Netgear Orbi 370 review: The most affordable Orbi mesh kit yet

More than the latest member of the Orbi family, the Orbi 370 mesh Wi-Fi system breaks new ground for those looking for economical home networking that still delivers the data. Small enough to fit in places where its larger siblings can’t, the Orbi 370 series offers more bang for the networking buck than the Orbi 770, 870 and 970 mesh routers. Its dual-band design may lack access to the high-performance 6 GHz data band and with it the high speed data flow that Wi-Fi 7’s 320 MHz data channels offer, but the Orbi 370 members deliver reliable data at surprisingly sprightly wired and wireless speeds.

At $350 for a three-pack, the Orbi 373 kit I looked at blazes a more economical online trail for Netgear although it can’t compete with its larger and more expensive siblings, particularly at close range. This inexpensive Wi-Fi 7 mesh kit has the potential to make data fly back and forth. My Netgear Orbi 370 review will help you decide if this is the best mesh Wi-Fi system and the best Wi-Fi 7 router for you or if you’re better off spending more on a tri-band mesh router.

Netgear Orbi 370: Price and availability

Without a doubt, the Orbi 370 clan breaks new ground for Netgear with inexpensive mesh technology. The Orbi 373 three-pack I looked at sells for $350, one-fifth the price of Netgear’s top of the line Orbi 973 triband set and about what an extra Orbi node costs.

Aimed at covering 6,000 square feet, the Orbi 370 series trio should be enough to fill most homes, although the two-part Orbi 372’s 4,000 square feet might be a better bet for an apartment or cottage; it costs $250. Extra satellites are $150 and can cover dead zones with an extra 2,000 square feet of coverage.

That said, the Orbi 370 costs about the same as the TP-Link Deco BE25’s $270 three-pack and is a bargain compared to the similar $260 for two MSI Roamii BE Lite units.

Netgear Orbi 370: Design

After opening the box, the first thing you notice about the Netgear Orbi 370 mesh devices is how small and light they are compared to previous Orbis. At 8.0 x 4.7 x 3.0 inches and 13 ounces, the triangular towers are half the size of MSI’s Roamii BE Lite mesh devices.

Available only in white, the devices can fit on a shelf, tabletop or off in the corner of a room. Unlike competitors, Netgear sells a $40 plastic mounting shelf.

The mesh set takes advantage of the latest Wi-Fi 7 updates, including 4K QAM, Multi-RU and preamble puncturing to push throughput levels. To use its fronthaul Multi-Link Operations (MLO), you need to set the router to use WPA2+WPA3 encryption. It pushes the Wi-Fi 7 spec with 240MHz streams while sending and receiving data over its four internal antennas.

That said, it limits data flow to the 2.4- and 5.0 GHz data bands and ignores the high-speed 6 GHz data band and its ability to make the bits fly over 320MHz data channels. Based on Qualcomm’s IPQ5322 circuitry with a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 512MB of storage space for its firmware and settings. With four independent data streams, it can theoretically move up to 688 Mbps over the 2.4 GHz link and 4.324 Gbps over the 5 GHz connection for a total of just over 5 Gbps.

For most this will be plenty, but super networkers, beware: the Orbi 370 will likely start to bog down with more than 70 connected devices. Plus, the router has two 2.5 Gbps networking ports while the node has one, leaving one open connection on each for a downstream link to a storage system or to wire the devices together. Most won’t care, but it will feel constraining for some and require a network switch for further connections. More on this later.

Unlike others that assign the router and node on set up, Orbi continues to have slightly different routers and nodes. They both have a Sync button and a recessed reset key for wiping the unit but neither has a USB port to use a phone as internet backup (as with many Asus devices) or making the contents of a hard drive available across the network (with TP-Link systems).

The Orbi 370’s discrete LED blinks white when it’s starting up and glows a solid white when ready to be installed. It turns red when it’s offline. However, here’s no way to control the light.

They set the pace with security features, like automatic firmware updates that need to be signed and an advanced firewall to separate your network from the current chaos of the web. There’s also Netgear’s Advanced Radio Protection, a cloud-based heuristic behavioral analysis technology that uses an AI engine to block known threats – and a few new ones.

The optional $100 Armor security package adds Bitdefender malware defenses at the device level as well as extending the scant 90 days of technical support and 1-year warranty to two years. Netgear’s Armor Plus plan costs $150 and takes this a step or two further with an adblocker and antitracking technology to protect family members. The big security extra is unlimited global VPN access for up to 50 users.

Netgear Orbi 370: Performance

Based on testing with Keysight’s IxChariot networking benchmark, the Netgear Orbi 370 showed itself to be a powerful mesh kit that did equally well with wireless and wired work. Over the course of two weeks, it was a reliable and consistent online companion, always putting the family’s data needs first. On the other hand, the Orbi 370 three-pack couldn’t fill my 3,500 square foot home with wireless data.

Using an HP Envy 2-in-1 notebook, the Orbi RBE 370 router achieved a throughput of 1.169 Gbps at close range. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy to gauge its wired LAN capabilities because the test requires two free router networking ports, one for the benchmark’s server and one for the test system. With a 10 Gbps switch, I got a 2.379 Gbps reading with a 15-foot cable, putting it on a par with more expensive routers.

