I’d never really seen just how effective mesh Wi-Fi could be until I took Netgear’s latest Orbis to my dad’s house
It’s difficult for tech writers like myself to get a broad view on a piece of tech within our day-to-day lives. Many of us live in small rental apartments in the inner city, which severely limits our ability to conduct holistic reviews on more fixed things like doorbells and security cameras. In the case of mesh Wi-FI, the tech’s greatest advantage is consistent coverage across a wide area, so it’s tough to get a good view in a small apartment. My solution with this modem-router? Take it to my dad’s big home out in the suburbs, of course.
Netgear sent me the company’s new Orbi 970 Series mesh routers some months ago, which represent the height of the company’s home internet tech (and the most expensive). They’re some of the first mesh modem-routers equipped with Wi-Fi 7, which offers improvements over Wi-Fi 6E, the most impressive of which being a shared SSID for 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands – no more split network names!
The Orbis came to me at a brilliant time – my dad was having Wi-Fi problems in the (much larger) family home. At the time, the smart home devices in his pool area, including the pump, lights and cleaning robot, required a 5GHz connection that my dad’s old modem-router could not extend far enough across the property, especially with so many walls and obstacles in the way. Moreover, the home was plagued by consistently slow speeds.
Exacerbating the issue was the fact that Dad’s modem-router combination was just old (God bless him, he holds onto tech for as long as he can). It was so old that I remember the very same devices being used seven years ago on an ADSL2+ connection when I was still living in the family home. Certainly not ideal for Australia’s fiber-based National Broadband Network (NBN), nor the 250Mbps-capable plan he’s paying for.
