Netgear has announced its first Wi-Fi 7 router. We’ve seen other models from competing manufacturers, but this one is different in that it’s actually priced and available for pre-order.
The Netgear Nighthawk RS700 is available for pre-order directly from the company for a price of $699.99 (about £575, A$1,050). I didn’t think it was cheap. – The router will ship in the US in Q2 (as early as he could be in April).
The Nighthawk RS700 router includes support for Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). That means, at least in the future, we can benefit from this next-generation wireless standard (more on that soon). ).
Wi-Fi 7 makes several key advances over Wi-Fi 6 (and 6E), delivering significantly faster Wi-Fi speeds, lower latency, and improved range.In short, better performance and reliability overall (and many Faster than Wi-Fi 6).
(Image credit: Netgear)
Technically, the Nighthawk RS700 is a tri-band router with speeds up to 19Gbps and coverage of 3,500 square feet, supporting up to 200 devices. In addition to Wi-Fi 7 for wireless across the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands, Netgear offers four 1Gbps LAN ports and one 10Gbps LAN port for wired connectivity.
I think the RS700 has a tower design that looks very smart. You can even connect multiple units together if you use a mesh network route to cover a very large house with your Wi-Fi signal.
Netgear also implements a system that goes beyond just the option to add a guest network for visitors in addition to the main network. You can also set your preferred network to get the most responsive and fastest connection for your gaming devices and streaming. Additionally, Internet of Things (IoT) networks silo smart home gadgets, keeping them separate in case you are concerned about security issues associated with that kind of hardware.
Also worth mentioning on the security side, included in the price tag is a year’s worth of Netgear Armor, a Bitdefender-powered security solution.
(Image credit: Netgear)
Analytics: Future-proof or not
New technology inevitably comes at a higher price, and buying decisions can be difficult. Want to fork out all that cash to hit a certain bandwagon in a new device? Determining early adopters is even more complicated.
what do you mean? Officially, Wi-Fi 7 is still a draft standard and won’t be finalized until 2024 (probably). That’s exactly why other router manufacturers may publish their models. TP-Link has already announced quite a few Wi-Fi 7 models, all of which are marked “coming soon” (Asus has some as well).
Netgear was the first manufacturer to actually raise the price of its Wi-Fi 7 router, and it’s available today. So do you really need to pull the trigger and buy now?
Simply put, no, probably not. Read below for a more detailed explanation.
where is the support?
First of all, it should be clear that there is nothing wrong with announcing Wi-Fi 7 routers relatively early. 802.11be remains a draft wireless standard, but Wi-Fi 7 is almost finished and dusty. No meaningful changes at this point.
However, an important point to understand here is clear. You can use a Wi-Fi 7 router, but if your phone, tablet, laptop or other device does not support Wi-Fi 7, you can use a Wi-Fi 7 router. You can’t use this cutting-edge wireless standard. As you can imagine, Wi-Fi 7 is still in its infancy, so few devices support it. (So far only the Xiaomi 13 Pro smartphone is known, but other Chinese phones may also be supported).
So, are Wi-Fi 7 routers pointless to the majority of people? 7 speed). What you get with a Wi-Fi 7 router is future proof. Use it now on all your devices. Ultimately, buying Wi-Fi 7 hardware will help you get the most out of it.
Either way, if you want a new router, you’re spending your money, perhaps because the current model has taken its final trip to silicon heaven, so why not look to the future?
The problem with the Netgear Nighthawk RS700 is that it’s clearly splashing a lot of cash. $700 is no small expense. That’s good enough for me to buy a PC (it’s a modest desktop, anyway). Is it wise to pay such a premium?
Not at this relatively early stage. Even if you do need to replace your router, you’ll want to at least consider getting a makeshift Wi-Fi 6 model at a relatively affordable cost.And Wi-Fi 7 is fully released Once it does (and we’re seeing a fair number of devices that support it), sell it secondhand and then upgrade to a Wi-Fi 7 router.
That said, if money isn’t an issue, there’s no harm in future-proofing it now, and this Netgear router looks pretty good.
