But very briefly now, it’s a technology that enables more efficient use of a router’s available bandwidth by allowing it to transmit data to multiple devices simultaneously.

For those unfamiliar with MU-MIMO, it’s worth reading our review of the Linksys EA8500 router first - it was the first router to support MU-MIMO out of the box. These radios are also MU-MIMO capable, so if you have the right client devices, you can expect an overall network performance boost too. Powering all this is Broadcom's new 4x4 5G Xstream platform which consists of a 1.4GHz dual-core BCM47094 ARM Cortex A9 processor and three BCM4366 4x4 radios. This is all very amazing especially when you remember that your Gigabit Ethernet connection is “just” 1000Mbps. Take this number and multiply it by two (because there’s two 5GHz bands) and add 1000Mbps from the 2.4GHz band, and you get 5300Mbps. On the 5GHz network, because of NitroQAM and the fact that it supports up to four streams, total bandwidth has been boosted to 2150Mbps. And because this new Broadcom platform supports four spatial stream and a new Broadcom technology called NitroQAM, which increases the maximum bandwidth of each stream, the 2.4GHz network now supports a maximum throughput of 1000Mbps. So how did we arrive at 5300Mbps? AC5300 class routers are tri-band capable which means that they broadcast a single 2.4GHz network and two 5GHz networks. It is tri-band capable and supports up to four spatial streams, allowing it to provide even greater overall bandwidth. The ASUS RT-AC5300 and Netgear Nighthawk X8 routers are both powered by this new platform. This new platform is the successor the 5G XStream platform found in the Netgear Nighthawk X6.

Internally, these routers are very similar in that they are all based on Broadcom’s new 4x4 5G XStream platform, so it’s probably apt that we talk about this new chipset now. And now we have AC5300 class routers in the form of ASUS' new RT-AC5300 and Netgear's new Nighthawk X8. And then in the past 12 months we saw the first AC2400 and AC3200 routers arrive as well. Just two years ago, we had the first AC1900 class routers hit the shelves. In fact, they are getting ludicrously fast. Routers are getting faster than ever, and that’s progress for you. Note: This article was first published on 3rd December 2015.

Netgear nighthawk x8 r8500 review