Netgear Orbi 970 Wi-Fi 7 review – the Rolls Royce of mesh systems

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• VERDICT

The Netgear Orbi 970 is the new benchmark when it comes to creating the ultimate wireless network in your home. It is not the cheapest - but it is the best.

Netgear has always led the way creating a robust and reliable wireless network with its Orbi products and its latest offering – the Orbi 970 – packs in the latest Wi-Fi 7 technology and raises the bar in terms of speed and quality.

Tech Guide replaced all the networks at our place with the new Orbi 970 and it gave us high speed connectivity in our two-storey home from the front of the house all the way to the back, upstairs and down.

Today it’s not uncommon for a household to have more than 40 or 50 connected devices or maybe even more from your smart TV, laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles, printers, smart devices, security cameras and much more.

We are also spending more time working from home so having a robust connection for high quality video calls and downloading and uploading files is essential.

On top of Wi-Fi 7, the Netgear Orbi 970 packs in so much new technology to create a network that’s going to keep you connected at high speeds across your entire home.

There are three units in the box – a main router and two satellites which can provide coverage at up to 660 square metres.

These units are taller than the previous Orbi units but have a more cylindrical look and a smaller footprint.

The Orbi 970 has four bands – a 6Ghz band, two 5Ghz bands and a 2.4Ghz band.

The 6Ghz band was introduced with the Wi-Fi 6E and Netgear expands that channel to 320Mhz to increase the speeds and performance – and you can tell.

The Orbi 970 also has enhanced dedicated backhaul – this is the channel that brings data back from the satellites to the main router – to keep the wi-fi fast on the other bands.

The Orbi 970 uses both the 6GHz and 5Ghz bands at the same time to reduce the amount of network traffic and keep you connected at high speed.

What it also does is enable your connected devices to simultaneously send and receive data across these bands which increases throughput.

The other problem with older standards of wi-fi is interference. This new Netgear Orbi has smart interference management to reduce the network congestion and keep things moving along.

The Netgear Orbi 970 a 10 Gigabit internet and Ethernet port which will be able to handle even faster internet speeds when they are available.

Netgear says Wi-Fi 7 delivers up to 2.4x faster speed than Wi-Fi 6 and is also backwards compatible with older devices.

Naturally if you have a Wi-Fi 7 device, like the latest Microsoft Copilot+ PCs and the latest smartphones, you’ll enjoy the full benefits of this latest technology.

The Orbi achieves all this with an innovative high performance antenna array that sprays out 360-degree Wi-Fi coverage to reaches every corner of your home.

It certainly did that for us.

Set up is really simple and is managed through the Netgear Orbi app which takes you step by step through the process.

Basically it involves connecting the main router to your existing NBN modem router, connect via the Orbi app before renaming the network and creating your own password.

The next step is to choose locations in your home for the two satellites.

In our case, the main router was located on the lower floor in the middle of the house, so we placed one satellite towards the back of the bottom floor and the second satellite upstairs towards the front of the house.

Then it was a matter of the router locating those other satellites and bringing them online and communicating with them.

The whole setup process took roughly about 20 minutes.

The Orbi app also comes in handy to manage the network with the ability to see the devices on your network as well as set up parental controls and give you an excellent top down look on the entire network.

The main router and the satellites also have Ethernet ports, so you can connect nearby devices like smart TVs, gaming consoles and computers.

But the wireless performance will still offer the same performance and reliability.

The Orbi 970 creates up to three separate networks – a main network, a smart home IoT network and a separate network for guests.

The IoT network runs on the 2.4Ghz band and that makes adding new smart home devices even easier.

So how does the network perform? The answer is amazingly well.

We were stunned to see amazing speeds in all corners of our home.

We have a 1Gbps NBN fibre to the home connection through Aussie Broadband and we were able to enjoy most of that speed anywhere in our home.

Now there are two speeds to look at here.

The Netgear Orbi app provides a speed test which looks at the speed of the network between the satellites and the router inside your home.

The Speedtest app by Ookla tests just how fast your internet connection is in various locations around the house.

We tested for both speeds on the bottom floor – front, middle and back and front, middle and back on the top floor and found we achieved speeds that were well over 900Mbps in all areas of the house.

And these speeds were tested in the usually busier morning period of the day.

The Netgear Orbi 970 also comes with a one-year subscription to Netgear Armor which is powered by BitDefender.

This offers an added layer of security and a VPN that helps plug up any vulnerabilities in your network and on your connected devices.

The Netgear Orbi 970 has created easily the best wi-fi network we’ve ever had.

We are seeing consistent high speeds across our entire home.

But this level of quality and reliability does come at a price.

The Netgear Orbi 970 3-pack is priced at $4,299. That’s not cheap.

There is no question about the quality of the wireless network and, at this price, this would be seen an investment.

An investment in your connectivity which is not just about entertainment and gaming but also for education and work.

For those who are renovating their home or building a new home this would be an ideal addition.

The Netgear Orbi 970 is the Rolls Royce of mesh systems.

But there are other Netgear Orbi options that are a lot cheaper but you it won’t be Wi-Fi 7 and it won’t have the range and quality of the latest Orbi 970.

 VERDICT

The Netgear Orbi 970 is the new benchmark when it comes to creating the ultimate wireless network in your home. It is not the cheapest – but it is the best.