(Edit: I added a video showing some of the storage performance, (in the video I pretty much just copy large and small files back and forth to the router, in other words, 8:17 of boredom)
I used this router during a beta test and enjoyed every moment of using it.
The setup is extremely easy just like with all of their other routers using the netgear genie web UI, It simply auto detects everything and gets you online.
The stock security is also decent. They generally use a combination of multiple dictionary words and a random set of numbers at the end (unique to each router) While this is not as strong as using a full character space completely random password such as those generated by GRC, it beats what many other routers are doing to secure the users who cant be bothered to log into the webui and make things secure them self.
While to meet wifi alliance requirements, WPS has to be enabled by default, a workaround has been done to secure it. 3 failed WPS connect attempts, automatically disables WPS which makes the brute force vulnerability nearly impossible to execute.
Overall for the setup part, you can be sure that you will have decent security without having to change anything.
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Now for the performance:
Wired connections LAN to LAN: UDP traffic goes at 990mbit+ and TCP traffic (not using jumbo frames) will go at around 980Mbit/s
Wired connection WAN to LAN: you get around 950mbit/s (though it slows over time). Not many routers are able to do that (at least when comparing my personal benchmarks with the WAN to LAN results of other routers on small network builder)
Wireless speed are also really good. While not groundbreaking compared to other high end routers, you do get very similar performance with speeds of around 150mbit/s + (if you have a wifi card capable of 3 streams)
One area dealing with wifi where this router comes out ahead, is the range and consistency of the speed across it's range. The wifi radios on this router run at 600mmw (many other routers will not push such a high transmit power). Higher transmit powers does a great job at improving overall range because the wifi card in the router is more sensitive than those found in the average laptop or desktop, so they make use of a signal received from much further away. Since the radio sensitivity is often lower for most laptops, having the router boost it's transmit power, significantly increases the range. In my personal test, I could go outside and walk about 400 feet away from the house before I lost connection ( I would have gotten further but that is as far as I can go and still maintain line of sight with the house)
Another benefit of a higher transmit power is that modern wifi devices negotiate the upload and download speed separately, so at a very far range where your laptop would drop the connection rate to around 5mbit/s, you will still have downloads which are significantly higher. For most people this effectively makes it so that your range bottleneck will become the wifi client and not the router.
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And finally, the the storage performance.
While the storage performance will be reduces as the hard drive gets more full(depending on the files if the drive has to do lots of small read and writes due to the type of data, then expect to lose up to half of that speed by the time you reach the end of the drive), Using a 2TB hard drive, I was getting around 90-95MB/s read speeds and around 45-50MB/s write speeds which is pretty close to similarly priced devices that are dedicated NAS devices. (though hitting those speeds temporally requires you to disable the DLNA service)
It also had a DLNA server built in and when I tested it, I streamed 6 1080p videos at the same time and it had no issues
(The area where it will fall short of a true dedicated NAS, is handling multiple hard drives, 1 hard drive bay means that you cant do any kind of RAID
While it does have 2 USB 3 ports on it, they will not perform as fast as the internal SATA drive.
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Overall rundown of the specs.
1GHz single core CPU (2000mips)
256MB RAM
128MB internal flash storage
Dual wifi adapters, both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz adapters have their own dedicated antennas (3 Antennas each, 6 total)
5x gigabit ethernet ports
2x USB3.0 ports
1x SD card slot
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Pros and cons
Pros:
Really good wireless and wired performance (better wireless performance than pretty much all of the other high end routers (except the 802.11ac ones)
Decent amount of RAM (most high end routes only offer 128MB, the 256 provides hope that many more software features will be added :) )
Fast CPU (this really helps with the WAN transfer speeds, though you are unlikely to ever run into a was speed limit (unless you are using a super fast gigabit internet connection such as the one google is offering)
Great NAS performance for a router (faster than all other NAS routers currently on the market by a pretty large amount)
the front lights are not very bright (while this may be a con to some, it is a pro to me because it means that I can have the router in the bedroom and not wake up in the morning with a tan :) (I just don't like having really bright LED's on a router)
Cons:
No LAN activity lights for each of the ethernet ports
The bottom stand does not offer much space around the ethernet ports, this makes it difficult to remove and connect ethernet cables if you do not have ample room to have the back of the router facing you.
No options to customize the side buttons. The side button options are wifi on/off, WPS, and backup (which allows the router to automatically backup all data from an external storage device such as a SD card, to the routers internal hard drive). The issue is that other than testing, I don't see my self ever using WPS and that button would be more useful if it could be customized ( eg I would personally set it to enable/ disable the guest wifi network)
It is very large compared to other routers (expect it to take about twice as much space as a standard router (it also has only one orientation; the one you see in the stock photo)
(this may limit where you can place the router)
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Overall this is one of the best routers that I have used and while it does have a few limitations (most of which can be fixed in software (really hoping for the ability to customize what the side buttons do), it offers solid performance and is very reliable (which is to be expected and demanded in this price range.
Product Description
Designed to simply home networking, NETGEAR CENTRIA is three powerful products, all-in-one. It provides automatic back-up for both PCs and Macs, acts as a Media Server and is a high speed WiFi Router. It s easy to set up and manage, and includes NETGEAR genie, a dashboard to manage, monitor and repair your home network.
Features
- All-in-One - Automatic Back-up, Media Server, WiFi Router
- Back-up for PCs and Macs
- Upgradeable internal storage
- Two (2) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports - up to 10X faster than USB 2.0
- NETGEAR genie app for simplified network management
- Supports Windows 8
