Netgear’s NightHawk RS700 is a tower router with Wi-Fi 7 connectivity

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 value $699.99 when it launches this spring with appears to be like which are 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 units we’ve seen introduced with assist for the brand new spec embrace a couple of from TP-Hyperlink and Asus; nevertheless, identical to this one, they’re not available in shops but.

The yet-to-be-adopted Wi-Fi 7 commonplace (generally known as 802.11BE) is designed to succeed Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7’s greatest enchancment, apart from sooner 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 units 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 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 “entire residence” protection and assist for as much as 200 units. Netgear will launch a software program replace later this yr that can enable customers to put in a number of RS700 items to function in mesh for even bigger houses.

Netgear’s Nighthawk RS700 has 10Gbps LAN and WAN ports, plus USB 3.0 for networked storage. Picture: Netgear

Like Netgear’s earlier Wi-Fi 6E-powered Nighthawk RAXE500, the RS700 can 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 out there from ISPs like AT&T, Optimum, Frontier, Google Fiber, and Comcast — although none of those but assist 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 may 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 consists of one yr of Netgear’s Armor subscription service, which in any other case prices $99 per yr. It consists of antivirus and VPN service to your units — supplied by Bitdefender — and an on-router menace safety service. The VPN service consists of as much as 200MB every day, or you possibly can pay one other $49 per yr for limitless visitors.

Netgear Nighthawk RS700 Wi-Fi 7 router. Picture: Netgear

There’s additionally a Sensible Parental Controls service that helps content material filters, deadlines, and monitoring — plus a rewards system that youngsters can alternate good habits 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 value $7.99 per 30 days or $69.99 per yr after a 30-day free trial.

Fortunately, the Netgear Nighthawk app doesn’t value something to make use of, and it permits you to remotely connect with your router to verify community standing, see what units are linked, run velocity exams, and arrange a separate remoted good residence gadget community. The Nighthawk RS700 prices $699.99 and is out there to preorder immediately from Netgear’s web site for Q2 cargo.