A Closer Look
Well, it’s certainly an attractive piece of hardware. The router I have in my house has eight massive antennae sticking out of it, and it looks like an upturned spider, it’s big, it’s obnoxious, and it’s notoriously tricky to find a good space for. However, the Nighthawk has a very compact footprint, making it easier to place around your home. It’s also very sleek, nothing is jutting out of it at all, which is nice.
On the front there are two control buttons, one for connect and one for the lights, allowing you to stop it flashing if it’s distracting you while you work, sleep, watch a movie, etc.
All the business stuff is around the back in a vertical layout, with just a little bit of ventilation at the top and bottom to allow for airflow throughout the device.
There’s a 10GbE WAN port, and a 10GbE LAN port, allowing for extremely fast internet connections, and at least one extremely fast home network device. There are also four Gigabit ports with aggregation, a USB Type-A port, and a master power switch here.
The bottom looks smart enough, there’s a rubber grip to stop it sliding around, plenty more ventilation for airflow, and two mounting holes so you can secure it to a bracket.
While up on the top, there’s even more ventilation, as well as a sticker with the default WiFi password, although it’s standard practice that you should change this in your initial setup for security reasons.
