It appears as if many people are lastly getting used to Wi-Fi 6E, and now Wi-Fi 7 is almost prepared to hit the market. A number of Wi-Fi 7 routers have been introduced at CES 2023, and now Netgear is the subsequent in step with the $699 Nighthawk RS700 (opens in new tab).
In contrast to many conventional routers with comparatively flat base models, the Nighthawk RS700 (opens in new tab) incorporates a tower-esque design akin to the Asus ZenFi Professional ET12 or Netgear’s high-end Orbi mesh routers. As well as, it is a tri-band router protecting 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands. It’s backward appropriate with all the favored IEEE requirements, together with the latest Wi-Fi 6E, with a most whole throughput of 18.7 Gbps.
After all, the Netgear RS700 can take full benefit of Wi-Fi 7 options like multi-link operation, which permits a router to mixture a number of wi-fi bands. For instance, as a substitute of a consumer connecting to a single 2.4GHz, 5GHz or 6GHz band, it may hook up with all three concurrently. This permits for lowered latency and elevated information charges. Wi-Fi 7 additionally enabled preamble puncturing, permitting purchasers to higher leverage wi-fi channels experiencing interference.
Along with its spectacular wi-fi portfolio, the Nighthawk RS700 additionally packs one 10 Gbps WAN port, one 10 Gbps LAN, and 4 1 Gbps ports. Whereas the ten GbE ports may appear to be overkill at first, Netgear was fast to level out that AT&T Fiber and Frontier already supply 5 Gbps service to clients, whereas Google Fiber (8 Gbps) and Comcast Xfinity (10 Gbps) promise even quicker speeds for patrons. Thus, the Nighthawk RS700 can theoretically deal with these high-speed pipes to your own home or enterprise.
The Nighthawk RS700 additionally helps LAN aggregation, combining two 1 Gbps ports for as much as 2 Gbps. Web aggregation can also be supported between the ten Gbps WAN port and one of many 1 Gbps ports. Netgear additionally features a USB 3.0 port for attaching a printer or storage machine for NAS duties.
Whereas Nighthawk RS700’s options will be accessed through the standard net consumer interface, Netgear additionally supplies a Nighthawk smartphone app for rapidly establishing your router and sustaining it as soon as operational. The corporate additionally contains one yr of Netgear Armor safety for the router with Bitdefender safety and a VPN (contains 200MB of every day site visitors). After the primary yr, Netgear Armor prices $99 per yr.
Netgear says that the Nighthawk RS700 shall be out there in the course of the second quarter, priced at $699 (you’ll be able to preorder it now direct from Netgear (opens in new tab)), which is a hefty value for a Wi-Fi router. The Nighthawk RS700 additionally helps mesh operation, that means you may add two extra models in a house or workplace to extend protection (and your monetary outlay). Nonetheless, this would be the firm’s flagship client mannequin, and we’re positive to see stripped down and cheaper choices from the corporate within the coming months.