Wi-Fi 7 is going to be a huge step ahead for Wi-Fi everywhere and companies are slowly rolling out solutions into the wild. Allowing consumers to finally consider making the upgrade to a much faster wireless scenario at home (or office). Now, Netgear has dropped its Orbi 970 Series Quad-Band WiFi 7 Mesh System into the market, making it available for pre-order.
The new mesh router system offers a huge increase in both wireless and wired speeds, offering up to 2.4x the speed of Wi-Fi 6 and the ability to support up to 200 devices spread around a network spanning up to 10,000 square feet (depending on how many units you buy into).
This system is capable of providing up to 27Gbps of combined throughput, showing how far Wi-Fi has come over the last so many years. Paving the way to faster experiences in a time when fiber internet is starting to slowly take over everywhere thanks to companies like Google Fiber.
Not to mention how quickly 4K (and eventually 8K) is taking over everything that makes use of high-resolution video streams. Products like video game consoles, media streaming services, and even security cameras, have been pushing toward 4K for a while now and this helps guarantee that they won’t run into any barriers.
The new system features a 10Gbps Ethernet port to go between it and your modem, along with another 10Gbps port to go between it and a 10Gbps capable switch (or used as a wired backhaul). Along with 2.5Gbps ports for its additional Ethernet connections beyond this. So you will have multi-gigabit no matter how you plug things in (assuming your other devices support the same)
These connections are fully backward compatible (as you’d expect any Ethernet connection to be), so you won’t have to replace any of your older tech that remains connected to the network.
There are two package options available for pre-order, including two and three units. The two-unit kit starts things off at $1,699 and the three-unit kit will run you $2,299. So this won’t be so affordable to the average consumer and likely will only be adopted by the most series of users (or small to mid-size businesses). This means you will see more consumer-friendly options roll out in addition to this eventually. Models like the Nighthawk BE19000 Tri-Band WiFi 7 Router (RS700) (a $699 non-mesh solution for consumers) will hopefully see the light of day sometime this year.
These will begin shipping later this month (September 29th).
Image Credit: Netgear
