NETGEAR WAC720-100NAS - Discontinued by Manufacturer

Decided to step up to a WAC720 at home and turn off the wifi in my older 802.11N router provided by my ISP (Verizon Fios). I ceiling mounted the AP on the top floor of my house using POE. Excellent signal. Easy setup. Unit feels like high quality and the warranty is excellent should I ever have to use it. Online registration was simple. Getting excellent speeds. Between phones, smart TV sets and streaming boxes, laptops, iPads, even the thermostat, your house is starting to compete with your business for the number of connected devices and I feel that this WAP will handle network traffic well, while giving me 802.11 AC speeds to my newer devices. Happy I did the upgrade.

We are a Managed Service Provider (IT Support firm) for small businesses and small medical practices (5-50 employees). Most of our clients are OK with standalone wireless access points like the Netgear R6300. For more complex/robust installations we've used SonicWall SonicPoints. Unfortunately the SonicPoints leave a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to range, speed, and handoffs, so we found ourselves in the market for a centrally managed, business grade, wireless solution. I purchased 2 WAC720s for a small medical practice and I was able to experience the Encore feature, unlike most of the Amazon reviewers who had only received and reviewed standalone units.If you have configured WAPs before then you will find the configuration straight forward. The GUI is dated looking but snappy/responsive. I made the mistake of configuring everything before doing the firmware update. My thought process was that I could push out the firmware update to both devices from the central management pane as opposed to doing them manually/individually. Unfortunately the firmware upgrade resets the unit to factory default which also wipes the Encore central management. Make sure that you update the firmware before doing anything else on these WAPs.This is where things got weird. After upgrading the firmware I suddenly lost the ability to locally manage the WAPs and was automatically enrolled in a 90-day trial for a central cloud/saas/web-based subscription service from Netgear called Business Central 2.0 Wireless Manager. The interface is absolutely gorgeous, especially compared to Encore, and it's one of the most polished websites I've ever seen. My RMM doesn't even look this good. I could immediately tell that there was no way something this nice was going to be cheap, and it isn't at $70 /year per WAP. I wasn't prepared to pay an annual subscription of $140 for central management when I had specifically purchased these WAPs for their free central management. I unchecked the cloud managed option in each WAP and was immediately disappointed upon returning to the bad/dated/archaic/clunky interface of the Encore central management. The cloud management is infinitely better and I feel like Netgear knows this and is banking on you paying for the subscription.Overall these WAPs met our needs: good range, good speed, basic central management, no additional management hardware, no mandatory subscription fees, and "good enough" handoffs from one WAP to another.

This product (Netgear ProSAFE WAC720 Wifi Access Point) was a complete waste of money. I bought it based on the description and reviews, thinking it would be an easier-to-configure replacement for my Ubiquiti WAP that finally died. I was wrong. This thing works only when you are close to it. I placed it on the ceiling in a very central part of our home using a cable connected to a PoE port, yet my phone cannot connect to it from our bedroom, which is only 20 feet or so from our dining room where the signal is reasonable. My Ubiquiti (which was plugged into the same cable before it died) worked well all over the house......and on our back porch as well.Since the WAC720 is so weak and does not come with external antennas, I decided to buy some to see if they would help. I did this, and changed the configuration to recognize the external antennas, but this did *nothing* to help.I regret purchasing the Netgear ProSAFE WAC720 Wifi Access Point. I'm going to see if I can return it for my money back.

I got this AP for our growing small business as our old router just wasn't doing it any more. While we had some trouble setting it up, Netgear support helped us out and now that it's up and running it's been working great!I used to get up 3 to 4 times a day to reset our old router. But I haven't had to think about this AP since I got it! It just works.

Didn't have the range as I was hoping. Too many walls to penetrate.

I love the Power-Over-Ethernet capability, made wiring it into my ceiling so easy. Excellent coverage for my single-story house. Two bands so I can have a separate guest SSID. Highly Recommended!

Wireless signals are very low, web interface is slow, and they often don't see each other in ensemble mode. Need to reset them often. I have 10 of these and so far I'm very disappointed.

Unit was easy to configure, powerful enough to adequately light the 2 story + basement home I installed it in, and the dual band radios make for a nice and usable WAP. Only knock is the slightly cheesy mounting bracket, when compared to units (sold seperately) for Cisco AP's. But - it was included, so perhaps I can't grade it too harshly. Lets see how the unit performs after a year to see if it really can go toe to toe with it's much more expensive competitors.

We used that for more than 2 years and we needed to extend the area. It has a nice feature called "Ensemble" that allows you to add multiple APs and have only one network of them, so your phone will switch always on the one with the stronger signal.

This access point is for home use. A stable device even with so many users connected to it simultaneously. I am using this for a month and I am happy of its performance. Wifi signal strength is very good. I installed it to the second floor of the house and it reach the basement without problem. My only comment is the web management interface is a little bit slow. The main menu should be change to pull down menu so that it can be easier to navigate. About delivery, I am very satisfied with FedEx. It arrived earlier than expected. It is way way much better than my wife's order with Prime that she tried (amazon shipped it through Purolator). We ordered at the same time, but the regular shipping arrived earlier than Prime that amazon is promoting. The order arrived after more than a week.