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Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi 6 For The Gigabit Internet Home - #NETGEARCES2019
Orbi Whole Home WiFi just got even faster! NETGEAR is continuing to lead the new era of Wi-Fi. To kick off CES 2019, we announced plans to pair award-winning Orbi Wi-Fi with the latest Wi-Fi s...
Wifi 6 will have different radio hardware, so there won't be any way to upgrade existing devices to Wifi 6 unless you can swap out components, like on a desktop, or a USB dongle for a laptop. But anything with an integrated radio (laptops, phones, tablets, probably nearly all "smart" devices) will just be capped at whatever level it left the factory with. A Wifi 4 device can only work at Wifi 4 levels, even on a Wifi 5 router. You can still use it with a Wifi 5 or Wifi 6 router, but you won't get all the benefits of Wifi 6 unless both the router and the device are Wifi 6.
(Assuming Netgear gets the firmware fixed on the current models) just keep using them until they fail or are insufficient to meet your needs. Factory reset it and sell it used if you really feel the need to upgrade before hardware failure or end of support from Netgear. There aren't even any consumer devices with Wifi 6 hardware yet, so even if you upgraded to the latest and greatet Orbi, you won't have any devices able to take full advantage of it. Even once they hit the market, it'll depend where you are in your upgrade cycle for phones, laptops, consoles, etc., anyway. If all your devices are Wifi 5 (or lower), there's simply no need to get a Wifi 6 router unless you already need a new router anyway. IMO, the bare minimum requirement to elect to upgrade your router to Wifi 6 (as opposed to a mandatory replacement due to failure) is that you have at least one device with Wifi 6, you are maxing out the Wifi 5 with that device, and you would actually benefit from upgrading the router to Wifi 6. Anything less than meeting all three of those conditions is just throwing money away to have the latest and greatest for the sake of having it now. You'd be better off deferring the purchase for six or twelve months and getting the same Wifi 6 router for less when the price comes down. Or even a better one for the same price. Either way, a better value.
I used my old cable modem for over a decade, and only upgraded it when I got bumped up to a plan that was faster than my old modem could handle. I've only replaced routers when the old one either failed or didn't cover as large an area as I needed.
Clearly the new wireless will be different.
But the AX chipset should be able to provide AC support as well.
So the question becomes can AC based Oribi devices be used with the new AX based Orbi devices.
For example, if one gets a Router plus Satelite AX based pack can AC based satelites that customers already have be used with the new AX based Orbi router?
I assume they'll make the new Orbis backwards-compatible, so that a new Wifi 6 router will work with an old Wifi 5 satellite, or a new Wifi 6 satellite will work with an old Wifi 5 router.
That's a big stretch of an assumption.
How so? Obviously, if both the router and satellite aren't Wifi 6, you won't get full Wifi 6 benefits, but that doesn't mean it can't be backwards-compatible and function as a hybrid set to some degree. I have some Wifi 4 devices that work fine on my Wifi 5 system. Netgear would obviously prefer for everyone, whether or not they currently have Orbi systems, to just buy the new Orbi when it comes out. But that's not realistic. Netgear needs to not only attract new customers, but also retain the ones it already has. If Netgear were operating in a vacuum, sure. Maybe they make it backwards compatible, maybe not. But it's not in a vacuum. It's competing against Google, Linksys, AmpliFi, TP-Link, Belkin, etc, for market share. They want to attract new customers, but also retain the ones they already have. The easiest way to do that is to give existing Orbi customers some value for their existing setups, so that switching to a competitor is relatively more expensive than remaining with Netgear's Orbi. If a Wifi 6 Orbi set (assume one router and two satellites) is, say, $400, and a Wifi 6 Velop set (also one router and two satellites) is also $400, maybe I'm indifferent if the features are comparable. But, if I can use my existing Wifi 5 satellites with the new Orbi, and not with the Velop, it's still $400 either way, but I get more value by staying with the Orbi, since I'll have two new Wifi 6 satetllites, but also one or two old Wifi satellites, for the same $400. Unless the new Velop set with only two satellites is so much better than the new Orbi even with two new and two old satellites, most people will stick with Orbi if they already have it. If the new Velop is so much better that it more than makes up for not being compatible with my old Orbi satellites, I'm switching, and Netgear has bigger problems than a lack of backwards compatibility anyway.
I think there's a strong business case for Netgear to make the next-gen Orbis backwards compatible, and it takes a much bigger leap to assume they won't be backwards compatible. And yeah, I could sell my existing Wifi 5 Orbi set to offset the cost of upgrading to an incompatible Wifi 6 Orbi, but I could also sell my existing Orbi to offset the cost of switching to Linksys, Google, etc., so that's really not an argument in favor of Netgear abandoning its existing customer base. If Netgear makes consumers start over to get next-gen tech, there's no guarantee they start over with Netgear and not a competitor.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
