Router Placement: The Free Upgrade Most People Skip (Orbi RBE973)
Router Placement: The Free Upgrade Most People Skip explained, with the Orbi RBE973's own measured figures as the worked example: moving a router two metres frequently beats spending hundreds on a fas...
Maya Okonkwo
In brief
Orbi RBE973, throughput 1.9Gbps at 5m, 710Mbps at 20m — Router Placement: The Free Upgrade Most People Skip. Measured on hardware rather than argued from theory, on a device we rate for a genuinely dedicated backhaul band, not shared.
Moving a router two metres frequently beats spending hundreds on a faster one, because physics dominates specification.
Why this matters: Coverage complaints are usually placement problems, and placement costs nothing to fix.
What is going on underneath
Wi-Fi radiates outward from the antennas, roughly in a flattened sphere, and is absorbed by water, metal and masonry. A router in a floor-level cupboard beside a boiler is fighting all three. Height helps because it clears furniture; central placement helps because coverage is wasted outdoors otherwise. The 5GHz and 6GHz bands are absorbed far more than 2.4GHz, so the higher the band the more placement matters. Mirrors, aquariums, foil-backed insulation and radiators are the specific obstacles that surprise people.
What it looks like in practice
Take the Orbi RBE973 as a worked example. It is the only system here that saturated our 2Gbps line wirelessly. That is the difference this makes once you stop reading specifications and start using the thing.
| Specification | Orbi RBE973 |
|---|---|
| Standard | Wi-Fi 7 quad-band |
| Throughput | 1.9Gbps at 5m, 710Mbps at 20m |
| Ports | 1x 10GbE WAN, 1x 10GbE LAN, 3x 2.5GbE |
| Coverage | 250m² per unit |
| Backhaul | Dedicated 6GHz |
| Setup time | 12 minutes |
The spread across devices
One worked example is an anecdote. Here is how the figure that drives this behaviour actually varies across the hardware we have measured in this category — same test, same conditions, so the spread is real rather than an artefact of who reviewed what.
| Model | Standard | Price | Our score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbi RBE973 | Wi-Fi 7 quad-band | £1499 | 3 / 5 |
| Eero Max 7 | Wi-Fi 7 tri-band | £599 | 4 / 5 |
| TP-Link Deco XE75 | Wi-Fi 6E tri-band | £229 | 4 / 5 |
| Asus RT-BE88U | Wi-Fi 7 dual-band | £399 | 4 / 5 |
Where the line sits
It helps to have a number in mind before you start comparing. Across the networking Gear we have measured, the useful thresholds are the ones where a difference stops being visible: below them you notice, above them you are paying for a specification rather than an experience. The Orbi RBE973 reports Wi-Fi 7 quad-band for standard, which sits comfortably on the right side of that line, and 1.9Gbps at 5m, 710Mbps at 20m for throughput. Treat anything materially below those as a real compromise and anything materially above as a number you are unlikely to feel.
Common misconceptions
- Antenna count predicts range
- A router works equally well inside a cabinet
- Range is a fixed property of the hardware rather than the room
How to check this on your own device
- Reproduce the conditions rather than trusting a one-off reading — run the same task three times and take the average.
- Note the figure your device reports and the figure it actually achieves; on the Orbi RBE973 those diverge under sustained load.
- Change one variable at a time. Brightness, background sync and ambient temperature all move this number independently.
- Compare against the manufacturer’s stated figure and treat any gap as the cost of real-world conditions, not as a fault.
- Repeat after a firmware update — this is one of the numbers that moves without an announcement.
What to do with this
Put the router as central and as high as the cabling allows, clear of metal and water, before buying anything.
Placement changes results more than a generation upgrade does, and it is free.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the networking we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Router Placement: The Free Upgrade Most People Skip (TP-Link Deco XE75) and Router Placement: The Free Upgrade Most People Skip (UniFi Express).
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
