Netgear Orbi 370 Series Review

Design and features

• Single 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port
• Slightly cheap feeling

The Netgear Orbi 370 Series is available as a two-pack (£209.99) or a three-pack (£299.99). At that price, the Wi-Fi 7 system is considerably cheaper than most of its rivals, even Netgear’s previous more budget-friendly systems, such as the Orbi 770 Series.

The reasons for this lower price are quite evident when I started to unbox the system. I’m used to Orbi systems having a reassuring heft to them, but the Netgear Orbi 370 Series feels cheaper, almost as if the cases were slightly hollow, even if the casing is well-made.

Netgear has also cut down on the number of ports you get. With the router, there’s two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

With the satellites, there’s just a single 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port. If you decide that you want to wire the satellites together, using what’s called a wired backhaul rather than the standard wireless connection, then you can connect one satellite to the router, and you’re done.

If you’re entirely wireless in your home, then the lack of ports won’t make a difference, but if you’ve got multiple wired devices, you’ll want to invest in an Ethernet switch.

The other reason that the Netgear Orbi 370 Series is so much cheaper is that this is a dual-band system that works on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands; the high-speed 6GHz band is not available. That’s the same kind of configuration as you get on the Eero 7. 

There is a difference between this and the Eero systems. Here, you can’t mix and match Orbi devices from other series; with Eero, you can use different Eero devices.

Netgear doesn’t state the exact specs of the Wi-Fi channels, beyond stating that there are four streams per device at speeds of up to 3.6Gbps. That’s likely to be a 2×2 2.4GHz network and a 2×2 5GHz network.

All of this bandwidth is shared between devices and, assuming you’ve set the system up wirelessly, for communication between satellites.

While there’s no 6GHz band, Wi-Fi 7 still has some benefits over Wi-Fi 6, including 20% faster transfer rates and the ability to use all network bands at the same time to improve performance.

While the hardware may be a lighter version of what I’ve seen before, the setup procedure and control of the network are the same as with other Orbi systems.

That means that you’ll need the Orbi app to set up your system, starting by scanning the QR code on top of the router, and then following the wizard to set up a secure network with your satellites connected. It’s a very easy app to use, and it didn’t take me long to get my network up and running.

At its most basic, the app lets me monitor which devices are connected to the network. I could also toggle the guest and IoT networks, the latter of which is a segregated network for smart home devices, designed for security.

There are two subscription services available. Netgear Armor is the Bitdefender-powered security system, which gives you on-network protection for all devices, plus you get client software for any computers and smartphones you might own.

Then, there are Parental Controls. Subscribe, and you can create profiles for each household member, assign their devices, and then set up internet filtering and scheduling. If you’ve got kids in the house, this is almost an essential feature.

It’s a shame that the two parts of the system are still separate. With Eero, there’s one subscription that gets you everything.

It’s still the case that some advanced settings are only available via the mesh system’s web interface, such as choosing a wireless channel or setting up port forwarding. It’s more than time that Netgear moved everything into the app.

Performance

• Fast at close range
• Speeds drop at distance

Having only the congested 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands to play with, the Netgear Orbi 370 has a tougher job of getting the best speeds compared to a tri-band router. I was impressed by how well the system dealt with interference at close range.

I tested throughputs using OpenSpeedTest, running a server on a computer connected to the Router via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. I then used an iPhone 16 Pro as the client.

I got an average throughput of 901.75 Mbit/s, which is very good. It’s much better than I got from the dual-band Eero 7; with that system, I had to move a satellite to my garden office away from interference.

Moving to the first floor, near a satellite, speeds dropped to 304.85Mbit/s, which is little better than a Wi-Fi 6 device, such as the Eero 6 Plus. Likewise, the average throughput on the second floor was just 172.5Mbit/s. Clearly, having just two bands, no dedicated backhaul wireless channel and plenty of interference from the wireless networks around me do limit this system’s speed.

Should you buy it?