With the switch and cables stashed, the Orbi router achieved wireless throughput of 1.074 Gbps with it 15 feet from the test system. That’s 10% ahead of the MSI Roamii BE Lite’s 970.3 Mbps performance. It’s not quite up to the data flow from triband systems, like TP-Link’s Deco BE63 (1.821 Gbps) or the Netgear Orbi 770 (1.721 Gbps) but should complement modest broadband plans.

At 50-feet, the Orbi 370 pushed 515.4 Mbps, well ahead of the Roamii BE Lite’s 470.5 Mbps but well behind the Deco BE63’s 610.7 Mbps. Still, it humbled more expensive triband routers like the Orbi 770 (391.1 Mbps).

With 75 feet between the router and test system, the throughput dropped to 191.2 Mbps, plenty for some gaming, 4K video or nosing around the web. It was about the 199.2 Mbps of throughput achieved by the Orbi 770 and a three-fold advantage over the Deco BE63’s 58.1 Mbps.

At the test’s terminal 90-foot test, the Orbi 370 ruled the Wi-Fi 7 roost at a throughput of 85.0 Mbps. That’s well ahead of the Roamii BE Lite’s 46.7 Mbps and the Orbi 770’s 54.2 Mbps and the Deco BE63’s 17.1 Mbps. The router’s 110-foot range was five feet farther than the Roamii BE Lite.

The Orbi 370 excelled at sending a strong Wi-Fi signal across my 25 foot office and through a wall into an adjacent room, delivering 930.5 Mbps, slightly better than the Roamii BE Lite’s 920.8 Mbps. With Orbi RBE370 nodes set up a floor above and below the Orbi RBE371 router, the wireless network moved 375.3 Mbps upstairs to the test system set up 40 feet away. The downstairs reading under the same conditions yielded 227.2 Mbps.

It aced our network saturation test, where the Orbi 370 fed data to four systems spread throughout the house. As an iPad viewed 4K videos and an HP Envy 2-in-1 played the BBC World Service audio feed, an Acer Edge notebook ran YouTube videos and a Dell XPS 15 moved data on to and off of a networked storage array. All the multimedia files came through without incident with no freeze ups, lost frames or audio glitches.

The Orbi 370 cools itself by passively pulling room air in from the bottom and expelling warm air out a top vent. None of the devices got above 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. With the RBE371 router using 11.4 watts and each RBE370 node using 7.7 watts, the network should cost about $41.10 a year to operate if it's left on and you pay the national average of 17.5 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s about $15 a year less than the Orbi 770 three-pack.

Netgear Orbi 370 review: Setup

Getting the three Orbi 370 units set up was simple but at 22 minutes, it was a tad tedious; others do this in one-third of the time. There’s the choice between using a connected browser (at orbilogin.com or orbilogin.local) or either the iPhone/iPad or Android app. Using my Galaxy S25 phone, I started by plugging everything in and creating a Netgear account.

After a verification email, I activated Touch ID to use my fingerprint to open the app. Snapping the QR code on the front of the router didn’t work, but the QR code underneath did.

With a steady white LED, the Orbi device connected the router with my phone. It checked the Internet connection.

I added a LAN name and passcode, followed by an Admin password and two challenge questions in case I forget the log in credentials.

After it updated the firmware, the app connected the two satellites followed by an Armor subscription come-on. All devices connected on the first try.

Netgear Orbi 370 review: Configuration

While the app is a visual way to explore options and make changes, using the network’s browser interface has more choices and details. The top of the app’s main page shows everything from online status to the number of connected nodes to the choice of 10 activities that include Device Manager and Security & Support.

There’s more available by scrolling down to get to WiFi Analytics, Network Map and WiFi Settings.

The network map provides access to what’s connected to each node. There’s a place to change the network’s parameters and share access with a QR code.

In addition to an internet speed reading, the Orbi app has a Traffic Meter for deeper trends with daily, weekly and monthly totals.

The app’s three line link opens the Settings, Support and Subscriptions sections. It has a place to reboot the devices and rerun the set up sequence.

Using Orbi 370’s web browser interface, the Basic main page has internet connection, guest network status and the number of devices online. Do yourself a favor and guard the scrolling network name and password from strangers.

The Advanced section yields a wealth of router info, internet details and Wi-Fi settings. It can show current throughput statistics.

In addition to turning the mesh nodes into wired access points, there’s the ability to use the Orbi 370’s 240MHz transmissions and password-protect the wireless backhaul data flow.

What’s missing? Despite its many options and settings, the Orbi 370 doesn’t have a way to control or turn off the LEDs. Other Orbi systems and most competitors have this.

Netgear Orbi 370 review: Verdict

While limiting the data flow to the 2.4- and 5.0 GHz bands, Netgear’s Orbi 370 kit stuffs Wi-Fi 7’s features and performance into units that are not only much smaller and lighter than previous Orbi efforts but a bargain at $350 for a router and two nodes. This undercuts the company’s other mesh products by hundreds of dollars. It has 2.5 Gbps networking ports, but some will find one free connection on each unit a tough compromise to swallow.

Still, the network delivered reliable and lively performance with over 1 Gbps wireless and over 2 Gbps wired connections. The final cut corner is Netgear’s 90-day support policy that requires at least $100 a year to extend.

At $350 for a three-pack, Netgear’s Orbi 370 democratizes Wi-Fi 7 and is a big step away from outrageously priced mesh gear that’s likely to be overkill for most homes. In other words, the Orbi 370 is the right mesh kit at the right time.