While the Netgear range of Orbi products have been a strong focus for the company over many years now as Australians discover faster speed internet and realise the power of WiFi in every corner of the home, there’s also a part of the market looking to push the boundaries of performance on their network – that’s where the Nighthawk range comes in and the Nighthawk WiFi 7 Tri-Band router ticks so many boxes.
This is a single device with a very new design – moving away from those “flat” routers we’ve known for years, which became those flat routers with antennas sticking up from them – something the Netgear and Nighthawk range was so famous for. Taking the antenna design and incorporating it into the physical device is what leads you to this new design – an upright design, not quite a cylinder but a squashed hexagon to give it a bold and frankly powerful look.
Setup of the Netgear Nighthawk WiFi 7 Tri-Band router is as simple as every other Netgear product, using the Nighthawk app you are stepped through the process really quickly, allowing you to name your network, set a password and get your devices online quickly.
Features buyers come to Nighthawk for like Link or Internet Aggregation and LAN Aggregation are there, so you can nerd out and really push the boundaries, but one of the key selling points of this device is also the inclusion of dual 10G ports, one for your connection and one for a LAN connection.
I set this up at the EFTM office where we only (only?) have 100/40 Internet, rather than at home where I have 1000/50 because home is a much larger area and that’s important here, because for $1,499 you’re getting a single device that will cover a small home.
This is ideal for a gamer, or someone with a great library of local video content because of the power of the home network streaming – that is the speed things will travel around your home network, ignoring the internet. Effortless streaming of the highest bitrate content from your local network storage to your smart TV .
As with all Netgear products, there’s also a host of services available with the device should you choose to subscribe. These include Armour – for which you get a one year subscription, and Parental Controls.
I won’t be using the Parental Controls here, I use them on my Orbi at home but they are an exceptional way of setting limits on devices grouped by person and limits to what content is available.
Armour however I highly recommend. Vulnerability scans of new devices you connect, and even just the simple alert of new devices joining your network. It’s great information for anyone running their life or business off their network.
If you’re not using the app, the back-end user interface on the web is familiar to anyone who’s used a Netgear product before.
Personally, this whole thing feels dated and could do with a UI overhaul, but I get that it’s running on the device so needs to be simplistic, but also most things are accessible within the app.
Netgear probably needs to work on getting all the features into the app, things like QoS are only on the web interface not the app.
Speeds have been exceptional, reliability on point and this device now supports the entire EFTM office setup and the 38 devices we have connected right now.
It’s certainly not cheap, that’s for sure, but this is an investment in the long term – capable of supporting faster internet links than we can even order today, so if you’re running a Nighthawk from the early days, or you’re looking to create a more stable and faster internal network this has you covered.
Of course, the headline here is WiFi 7, but with little to no WiFi 7 devices to test, we can only say that it’s a router made for the future of devices that are coming, and coming fast.
You do get bang for your buck, if you can stretch it, and it’s going to be a great network.
Remember though, if range and dead spots are your issue, then look at Orbi or Nighthawk mesh systems in this price point for that solution.
