Hot on the heals of Buffalo’s 5G Wi-Fi AirStation router and bridge shipped earlier this week, Netgear announced what it claims is the first 802.11ac adapter for notebooks, as well as a cheaper version of the R6300 router it unveiled in April.
The R6300 adapter will be available for sale this week. Netgear also announced a dual-band version of the R6300, the R6200, which will ship beginning in August.
Both devices are dual-stream, the first, critical step to pushing 802.11ac to client devices like notebooks.
The difference between the R6300 and the R6200 is a single USB port, as well as the speed of the router. The R6300 will include a pair of USB ports for attaching a printer or a storage device, and will include ReadyShare network printing technology.
Netgear also rates the R6300 at “450+1300 Mbps” speeds, which means that the router can transmit up to 450 Mbps of information on the 2.4-GHz band shared with legacy 802.11b/g/n devices, as well as 1,300 Mbps on the 5-GHz band used by the 802.11ac technology. The R6200, meanwhile, is rated at a slower-performance “300+867 Mbps” speed.
Still, at 867 Mbps, we doubt you’ll be able to notice much of a difference between the two for most of your uses, especially when using Tru VoIP Application.