Just when you were looking to upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 router, Wi-Fi 6E came along. And it’s expensive. Netgear today announced its newest entry in the 6E onslaught, the Orbi Quad-B Series and Mesh WiFi 6E RBKE960. This is the first quad-band Wi-Fi 6E mesh offering, but it’s not the first Wi-Fi 6E mesh router. Featuring one 2.4GHz band, two 5GHz bands, and a brand-new 6GHz band, this $1,500 system supports four different networks, including one designed exclusively for your insecure smart home devices. And if that doesn’t get you excited, they’re also releasing a limited edition color… black.
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This incredibly expensive setup supports multi-gigabit internet. Netgear claims that even if your home doesn't have many Wi-Fi 6E clients (which it won't), you'll see increased speeds of up to 30 percent due to the significant number of radios being clustered together, plus the upgraded antenna designs.
If this thing can do everything it says it can and keep my son's Xbox online while I'm Zooming, my husband is watching Squid Game on Netflix, and my daughter is playing Rec Room with Oculus, I'll be really excited. Wi-Fi is the backbone of the smarthome, and any upgrade to it is really appreciated.
The ability to create a separate smart home network on this Orbi system is also an interesting proposition, although it remains to be seen how it will be executed. Netgear says that switching between networks will be “seamless.” So if your phone is on a regular network and you’re trying to control devices on the smart home network, there won’t be any issues. This is a problem people run into when trying to use a Guest Network as a smart home network, as guest networks are designed to be sealed off from everything else, which can cause communication issues. Netgear also pointed out that smart home devices are often “not band-steering friendly,” and this network can ensure that devices stay on one band.
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If you really need Wi-Fi 6E, is it worth spending $1,500 for better Wi-Fi? Not really. But in a few years you might want to. So if you're looking to buy a new router, it could be worth considering.
Source of information: theverge.com
