For testing, Netgear sent us the RBE873B, a three-piece Black Edition system that goes for $1,299.99 and offers 9,000 square feet of coverage. In comparison, the $1,699.99 three-piece eero Max 7 covers 7,500 square feet. Netgear also offers a two-node system that covers 6,000 square feet and costs $999.99, and single-node satellites that provide 3,000 square feet of coverage go for $549.99 each. In terms of aesthetics, you can also get the 870 Series in a white finish.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The three-piece system includes a router node and two satellite nodes, and all three components have the same dimensions: 10.6 by 5.7 by 4.4 inches (HWD). Each node, meanwhile, comes with eight internal antennas with high-power amplifiers.
For info on the router’s status, there’s a small LED indicator that signals several possible statuses. The LED pulses white when the router is first powered on or syncing, and glows solid white when the router is being reset to factory defaults; a solid magenta LED indicates the router is no longer connected to the internet. When there’s no light at all, it means everything is working properly.
On the satellite nodes, the LED glows solid blue for three minutes, then turns off when the connection to the router is good. It turns solid amber when the connection is only fair, and solid magenta when the connection has failed.
The rear panel of the router node is home to a 10GbE WAN port and four 2.5GbE LAN ports, while each satellite node has four 2.5GbE LAN ports that support wired backhaul to the router. Both the router and satellite nodes have a sync button, a reset button, a power jack, and a power LED on the rear panel. None of the nodes has USB ports, which are rare on mesh systems.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Orbi 870’s tri-band BE21000 system can reach maximum data rates of up to 688Mbps on the 2.4GHz band, 8,640Mbps on the 5GHz band, and 11,520Mbps on the 6GHz band. Inside, the Orbi 870 operates on a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 4GB of flash memory, and 2GB of RAM. It also supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 technologies, including MU-MIMO simultaneous data streaming, 320MHz channel bandwidth, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) transmissions, 4K QAM, direct-to-client beamforming, and WPA3 encryption. You’ll also get multi-link operation (MLO) technology to combine the 5GHz and 6GHz bands for enhanced backhaul performance.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
