Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WNR854T RangeMax Next Wireless-N Router Gigabit Edition

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(115)

 

 

First, let's get a few things out of the way: I am not a newbie, I am not bitter, and I have absolutely no incentive to bash any company - Netgear included. I am writing this review because I want to prevent anyone else from making the mistake of buying this product. Why? Because it is a defective design - and, more importantly, Netgear has no idea what is wrong with it. What does that mean to you as a consumer? Your device will most likely fail. And Netgear is not likely to make it right. Here's the story:

After between 3 and 6 months of your router working perfectly, you will wake up one day and only the green power light will be on. The wireless light will no longer blink actively and the network lights will all be dead. Why you ask? Because your router has just bitten the dust. You'll unplug the router several times to reboot it, but nothing will change. Then, you'll press and hold the reset button on the back for 10 seconds or longer - just like the manual tells you to. But that won't fix it either. After a few more tries, you'll finally suspect that the thing is dead and, if you're like me, you'll go to Netgear's site and find no documentation of the problem in their knowledgebase. Then, you'll go to the trusty forums where they can't hide their problems, and you'll see hundreds - yes, hundreds - of posts by users just like you and I who are having the exact same problem. And those are only the small percentage of troubled users who actually bothered to write about it. They'll share stories of nightmare phone calls with Netgear, and some will tell you about the same problem happening to 2, and sometimes 3 replacement routers. Frustrated before you even begin, you'll probably call Netgear to confirm it all and to see if maybe you're reading outdated posts. Certainly the problem must be fixed by now. So you'll call them and get placed on hold for anywhere between 10-45 minutes while you're treated to a selection of awful music, paused only by a shameless pre-recorded message telling you how much Netgear cares about you. Yeah, right. Finally, one of the interruptions will actually end up being a real-live person. What you'll have reached is a tech support agent (friendly, but fairly useless) who will confirm the problem (but only if you're saavy enough to tell them that you already read about it online) and then they'll offer you three return options - all of which have you, as the victim, paying to ship the unit back to them (provided you are still within the 1 year warranty period). Option 1 is for you to ship it and get a replacement within 5-7 business days. The second option is for them to ship you a replacement for $16 within 5-7 business days, along with a prepaid shipping label. This way, I guess, you don't have to bother with choosing the shipping company. And, unbelievably, the third option is to have them expedite you a new unit within 2 days, for the bargain price of a brand new router. How this option is helpful to us, I have yet to figure out. But, it will be presented to you as an option nonetheless. It seems they are making a tidy little business out of selling us defective units.

After all of this, hopefully, you are still calm, cool, and collected enough to ask if they have actually fixed the problem - a logical question to be certain since you don't want to pay to replace a bad router with another bad router. And then, if you get an honest person - as I did - they'll tell you that they actually have no idea what the problem is and that the replacement router will be no different from the one you are returning. So, although I haven't quite made it this far, I'm certain that you'll be doing the whole thing over again in another 3-6 months.

So what can we learn from this little story: 1) This router is sick; 2) There is no cure; 3) Netgear doesn't care; 4) Your time is worth more than all of this.

Stand up for yourself and, if you would be so kind, for me as well. Don't buy this item. Believe me, you will regret your purchase. Remember, this is not an opinion. It is a factual account of what happened to me and to hundreds of other consumers. Don't let it happen to you too.

Thanks for listening...

Today, Oct 30 2007 our router died the "single green light" death, observed here by so many others. It is just out of warranty. I am glad to see that my primary warning about the "New Netgear Standard" found so many confirming voices. If we helped you to make a better router selection, I am glad. If you still consider to purchase this horrible product, you are misguided, and most likely you will be sorry...

This is the original review:

Based on excellent experience with Netgear wired router, and on the so enthusiastic promotion for this "RangeMax NEXT" technology we got this router and the laptop adapter.

To my surprise my router would not establish the network connection at all. I have spend almost one hour (56min) with a support rep, whose Indian English was difficult to follow. We checked the settings of the basics, rebooted everything a few times. He seemingly gave up on me, and recommended yet again to power down everything, and power up in the proper order, after which the connection via cable modem should be established. He was eager to hang up. Of course, we did this pulling of power cords a few times already... The next 10 min of power up modem, than the router, than the computer was not helping either. And so I called again, another Indian person agreed with me that something must be wrong with the router, because as soon I attached my older wired router, the connection was established in no time, with download speed around 7Mbit/sec.

