Inside the fight to fix your home internet: Orbi’s $4000 and Eero's ‘smart value’ new routers tested
Tech giants are battling for control of your home Wi-Fi, with new systems costing up to $4000 as NBN speeds hit multi-gig levels. Which one is best for you?
Internet speeds are getting faster with taxpayer-funded NBN Co launching its first “mass market multi-gig speed tiers”.
But amid this need for speed, the biggest chokepoint is not what’s in the ground outside but the router in your living room – what has been branded “modem mayhem”.
A standard, single-unit router is a digital relic, incapable of distributing blistering speeds across a large or complex floor plan. Enter the mesh Wi-Fi system: a decentralised power grid for your data, made up of multiple units – a main router and satellites – that blanket your home in one seamless, high-speed network.
While telcos such as Vodafone are offering mesh router plans from $6 a month, Netgear and Amazon-owned Eero are jostling for digital supremacy. We take a look at Netgear’s Orbi 970 – a pricey beast – as well as its stand-alone Nighthawk RS600, seeing how they stay up against Eero’s plug and play Pro 7 system.
Unboxing
A high-performance router shouldn’t look like a dead spider, but it also shouldn’t be a monolith.
The Orbi 970 comes in a three pack – a router and three satellites – providing up to 660 square metres of coverage.
The most expensive of the trio, priced from $3999 – the Orbi 970 is the definition of brute-force elegance: a large, tower-like structure that makes no apologies for its presence. It signals that this house takes its internet seriously, relying on a sophisticated internal antenna array.
The Nighthawk RS600, priced from $799, follows a similar, though smaller, cylindrical form. It doesn’t use separate satellite units like the Orbi or Eero, so coverage is smaller at 250 square metres.
The Eero Pro 7 adopts a minimalist design. It’s compact, sleek, with its router and two satellites practically disappearing into the background. The design ethos here is seamless integration, a quiet promise of connectivity everywhere without the visual clutter. Its coverage is less than the Orbi, offering up to 560 square metres. But it’s significantly cheaper, priced from $1197.
The Eero, like most Amazon-owned devices, is also the easiest set up. It’s pretty much plug and play. The Orbi and Netgear have more complex user interfaces, which requires more attention (and time) to set up correctly.
The speed wars
All routers are Wi-Fi 7 devices — the latest, fastest generation of wireless technology.
The Orbi 970 is the undisputed champion of raw, theoretical throughput (the maximum data speed it can handle), promising an unrivalled 27 Gbps. This looks impressive. But in reality it’s overkill, with NBN offering plans up to 2Gbps.
The Orbi’s secret weapon is a quad-band set-up, meaning it uses four distinct radio frequencies (2.4 GHz, two 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) to communicate.
Crucially, it uses a dedicated backhaul — a specific, reserved channel (in this case, 5 GHz and 6 GHz) used only for the router and satellites to talk to each other. This prevents your devices from clogging up the network’s internal communication.
It is built for the absolute maximum throughput, aided by a 10 GbE WAN port (multi-gig port). This means it can handle a wired connection of up to 10 Gigabits per second.
The Eero Pro 7 pulls back slightly with a max speed of 9.6 Gbps but counters with its TrueMesh technology, which prioritises reliability by automatically finding the most optimal path for data transfer.
It features three frequency bands: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, 6 GHz, intelligently using a mix of wireless and ethernet connections to ensure a reliable link. Its multi-gig ports are 2.5 GbE, making it ideal for 5Gb plans, when they arrive.
Like the Orbi, the Nighthawk RS600 offers speeds of up to 18Gbps, with a dedicated 6 GHz backhaul. It’s fast, reliable, and offers strong coverage – but over a smaller area compared with the Orbi and Eero.
Features and the cost of security
A router is also a smart home hub. The Eero Pro 7 sets itself apart here with built-in Zigbee and Matter support (two primary protocols for smart home devices). This makes it an instant, powerful, and simpler hub for your entire smart ecosystem. The Netgear devices offer none of this native integration.
Another advantage of the Eero is certain Amazon Echo smart speakers, which are priced from $99, can become Wi-Fi extenders.
When it comes to security, both Netgear (with Netgear Armor) and eero (with Eero Secure/Secure+) follow the modern trend: subscription-based security. You get world-class protection, but you have to keep paying for it. For the price of these premium systems, one might expect this essential protection thrown in, but alas, it’s an added cost.
Bottom line
The Orbi 970 is a staggering luxury purchase, only justifiable for the power-user with a massive home, a 10 Gbps fibre line, and a need to own the absolute fastest technology on the market.
The Nighthawk RS600 is the clear value leader, offering nearly top-tier performance for a relatively modest price.
But the Eero Pro 7 strikes the perfect balance: exceptional Wi-Fi 7 speed, a seamless user experience, and the best smart home integration, all at a price that is almost a quarter of the Orbi.
The choice isn’t about which is “best,” but which is “best for you.” But the Eero is the future of connectivity, balancing speed with integration and design, making it the most compelling system for a modern, connected home.
Originally published as Inside the fight to fix your home internet: Orbi’s $4000 and Eero's ‘smart value’ new routers tested
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