Netgear Nighthawk RS700 Router Brings Wi-Fi 7 and a Hefty Price Tag

It seems as though many of us are finally getting used to Wi-Fi 6E, and now Wi-Fi 7 is nearly ready to hit the market. Several Wi-Fi 7 routers were announced at CES 2023, and now Netgear is the next in line with the $699 Nighthawk RS700.

Unlike many traditional routers with relatively flat base units, the Nighthawk RS700 features a tower-esque design akin to the Asus ZenWiFi Pro ET12 or Netgear's high-end Orbi mesh routers. In addition, it's a tri-band router covering 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands. It is backward compatible with all the popular IEEE standards, including the most recent Wi-Fi 6E, with a maximum total throughput of 18.7 Gbps.

Of course, the Netgear RS700 can take full advantage of Wi-Fi 7 features like multi-link operation, which allows a router to aggregate multiple wireless bands. For example, instead of a client connecting to a single 2.4GHz, 5GHz or 6GHz band, it could connect to all three simultaneously. This allows for reduced latency and increased data rates. Wi-Fi 7 also enabled preamble puncturing, allowing clients to better leverage wireless channels experiencing interference.

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In addition to its impressive wireless portfolio, the Nighthawk RS700 also packs one 10 Gbps WAN port, one 10 Gbps LAN, and four 1 Gbps ports. While the 10 GbE ports might seem like overkill at first, Netgear was quick to point out that AT&T Fiber and Frontier already offer 5 Gbps service to customers, while Google Fiber (8 Gbps) and Comcast Xfinity (10 Gbps) promise even faster speeds for customers. Thus, the Nighthawk RS700 can theoretically handle those high-speed pipes to your home or business.

While Nighthawk RS700's features can be accessed via the traditional web user interface, Netgear also provides a Nighthawk smartphone app for quickly setting up your router and maintaining it once operational. The company also includes one year of Netgear Armor protection for the router with Bitdefender security and a VPN (includes 200MB of daily traffic). After the first year, Netgear Armor costs $99 per year.

Netgear says that the Nighthawk RS700 will be available during the second quarter, priced at $699 (you can preorder it now direct from Netgear), which is a hefty price for a Wi-Fi router. The Nighthawk RS700 also supports mesh operation, meaning you could add two more units in a home or office to increase coverage (and your financial outlay). However, this will be the company's flagship consumer model, and we're sure to see stripped down and cheaper options from the company in the coming months.

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Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.

14 Comments Comment from the forums

steve4king

Finally! A cutting edge router that doesn't look like a tarantula or fighter jet!

There's not always a great place to hide a router in a central location, and this item would fit just fine in a lot of places.
Reply
digitalgriffin

Any wifi 7 AP's yet? The inclusion of BitDefender is a big plus here as they abandoned their BitDefender Box 2 project. But I would still prefer my pfSense box and treating the bitdefender as a subnet
Reply
bill001g

digitalgriffin said:
Any wifi 7 AP's yet? The inclusion of BitDefender is a big plus here as they abandoned their BitDefender Box 2 project. But I would still prefer my pfSense box and treating the bitdefender as a subnet
Many manufactures wait until the standard is guaranteed not to change before they manufacture anything. Last I heard wifi7 is still looking at first part of 2024 to be finalized.
Most will have designed ready to go but will not push the button on making them until that date. It then has the delay between when it built and it can be on store shelves. I bet it will be summer of 2024 before it is somewhat easy to get wifi7 devices.

I am not so sure the value of firewalls in home environments. All traffic is generally encrypted both with the wifi and then again using HTTPS to the internet. Your more general user will not have set any port forwarding so no one can attack them from the internet even without a firewall.
Reply
HideOut

bill001g said:
Many manufactures wait until the standard is guaranteed not to change before they manufacture anything. Last I heard wifi7 is still looking at first part of 2024 to be finalized.
Most will have designed ready to go but will not push the button on making them until that date. It then has the delay between when it built and it can be on store shelves. I bet it will be summer of 2024 before it is somewhat easy to get wifi7 devices.

I am not so sure the value of firewalls in home environments. All traffic is generally encrypted both with the wifi and then again using HTTPS to the internet. Your more general user will not have set any port forwarding so no one can attack them from the internet even without a firewall.