And so a few days later I received a replacement device. This one connected at last, but also as if "unwillingly." It took me over 2 hours to get the connection established. At some time it just connected, without me really knowing why it happened only after so many seemingly similar attempts.

The worse part of the router firmware is the connection wizard. For some reason, connection wizard claimed that I use a static IP configuration, and asked "yes or no." No, I said, and then the advise was... you got it: Power down everything, power up the modem, wait for several minutes, power up the router, wait for several minutes, power up computer and you are a lucky men, or so they would hope. I hoped rather to have been paid for the time lost on their RangeMax NEXT technology. Netgear promotion says that it will liberate you from dead spots and mayhem alike. So far they merely "liberated" me from my free time on a few weekends.

To my astonishment, I saw here quite a few positive reports about this device. Before buying, weight well the happy and unhappy voices. You might become the RangeMax NEXT unhappy. Especially, be careful if you live in a densely populated area with severe interference.

I just bought a house and Linksys G wasn't good enough to cover 2040 sqft house. So I went out to get this one hoping the range is going to be good. Yes, this router can cover the whole house. I have my router at one end of my house and it covers to the other side of it although signal is goes down to 50%. Good stuff!

Update:
This product was working pretty well up until last night. It suddenly died. So I have had this product for less than a year (about 10 months) and it ended its life.

Do not waste your money on this router, it does not worth the $160+. the features are not worth it, you can get the same from a cisco / linksys halve the price (without the pre n)

Watch out with the Warranty, mine got bad after 3 month and this is what the offer for replacement:

3 ways of "returning a defective unit"

1. You pay shipping, send it to the them and they return a new unit (5-10 days)

2. You pay $17 they send you a new one, you use the same box to return the unit. (5-10 days)

3. You pay $30 they send it overnight, same as option 2

This guys does not understand that you can get a new wireless router from other company for $40 ....

I just replaced my second one of these. I don't usually buy in store warranties but I did in July 2006 when I bought this for the first time. It went dead in February 2007. But because of the warranty I could get a new on at the store for free. Tonight (September 2007) I exchanged that one for what is now my third one. Every 7-9 months this thing dies. I am not the only one. Search the internet for "Netgear WNR854T dead" and you'll find that this thing dies after 7-9 months for a lot of people. Aside from the dying, the router is fantastic. Netgear's setup and interface are great. Too bad about the dying part.

Do not buy this router. It looks good and worked very well for me and then suddenly died after 8 months. I got a replacement under warranty from Netgear, which also worked well and then suddenly died after 4 months, at which point my warranty had expired. I have always used Netgear's products and have never had one of their products die on me like this. I am going to try out D-Link and hope that theirs can at least last for a full year. Never again.

I've had this router for ten months, and this morning it just suddenly stopped working. Tried resetting factory defaults, but it won't even stay powered on. Not having the luxury to wait for a replacement, I bought an Airport Extreme. If you're thinking about buying a netgear, save yourself some time and trouble and just set your money on fire instead.

Have had this for almost one year - had to replace the first one which worked flawlessly after six months when it just died - green light remained on - but no functionality.

The current router requires multiple resets a day - not usable in my mind and has completely eroded my confidence in Netgear. Tech support is very poor and disinterested in helping - with this many people having similar issues - it is hard to imagine a less responsive customer support effort.

My advice is to avoid this router and use a Dlink or Linksys product.

My second RangeMax NEXT died today, less than 6 months after I purchased the original one. Same problem as far as I can tell, the power light is on, but the rest of the unit is completely non-responsive, and technical support can do nothing except keep you on the line for 45 minutes resetting and trying to reconnect the cables every which way. STAY AWAY

I bought this as a replacement for my Linksys G wireless router hoping that I would get increased coverage and throughput. It took me 3 hours to finally get the router to connect. After that, coverage was poor and it kept dropping connection with my cable modem resulting in it having to be unplugged and reset every 10-15 mins.
Needless to say, it got sent back right where it came from. Definitely NOT ready for prime time :(