Netgear’s releasing a brand new Nighthawk router that trades within the sci-fi spaceship look the road adopted in 2018 for a extra monolithic tower design. The brand new Nighthawk RS700 will price $699.99 when it launches this spring with appears to be like which can be extra akin to the AmpliFi Alien or Linksys Velop routers. That is additionally the primary of the road that’s outfitted with Wi-Fi 7 — the upcoming IEEE specification that guarantees the bottom latency wi-fi connections but.
Different gadgets we’ve seen introduced with help for the brand new spec embrace a number of from TP-Hyperlink and Asus; nonetheless, identical to this one, they’re not available in shops but.
The yet-to-be-adopted Wi-Fi 7 customary (generally known as 802.11BE) is designed to succeed Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7’s greatest enchancment, apart from quicker theoretical switch speeds of as much as 30Gbps (the RS700 is rated for as much as 18.7Gbps mixed throughput), comes within the type of Multi-Hyperlink Operation, which lets appropriate gadgets join with a number of bands like 5GHz and 6GHz concurrently to enhance reliability. There’s additionally Versatile Channel Utilization that may block interference on channels with out shutting down site visitors on it.
The Nighthawk RS700’s new design incorporates eight inside antennas supporting quad streams: that’s 4 receiving and 4 sending (4×4) antennas that the corporate says give “complete dwelling” protection and help for as much as 200 gadgets. Netgear will launch a software program replace later this yr that may enable customers to put in a number of RS700 models to function in mesh for even bigger houses.
Like Netgear’s earlier Wi-Fi 6E-powered Nighthawk RAXE500, the RS700 can also be a tri-band (2.4 / 5 / 6GHz) router with 4 gigabit LAN ports, one 10Gbps “multi-gig” LAN port, and a multi-gig WAN port. The 10Gbps-capable WAN port can accommodate the highest-end tiers accessible from ISPs like AT&T, Optimum, Frontier, Google Fiber, and Comcast — although none of those but help speeds higher than 5Gbps up / down. The router additionally helps LAN aggregation that permits for 2 gigabit ports to behave as a 2Gbps port. It could additionally use its WAN plus one LAN port to hyperlink with current supported DOCSIS 3.1 Netgear cable modems and allow gigabit-plus web service on the community.
The RS700 contains one yr of Netgear’s Armor subscription service, which in any other case prices $99 per yr. It contains antivirus and VPN service in your gadgets — supplied by Bitdefender — and an on-router menace safety service. The VPN service contains as much as 200MB every day, or you’ll be able to pay one other $49 per yr for limitless site visitors.
There’s additionally a Sensible Parental Controls service that helps content material filters, closing dates, and monitoring — plus a rewards system that youngsters can change good conduct for further web time. You may as well construct profiles for your self (and others) to maintain monitor of how a lot time you’re spending on sure actions. These options price $7.99 monthly or $69.99 per yr after a 30-day free trial.
Fortunately, the Netgear Nighthawk app doesn’t price something to make use of, and it permits you to remotely hook up with your router to examine community standing, see what gadgets are linked, run velocity checks, and arrange a separate remoted sensible dwelling system community. The Nighthawk RS700 prices $699.99 and is offered to preorder immediately from Netgear’s web site for Q2 cargo.
