Netgear Nighthawk RS500 vs RS600

The WAN port changes class

Every other step on this ladder moves radios around. This one moves the wire.

The RS500's internet port is 2.5 Gbps. The RS600's is 10 Gbps. That is the single most consequential difference anywhere in the Nighthawk RS line, because a WAN port is a hard ceiling: no radio, feature, or firmware update routes more traffic into the house than the port accepts.

It is also the difference that most buyers do not need. A 2.5 Gbps port is faster than the overwhelming majority of residential connections, and a 10 Gbps one is useful only if you already have — or are about to get — multi-gig fibre above 2.5 Gbps. If your plan is 1 Gbps, both routers have more WAN than you can use, and this row should not cost you $100.

Check the plan before the specs. This comparison resolves itself the moment you know that number.

The 6 GHz radio doubles too

The RS600's 6 GHz radio is four-stream at 11529 Mbps against the RS500's two-stream 5765. Unlike the 5 GHz change one rung down, this one lands on the band only Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 devices can see.

So it stacks with the same caveat as everywhere else on this ladder: it is a genuine doubling, on a band your older hardware cannot join. If your phones and laptops are recent, it is real. If they are not, it is a specification you paid for and will not touch.

The 5 GHz radios are identical — four-stream, 5764 Mbps, on both. The 2.4 GHz radios are identical. So between these two routers, all of the wireless difference is 6 GHz.

The port trade-off is subtler than it looks

The RS600 gives you two 10 Gbps ports where the RS500 gives you two 2.5 Gbps ports. One of each pair is the WAN, so both leave you a single fast LAN port.

The catch is what happens underneath. The RS500's LAN side is two 2.5 Gbps ports plus three gigabit. The RS600's is two 10 Gbps ports plus three gigabit — and Netgear specifies those as 10 Gbps 10GBASE-T without publishing the intermediate rates they negotiate. In practice ports of this type usually fall back through 5 and 2.5 Gbps, but Netgear does not state it for these models, so if you own 2.5 Gbps equipment and are counting on plugging it in, confirm that before you buy. The RS500's ports are explicitly 2.5 Gbps and leave nothing to check.

This is the third rung in a row where the multi-gig port count moves in a direction the price does not predict — three on the RS300, two on the RS500, and on the RS600 a pair of faster ports whose slower rates are undocumented.

What does not change

The CPU is a quad-core 2.0 GHz on both. The USB 3.0 port, link aggregation, MU-MIMO, OFDMA, 320 MHz channels, WPA3, traffic monitoring and app management are on both, and the feature lists match item for item. Netgear Armor is the same 30-day trial and the same roughly $100 a year on either.

Coverage claims move from 3,000 to 3,300 sq ft, and the antenna count from six to eight. Take the antenna count as the more meaningful of the two.

The honest recommendation

This is the one rung on the ladder with a clean external test, so use it.

Look up your internet plan. Above 2.5 Gbps, buy the RS600 — the WAN port alone justifies it and the doubled 6 GHz radio is a bonus. At or below 2.5 Gbps, buy the RS500 unless you specifically want a four-stream 6 GHz radio for recent devices, and put the $100 somewhere it does something.

The BE12000-to-BE18000 jump reads like the biggest upgrade in the line. The wireless half of it lands entirely on the band the fewest devices can use, and the wired half is worthless until your ISP catches up.