Netgear Orbi Quad-band WiFi 6E RBKE963

The fastest Wi-Fi ever – but it’s incredibly expensive, and you’ll need 6E-compatible devices to fully benefit

- DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH

PRICE £1,250 (£1,500 inc VAT) from netgear.co.uk

Netgear’s Orbi Wi-Fi mesh systems have taken home numerous PC Pro awards thanks to their ease of use, wide coverage and excellent performance. They tend to be pricey, though, and this new model pushes the boat out further than ever with a shocking price of £1,500 for three stations.

Then again, the RBKE963 is no ordinary mesh. It’s the first wireless system we’ve seen to support Wi-Fi 6E – a rapidly encroaching standard that opens up a whole new set of radio frequencies in the 6GHz band for home and office use.

This is a big deal, because the 5GHz band has always been cramped. Its standard frequency range is only broad enough to accommodate two adjacent networks using the wide 80MHz channel width, or a single 160MHz one – so it’s hard to avoid overlapping with other networks, resulting in interference and reduced performance. The higher-frequency dynamic frequency selection (DFS) channels afford extra legroom, but not all hardware supports them.

The 6GHz range is much more free and easy. In the UK, the licensed spectrum is wide enough to allow three 160MHz Wi-Fi networks – or six 80MHz networks – to coexist without any overlap. So even if your neighbours on both sides are running Wi-Fi 6E networks, you should find a clear 160MHz channel for your own use.

Thus, while a Wi-Fi 6E connection might appear on paper to merely match the speeds of a regular Wi-Fi 6 network, it has the potential to boost performance anywhere that other networks are in operation.

Connections old and new