Anyone who knows the frustration of having their internet drop out when they walk to that one room in the house has likely heard of a mesh network system. It’s fairly new at a consumer level, but essentially it’s a wireless network that uses a node infrastructure to cover your area in wireless connection. If you’ve ever tried a wireless booster back in the day, it’s kinda like that, but these actually work.
The downside to mesh networks is they’re still relatively new and thus can be quite pricy. So when Netgear launched its new Wi-Fi 7 mesh system and it came in at less than half price of its previous offerings, it grabbed the attention of The Verge, and also myself. Netgear’s new Orbi 370 is a three pack consisting of a router and two satellites and it only costs $250 USD.
Being by far the cheapest of NetGear’s offerings also means the Orbi 370 is a little underpowered compared to its older siblings. It covers less space, clocks a lower speed, only supports dual band, and caps out at 70 devices. For most people this is likely far more than enough, and having to pay extra for the higher end devices simply would be overkill. It’s nice to see this friendlier price point, and generally speaking the cuts are pretty smart to get it there.
The Orbi 370 series is enough to cover up to 6,000 sq ft/ 550 sq metres or about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Assuming you live in a home rather than a pool, the idea would be to place the satellites in different rooms but within reach of your router, and hopefully each other to get the best connection. This way if any pesky walls or other interference is causing your issues you should have plenty of connections to get around these hurdles.
Hopefully once set up, you’d be enjoying up to 5 Gbps Wi-Fi speeds, which is honestly more than anyone really needs. High-quality streaming of both videos and games should be no problem with this kind of connection. It also has the 2.5 lan ports for both internet and ethernet on the router, and an ethernet on each of the satellites for when you want to go wired and zoom.
While still Wi-Fi 7, this cheaper Orbi only supports up to Dual-Band while the others are Tri-Band and again, I don’t think is something most consumers should worry about, we only just found out what Wi-Fi means, afterall. Wi-Fi 7 is still in precious few devices, and these are backwards compatible anyway. If you’re buying these for your home you’re more likely after better speeds and less dead zones, and they should deliver that nicely even if you don’t own a single Wi-Fi 7 device.
As they’re on the cutting edge, Wi-Fi 7 routers don’t tend to be cheap. Our favourite comparable mesh system router is the Amazon Eero Max 7, and while it’s easy to use and fast it’s also $600 USD. If this mesh system from NetGear manages to come in as half as good it’ll still be excellent value.