Netgear Orbi 370: Buyer's Assessment

Buy the Orbi 370 three-pack if you need to cover a lot of floor for little money, your internet plan is a gigabit or less, and your device count is modest. Do not buy it if your house runs a camera system or a large smart home, if you want 6 GHz, or if you need more than one wired port per node. It is a genuine Orbi at a genuinely low price, and the two things Netgear cut to get there are both visible on the specification sheet rather than hidden in the firmware.

What Netgear actually sells here

The Orbi 370 Series three-pack is model RBE373: one RBE371 router and two RBE370 satellites. Netgear's own product page describes it as a dual-band Wi-Fi 7 system on 2.4 and 5 GHz, rated up to 5 Gbps, covering up to 6,000 square feet across the three units at roughly 2,000 square feet each, and supporting up to 70 connected devices. Netgear states it works with cable, fiber or DSL service, and that Gigabit or Multi-Gig internet speeds need a Gigabit service plan and compatible equipment behind it.

The wiring is where the model is more generous than its price suggests and less generous than its rivals. The router has one 2.5 Gigabit WAN port and one 2.5 Gigabit LAN port. Each satellite has one 2.5 Gigabit LAN port. Every port in the system is multi-gig, which is the good half; there is exactly one of them available per unit, which is the other half.

Setup runs through the Orbi app — the same guided flow as the expensive Orbis, which is a real advantage of buying into a mature range at the bottom. WPA3 encryption and automatic firmware updates are included at no cost. Netgear Armor, the Bitdefender-powered security suite, is a trial that becomes a paid subscription. The system is expandable: an add-on 370 satellite is rated to add a further 2,000 square feet rather than forcing you to replace the whole set.

Limit one: two radios, and no band held back

The 370 is dual-band. In a mesh system that means the satellites relay your traffic over the same 5 GHz band your laptop is using, so anything going through a satellite crosses that band twice — once from the device to the node, once from the node to the router. Under load that costs roughly half the throughput on satellite-connected devices.

Netgear describes the system as “simultaneous dual-band WiFi with enhanced backhaul”. It is worth being straight about this: the product page uses that phrase without defining what it does on this model, so we are not going to tell you what it improves. What we can say from the band count is the physics — two radios cannot give the backhaul a lane of its own, and no firmware feature changes that. How mesh backhaul works is the mechanism, and tri-band vs dual-band mesh is the decision.

Whether that matters to you is mostly a question about your internet plan. On 300 or 500 Mbps, halving a 5 GHz link that was already faster than the plan still clears the plan, and you will not feel it. On a gigabit plan in a busy house you will, and the answer is either a cable or a tri-band system.

Limit two: the 70-device ceiling

Seventy devices is the lowest figure of any Orbi, and unlike coverage ratings it is the kind of number worth taking seriously, because it tracks the hardware underneath rather than an open-field measurement.

Count honestly before you dismiss it. Phones, tablets, laptops, a work laptop, televisions, streaming sticks, speakers, a printer, a doorbell, thermostats, plugs, bulbs, a robot vacuum, a couple of cameras — an ordinary 2026 family house arrives at forty or fifty without trying, and a house with a camera system or a bulb in every socket goes past seventy. That is the specific household the 370 is wrong for, and the one the Orbi 770 at 100 devices or a Deco at 150 handles instead. Best router for a lot of devices explains why airtime rather than the association limit is what actually runs out, and Wi-Fi for a device-heavy smart home is the page to read if that description fits you.

The coverage figure, read properly

Netgear rates the three-pack at 6,000 square feet, about 2,000 per unit. Published coverage figures are measured in conditions no house has, so use them to rank systems rather than to size one.

Our sizing method is in how many mesh nodes you actually need. If the walls rather than the distance are the problem, Wi-Fi in concrete and brick houses is the more useful page, and for genuinely large floor plans start at the 5,000 sq ft page.

Where it sits in the Orbi range

Orbi is a wide range and the model numbers are not intuitive. The 370 is the entry point: dual-band, 70 devices, one spare multi-gig port per unit. The 770 is tri-band BE11000 with 2.5 Gbps on every port, rated to 8,000 square feet and 100 devices. The 970 is the quad-band flagship with a reserved backhaul band. Our assessments of the other two are the Orbi 770 review and the Orbi 970 review, and our Orbi range overview puts the whole family in order.

The step from 370 to 770 is the one worth thinking about, because it buys the third radio and the higher device ceiling at the same time — the two things the 370 is short of. Whether it is worth the money depends entirely on whether you can run a cable. If you can, wire the 370 and keep the difference. If you cannot, and your plan is a gigabit, the 770 is the honest recommendation.

Orbi 370 against the Deco BE25

This is the comparison that decides most of these purchases, because the two systems sit at the same price point with the same two radios.

On the specification the Deco BE25 wins: more ports, a higher coverage rating and double the device ceiling. The Orbi's arguments are the app, the upgrade path within a range that goes all the way to quad-band, and the add-on satellite being a catalog item rather than an afterthought. If you are choosing purely on hardware, buy the Deco — our Deco BE25 assessment is the companion to this page. If you want a Netgear and a path upward, the 370 is a fair buy.

Who should buy it

• A sub-gigabit house under about 3,000 sq ft with a normal device count. This is the case it was designed for.
• Anyone replacing a rented ISP gateway on a budget. It drops in behind any modem; replacing your ISP's router has the per-provider steps.
• A house that already runs Orbi and needs cheap extra coverage. Buying into the same app rather than a second ecosystem is worth something real.
• Three-radio coverage where one router is failing. Three nodes beat one strong router in almost any multi-room house — mesh vs a single router makes that case properly.

Who should not

• Camera-heavy or smart-home-heavy households. Seventy devices is a real ceiling.
• Gigabit-and-above plans with no cable run. The satellites will give back about half of it.
• Anyone who wants 6 GHz. There is no 6 GHz radio in this model at all.
• Desks with several wired things. One spare port per unit means a switch, and at that point the Deco's second port looks cheap.

How we picked

We do not run a test lab. Rankings here are built from the manufacturers' published specifications, measurements taken by independent outlets that do have labs, and the structural reasoning on this site about what a given house or job actually needs. Every product was checked as currently sold before it was included. Where a figure appears it is attributed and linked in Sources; where we have no basis for a claim, it is left out. Our methodology sets out exactly what we will and will not assert.