The WiFi alliance has not certified Wifi 7 products yet. Yet the RS700 (which at the moment have on pre-order), as well as similar products from TP-Link and Asus are on or will be on preorder. Will the RS700 be pre-certified? Is it guaranteed to be fully Wifi 7 compliant and certified- or is there a risk that it will not eventually be WiFi 7 certified. If it doesn't achieve Wifi 7 certification is the product returnable after the normal return period.
Also, since Wifi 7 compatible non-router devices won't be in the market until 2024- what is the expected life of the RS700 in term of on-going security and firmware updates from Netgear?
Or don't want to be answered. Asking about pre-certification is a yes or no type question. Asking about customer protection if the new croup of routers can not fully certified at a later date- is valid and would be a matter of corporate policy (and the degree of customer orientation). Also if there is a chance it won't be fully certified, - it should be clearly mentioned in the product literature.
It is true that asking about support life is difficult to answer- primarily because if the router OS cannot be successfully patched to avoid security threats- it becomes unsupportable- and this might be hard to predict unless the OS is dated on release. Asking that if the router can be patched, it will receive security updates after X years is reasonable.
This is a user-to-user community forum - we do not have pre-knowledge of what NG is thinking or will do. If you want some of the questions answered, ask NETGEAR directly.
Still, if I was a vendor, I would be upfront with customers regarding the potential risk. In this case trusting the vendor's capabilities and plans is essential. Bottomline, upon release of the RS700 and similar models from TP-Link and possibly Asus- the Wifi 7 standard will not be standardized- and early adopters may not be able to take advantage of the full set of capabilities until after additional firmware upgrades. And there appears to be a risk that some aspects may never be updatable- though this is unlikely given that similar hardware will be used.
This is my assessment anyway.
"Although the Wi-Fi Alliance announced earlier this year that the technical phase of Wi-Fi 7’s certification is under development, the actual testing is yet to take place. As such, there isn’t yet a Wi-Fi 7 certification for interoperability, which means it doesn’t technically exist.
However, this doesn’t mean that development work isn’t already underway. Wi-Fi technologies and products often hit the marketplace before the certification program is in place, especially consumer-grade products. For example, Wi-Fi 7 smartphones are likely to debut as early as Q2 2023, shortly followed by routers. Broadcom has already put its stake in the ground by announcing Wi-Fi enterprise access point (AP) chips, as well as its ecosystem of Wi-Fi 7 chipsets and radios for residential APs and client devices such as smartphones. On the enterprise side, we’ll likely have to wait until early 2024 for Wi-Fi 7 access points."
I think that there is a small risk here but there are several factors to consider. One as you noted is that products are often introduced before the standards are formalized, and those products may have some limited ability within the finalized standards. Even after certification not all products will take full advantage of the standards. Another is that it's not just the router but also the capabilities of the devices on the network to use all of the features and capabilities of the standard. Those devices don't really exist yet and likely they won't be able to achieve full utilization anyway. We're really talking about how the router handles multiple devices on the same network.
WiFi 7 is primarily just using the three bands and also has some improvements to the throughput, but I think that it is really intended for very high congestion WiFi environments. For most consumer uses WiFi 6 is more than enough. Who really needs 46 Gbps anyway? (For what it's worth I use ethernet for most high speed applications.) So I would think that the risk the new router somehow falls short of the WiFi 7 standards in a meaningful way is pretty low. IMHO
I wouild not buy it, firstly its way to early and not giving full wifi 7 speeds, I imagine it will be a very earlly draft model, like wifi 6 routers, I mean the RAX120 never got full features, the RAXE500 seems to not be certified Negear never said if it had BSS or TWT for instance, and there has been no firmware updates for almost 6 months now on that high end router.
Buying a Wi-Fi 7 so early is going to be a world of pain as it will be buggy, may run to hot in that form factor like the Ampli Alien Wi-Fi 6 router did as its hard to vent heat out of a cylinder, also I don't think its coverage will be that great with I imagine its internal antenna will just be stamped ones, unlike the winged devices with external antenna or the antenna on say the R7800 (still Netgear's best router with Voxel firmware) To many if's and buts and why buy something when there are no clients anyway, also its obscenely expensive.
I beta tested the old RAX120 and the beta model which I still have was bigger than the release model, that router had great coverage, better than the RAXE500 on 5Ghz but higher latency but stayed at draft 3. Netgear to date have never released a router that went from draft to fully fledged wave one or two as so many things can change and you cannot guarantee the silicon will be capable of those updates, and since Wi-Fi 6E is only just appearing I think 2025 is more likely when main stream Wi-Fi 7 gear will be in the wild.
I mean many devices are still Wi-Fi 5 even now, manufacturers wont hedge there bets and update Wi-Fi specs unless it means they know it will them money and devices are set at least a year ahead for development I would imagine at least. Early days for Wi-Fi 7 which is not needed yet, you could argue that Wi-Fi 6E isn't either. I would not risk buying a router that needs hardware updates to reach full throughput, its well under so called Wi-Fi 7 supposed top speeds. I imagine 30-40Gbps will be the target in reality, I don't think the supposed 46Gbps will be the norm. I'd stay well clear for the time being, but that's just my view or course, and I am a little cynical these days.
Actually- I lost patience on RS700 ship dates and went with the TP-Link BE800 Wifi 7 tribune router. It's great- offering top speeds, great range and good wifi 6E performance. I can't test on Wifi 7 yet- but at this point I am confident the hardware will fully support the standard and that firmware updates will bring it to the full standard. These routers are great multi gig routers.
Also, I should add the BE800/BE900 doesn't yet have Wifi 7 back haul support and I believe the RS700 will. For those that need mesh solutions- the RS700 may be worth the wait- though the TP Link BE85 is out now- and I believe it does have Wifi 7 back haul support.
One reviewer of the RS700 has stated "...Netgear told me the RS700 would include all Wi-Fi 7 has to offer." If accurate, this statement suggests that the RS700 will (eventually through firmware updates) be fully Wi-Fi 7 compatible.
