News Netgear's latest Wi-Fi 7 routers cost less and pack fewer features — but don't call them cheap

[Admin]

The Orbi 770 and Nighthawk RS300 seriously undercut earlier Netgear Wi-Fi 7 offerings in pricing

Netgear's latest Wi-Fi 7 routers cost less and pack fewer features — but don't call them cheap : Read more

 

[das_stig]

Do the sensible thing, tell manufacturers like Netgear and Asus to go *** with their overpriced underpowered con..sumer trash and build your own. Buy a cheap mini PC (build one or ex-corporate mini desstops of eBay), with multiple 2.5GbE or 10GbE ports, superior low power x64 cpus, standard memory, NVME/SSD storage, install Proxmox/XCP-NG as your bare metal hypervisor and then run Pfsense/Opnsense as your firewall/DHCP, piHole as your spam/advert/nasties filter, Unbound as your DNS server bypassing your ISP and OpenVPN all as virtual machines and finally purchase your own access points that match your speed/bandwith needs and fully configurable, nothing locked out behind paywalls and you also get the benefit of better security and generally superior updates and longer support.

Your general con..sumer router is all of the above but of lower quality, especially the software and yes I am going down this route !

 

[Blastomonas]

For the price of these things i would expect a lifetime subscription to their Armour platform.

 

[thestryker]

finally purchase your own access points that match your speed/bandwith needs and fully configurable, nothing locked out behind paywalls and you also get the benefit of better security and generally superior updates and longer support.

The problem with this is that you cannot match the WiFi capability of some (the ones in this article are just poor value period imo) of the consumer routers with anything close to the same price. This is the issue I've been running into which is why I've yet to replace my old router with a newer one. There were some really well balanced perf/$ 6E devices so I'm guessing it's just a matter of time for 7.

That being said I've definitely been on a N5105 based router box for the internet side of things for close to 2 years and wouldn't go back at all.

 

[bit_user]

Eh, I'll bite. I think the Nighthawk RS300 is just what I've been waiting for. My old router needs a reboot once a month or so, but otherwise is adequate for my needs. The RS300 should therefore easily last me another 5 years.

I'm just happy finally to be moving up to 2.5 Gbps. I'm glad it has 2.5 GBase-T ports on both WAN and LAN sides, which is one of the things I wanted, since my cable modem now has 2.5 Gig and I never liked the idea of teaming on the LAN side.

Price-wise, it's in the ballpark of what I paid for my current WiFi router and there's no way I'd consider saving a couple bucks to get a Chinese router.

 

[bit_user]

build your own.

Fine, if you want to.

standard memory, NVME/SSD storage,

Who cares? For a router, "standard memory" and fast storage shouldn't matter.

finally purchase your own access points that match your speed/bandwith needs

On my LAN, everywhere that I need rock-solid service and top speeds is hard-wired. For Internet, I doubt routers have ever been much of a bottleneck, for me. In terms of wifi, my devices tend to be older than my routers, so probably don't even max them out.

 

[thestryker]

Eh, I'll bite. I think the Nighthawk RS300 is just what I've been waiting for. My old router needs a reboot once a month or so, but otherwise is adequate for my needs. The RS300 should therefore easily last me another 5 years.

TP-Link has been selling the BE550 for ~8mo or so which is pretty much the same thing but with all 2.5gbps ports and is cheaper (there's a more cut down one the BE9300 with only 2x 2.5gbps ports but I think it might be a retailer exclusive). If it had more 5 GHz bandwidth I'd have probably bought it so I continue to wait for one that does while costing a lot closer to $300 than the current crop.

 

[bit_user]

TP-Link ...

Nope. I won't use any Chinese networking gear, other than possibly unmanaged switches.

 

[thestryker]

Nope. I won't use any Chinese networking gear, other than possibly unmanaged switches.

You're aware that they're not based in China anymore and their equipment is built with the exact same parts as everything else on the market right?

They wanted to avoid Huawei's fate from how it appeared to play out.

edit: I can't say it's true for everything, but the last switch and powerline adapters I got from them weren't even made in China, but rather Vietnam (aka the same as Netgear).

 

[bit_user]

You're aware that they're not based in China anymore and their equipment is built with the exact same parts as everything else on the market right?

Not sure about the parts; don't care if their official HQ is in Singapore, either. I'll stick with Netgear.

Last year, I got a Netgear cable modem and this router will go with it, nicely.

 

[thestryker]

Not sure about the parts; don't care if their official HQ is in Singapore, either. I'll stick with Netgear.

Last year, I got a Netgear cable modem and this router will go with it, nicely.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm simply pointing out that TP-Link is no more "China" than Netgear is.

 

[bit_user]

There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm simply pointing out that TP-Link is no more "China" than Netgear is.

I'm still not sure about that.

 

[e38Bimmer]

FYI, regarding this articles statement: "The Orbi 770 router also only supports up to 500 Mbps internet connections, which is something to keep in mind if you have a 1 Gbps+ fiber connection to your home."
Is inaccurate and false. The 770 router supports up to 2.5Gb internet connections since both WAN and LAN ports are supporting of 2.5Gb connection rates. Even WiFi will see over 1Gb if your wireless devices have support for speeds over 1Gb on AX or BE modes.
https://www.tomshardware.com/networ...-pack-fewer-features-but-dont-call-them-cheap

Brandon Hill should first review any spec sheet for products he reviews first to fully get what the product does support before publishing.