so far, very promising.