You are correct. There is definitely no assurance that this thing will be WF7 compatible on final spec. And THG's assumption that this will be there "flagship" is rediculous. It might be on launch, but a year later they'll have a new better one, and then the next year, then the next year, etc. They just want you to click on it so they get their commision.
Reply
eye4bear

digitalgriffin said:
Any wifi 7 AP's yet? The inclusion of BitDefender is a big plus here as they abandoned their BitDefender Box 2 project. But I would still prefer my pfSense box and treating the bitdefender as a subnet
I am still using my BitDefender Box2 at home as my router, after wasting $249.00 on a Lynksis paperweight and finally giving up with their tech (or lack there of) support staff about 3 years ago.
Reply
nrdwka

Fornthat price lack of 2.5G for clients is weird as it highly limit use on nas, there 1lan 10G won't help.
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jonathan1683

No thanks Asus has one coming with 3 10G ports.
Reply
bigdragon

$700 for a router? A home, consumer-grade, WiFi router? Like, not even a commercial one with a dedicated support package?

Lol! Did Nvidia purchase Netgear?

On a more serious note, I do appreciate the design (yay, no gamer edgy stuff and antennas for the antennas) and 10G WAN port. Surprised that not all LAN ports are 10G, but they probably expect this router to be connected to a 10G switch with many more ports on it. Greater performance is welcome given how much streaming is commonplace now on portable devices.
Reply
razor512

With a router like that, much of the pricing will be the early adopter tax, though with WiFi, typically once the hardware guidelines and standards are confirmed, even if the software side iof things are not fully complete, the major brands will begin making routers and implementing a draft standard. The times when there are issues, is if the any hardware impacting parameter change. With corrupt FCC changed in 2015, parameters impacting transmission, were effectively required to be stored in a one time programmable memory, where further adjustments would not be possible. The problem is that if later changes to regulations happen, the only changes that can be done in firmware are increasing restrictions, but no change can be made to loosen restrictions if regulations change to become more permissible. This overall makes it risky to jump into a new wireless standard too early, especially if there is still contention within the FCC.

Aside from that, Netgear is one of the best consumer router makers, mainly due to their long aftermarket support cycles. Many of their routers from over 10 years ago are still receiving firmware updates, though part of their price premium is likely due to the long support cycles.

On the other hand many others are hit or miss, for example, the Linksys WRT1900ACS only got 1 year of firmware updates before being EOL.
Reply
digitalgriffin

bill001g said:
Many manufactures wait until the standard is guaranteed not to change before they manufacture anything. Last I heard wifi7 is still looking at first part of 2024 to be finalized.
Most will have designed ready to go but will not push the button on making them until that date. It then has the delay between when it built and it can be on store shelves. I bet it will be summer of 2024 before it is somewhat easy to get wifi7 devices.

I am not so sure the value of firewalls in home environments. All traffic is generally encrypted both with the wifi and then again using HTTPS to the internet. Your more general user will not have set any port forwarding so no one can attack them from the internet even without a firewall.

DMZ-zone 1 where I tinker improving my web skills as a programmer. If I screw up a configuration, or have a bad plugin, I do not want anyone compromising my network. It also allows VPNs into your home network.
IOT-zone 2 (Very insecure. These devices can also monitor and sell your traffic and information about you) I'm talking your robot kitty liter cleaner, alexa, roomba, Roku. And if you use Eufy or Ring cameras I will slap you silly.
Business-zone 3 - Ensuring my wife has enough bandwidth for 200+ people zoom conferences.
Personal devices-zone 4 (phones, xboxes, playstations, and computers)

pfSense and logging/Snort allows me to see what every device is connecting to and when. Hey what's that traffic spike to China at 3 AM? Oh it's my Fossile Google Wear watch.-Black listed.

I suggest you download Fing from google's app play. It can determine what devices are attached to your network and what protocols they support. That old network printer still supporting SAMBA v1? At work we had one of those trying to attack my computer. Also DNS request are unencrypted, and ANY devices on the same wifi can read that DNS request. (If you use smart switches properly, or VLANs it's harder to penetrate. But WiFis are open territory) Headers are also not encrypted. Only the payload.
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