Time for a Wi-Fi 7 Upgrade? Netgear's Orbi 870 Boasts 21Gbps Top Speed

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In the latest sign that Wi-Fi 7 is now the standard of choice for early adopters looking to upgrade home internet connectivity, Netgear launched its third to support this cutting-edge technology at CES on Tuesday.

Offering speeds up to 21Gbps and available in a 3-pack for $1,299, the new Orbi 870 mesh system is certainly not what you’d call affordable for most households. But even now, a year after its finalization, Wi-Fi 7 isn’t meant to be mainstream. It’s still for people looking to future-proof their tech.

To that end, the Orbi 870 offers some seriously beefy specs that you might not use right now. A 10GbE WAN port joins four 2.5GbE LAN ports on each node. If you’re on a one-gigabit fiber or cable that you consider plenty fast enough, you’re probably scratching your head at this astronomical wired connectivity. A Netgear spokesperson tells me that the company decided all of its premium products should have 10GB WAN ports, and that it considers 2.5GbE to have supplanted 1GbE as the baseline standard for mesh and router Ethernet ports.

Those copious wired capabilities will also come in handy if you can configure your mesh system with wired communication between the nodes, known as “backhaul.” Running an Ethernet cable between the nodes will take a big chunk of wireless congestion out of the equation, Netgear says.

If you’d rather not cut into drywall to install Ethernet ports or run unsightly cables along your baseboards, the Orbi 870’s wireless backhaul options should still be plenty powerful enough. The system offers 4x4 streams on the 6GHz frequency, which is quite uncongested compared with 5GHz and 2.4GHz.

A 150-device connection limit, 320MHz support, multi-link operation (MLO) support, and a choice of black or white colors round out the Orbi 870’s list of features. It joins two other Netgear Wi-Fi 7 mesh systems already on sale: the ($1,000 for a 3-pack) and the ($2,299.99 for a 3-pack). Both received 4-star ratings in PCMag’s reviews.

We’re eager to test out the Orbi 870 to see how it fits into the middle of Netgear’s lineup. Stay tuned for our full review.

Built-In VPN, Ad Blocker Subscription Launches for Orbi, Nighthawk Routers

Orbi, eero, and a few other brands pioneered the “it just works” era of mesh networking, aiming to simplify device setup with just a few taps of a smartphone app instead of logging into a cumbersome web app portal and wading through opaque, jargon-filled settings panels.

Now that that problem has largely been solved, Netgear’s turning its attention to making Wi-Fi security as easy as initial setup. Alongside the Orbi 870 launch comes a significant update to the company’s Armor cybersecurity app available on all current Orbi and Nighthawk routers.

Called Armor Plus, the update adds unlimited VPN connections for up to 50 devices as well as ad blocking and tracker blocking. Home devices see an average of 10 attacks every 24 hours, according to a 2024 study by Netgear and Bitdefender, a security software maker.

The new Armor Plus subscription costs $150 per year, which Netgear estimates is a third of the cost of purchasing VPN, network security, ad blocking, tracker blocking, and warranty coverage separately.

Other networking companies already offer similar subscriptions, including eero, whose eero Plus service is $100 per year. Netgear will continue to offer its base Armor subscription, which lacks the new VPN and blocking features, for $100 per year.