Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought the Netgear R8500 because I've owned and been extremely satisfied with Netgear for years. In my opinion, they have always been THE premier router manufacturer - until now. Based on the performance of my previous Netgear router, I decided to purchase their new flagship product, the R8500. That's when my trouble began. The first router went into an infinite boot loop within 24 hours of plugging it in. Because it was still brand new, Amazon issued a replacement. The second router would randomly drop wifi connections, but generally worked, so I bit my tongue for four months, until one morning the router simply refused to connect to the Internet. My LAN was still visible and accessible, though depricated, but the WAN was unreachable. I started with a power cycle, then a factory reset, before phoning Netgear for a warranty claim. Their response was that, although the product has a 1 year warranty, it only comes with 90 days of support. In order to take advantage of my warranty, they wanted me to pay for "Gear head" technical support. I refused, and spent more than an hour being placed on hold while the tech got permission to test my router without having to pay for warranty service. The tech eventually verified that my router was non-responsive, and shipped a brand new replacement - my third. At this point, I knew the R8500 line was a defective pig, and begged for a different model, but was told it was impossible. When the new R8500 arrived, I skeptically spent another hour and a half configuring it. This time, I configured it to email me hourly performance logs. Just 12 hours later, wifi stopped working. My network was still visible, but none of my devices could join it. I did a restart and was able to get back online. 12 hours later, I once again couldn't reach the internet. The router was still connected to the Internet, sending me hourly logs that were blank, but the link between LAN and WAN was somehow severed. The router couldn't see half of itself. Again, I called Netgear. I explained the issue, we did some troubleshooting, and after another reset the internet was back. By the next morning, it was gone again. I again phoned tier 2 support, through a "backdoor" support number my previous tech gave me - probably because he knew the signs of yet another bad router. They offered to send me a fourth router, and I refused. In my estimation, it was definitely a firmware bug, though there may still have been some hardware defects - perhaps hardware issues that the firmware "bugs" were intentionally designed to cover up. Finally, I was escalated to the secret level above Tier 2. This was the triage level. My router had already been tested, the issues reported. This guy just wanted to make me happy. This rep was very helpful and accommodating. He called me daily to give updates on my case, and was able to get me an acceptable final resolution. For fixing it, after about ten hours of my insistence, Netgear earns one star, for the product: none. The Netgear R8500 router is a ticking time bomb. In my research to fix this problem on my own, I read dozens of threads and blogs discussing the various problems people are having with this model. Many believe it's a quality control issue, with models being manufactured in at least China and Vietnam. Then there are reports that a faulty capacitor is to blame.There are at least three known issues: an infinite boot loop, models that randomly drop wifi, and others that lose WAN connection. With my final unit, it was revealed that a series of specific firmware changes could make it work (for another twelve hours), but that wasn't good enough. Whether hardware, or software, or a combination of both, something isn't right with the R8500. Worse yet, Netgear knows it, their tech's know it, and they don't want to fix it. Reputation used to be essential to the survival of a company, and that reputation begins with customer confidence in the products they buy, and faith that, if there's a problem, it will be addressed properly. The R8500 places a significant dent in Netgear's long-standing and trusted reputation, and until they've worked out the "bugs" or quality control gremlins attached to this unit, I don't recommend it to anyone.