I am trying to make a decision as to which AC router I want to upgrade too. I am not completely ruling out a router not listed above but based on the reviews I have read on CNET I have concluded that these are the two best of the best for home wireless.
Each router has similar reviews, price, and speeds, so it will boil down to features and with these two routers there are plenty.
In one corner there is the nighthawk which features include:
-VPN
-Readyshare
-iTunes media streaming
-Free and personalized URL for FTP
The Asus's unique features include:
-Aicloud
-An edge on speed
Other minor condiderations:
-Nighthawk is bulkier and lies horizontally, Asus has a vertically standing design
-Night hawk has 1 front facing usb 3.0 port. Asus has two rear usb 3.0 ports. (I realize the fact that the usb port is in the front is highly trivial but never-the-less the concept of having a bulky usb cable sticking out the front of the device is pretty off putting.)
Now I am familiar with Netgear as I am currently using a netgear wireless-N router, so the feature of readyshare is known to me. I know if I get the nighthawk I am one shortcut to \\readyshare\usb_storage away from accessing all my media. What I don't know is how the Asus handles connected media outside of Aicloud. All informatioin I find on this router says you will use Aicloud to stream your connected media from anywhere. In concept this sounds great, but for a HTPC setup I don't see how connecting up to asus to be directed back down to my own LAN is the most ideal formula. That isn't to say I can't just map an external as a network drive, but there is no mention of this ability anywhere in the item description which has me a little worried about how easy it will be to do. The other question raised about Aicloud is how much of an advantage does it really give over netgears VPN support. Yes Aicloud has apple and android app support but since I use a windows phone this feature is useless. That taken into account I would think in principal that a direct tunnel vpn to my network would be faster than cloud streaming but without testing both I wouldn't be able to say for sure.
So, if any of you have hands on experience using one of these routers for a home gaming/media center environment please let me know what you think of it and how well the features work for you!