Free launches the Freebox Ultra, “the most powerful box on the market”: price, features, speeds, everything you need to know

The operator presented, Tuesday morning, its new Freebox Ultra, accompanied by a Wi-Fi 7 repeater, equipped with a very large entertainment offering, quite unique in France. Prices, characteristics and speeds, Clubic offers you a broad summary.

Xavier Niel says it himself: the Freebox Ultra is “ the fastest and most powerful on the market “. Tuesday January 30, Free took care of the presentation of its new box, perhaps the most complete in its history in that it has well assimilated consumer uses. And even if its price places it in the category of so-called “premium” boxes, you will see that it is far from falling into the unreasonable category.

An Ultra powerful Freebox

The Freebox Ultra is the fastest fiber. On the menu, speeds of 8 Gbit/s down (download) and up (send). On this last point (in amount), it is eight times faster than the best boxes sold in France. More than 35 million households are already eligible for box technology, according to the company.

Free has already offered this technology since 2018, but the Freebox Ultra is an opportunity to once again deliver 10G-EPON technology. But above all, it is the arrival of Wi-Fi 7 which could be the big point to remember about this new device, from a technological point of view.

Thanks to Wi-Fi 7, it is possible to achieve speeds of up to 6 Gbit/s on several devices simultaneously. It’s quite simply five times faster than what Wi-Fi 6, the latest generation available on Freeboxes, offers. Wi-Fi 7 is quad-band, so it integrates the powerful 6 GHz frequency band. Note that it is possible to connect up to 100 devices at the same time to the box.

Regarding connectivity, there are 4 2.5 Gbit/s Ethernet ports, 2 SFP ports (one for fiber, the other dedicated to the local network), 1 USB-C port and 1 NVME slot. The Qualcomm Networking Pro 820 platform quad-core processor, dedicated to Wi-Fi 7, equips the Freebox Ultra.

The first Wi-Fi 7 repeater on the market

Alongside the Freebox Ultra server, you can benefit from a Wi-Fi repeater. Free has also become the first operator to offer one to its subscribers. This repeater is made available from the Free Subscriber Area, on request. Three additional repeaters can also be requested, but it will cost you 20 euros per device.

The Freebox Ultra offers two new modes which allow it to be placed in the category of eco-responsible boxes. Total sleep mode, once activated, reduces the machine’s consumption by 95%. At night, on the move or at work, there are no small savings. The repeaters also synchronize with the box, to also stop consuming unnecessarily.

As for the Eco Wi-Fi mode, it allows you to adapt the power and performance of Wi-Fi 7 to the connected devices. “ More concretely: in Eco Wi-Fi mode, one or two Wi-Fi bands out of the four included in the Freebox are automatically cut off when they are not in use », Explains the operator.

The Freebox Ultra, the king of entertainment?

In terms of content, the Freebox Ultra is very, very impressive. The operator’s new box offers, in addition to 280 TV channels, numerous services, included for the entire duration of your subscription, a detail not to be overlooked.

Thus, Freebox Ultra offers the Canal+ channel, but also Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, Universal+, but also the applications OQEE, Cafeyn, Free Ligue 1 and TV by Canal.

Before talking about prices, a word finally about the services. Free provides the Free Proxi local assistance service to all those who subscribe to the Freebox Ultra offer.

An expensive Freebox, but which will save you money if you like streaming

The Freebox Ultra offer is priced at 49.99 euros for 1 year. Unlike its competitors, and Xavier Niel did not fail to emphasize this on Tuesday during the presentation, Free still offers a promotional period of 12 months, when it has increased to 6 everywhere else. Beyond the first year, the Freebox Ultra drops to 59.99 euros/month.

All applications contained in the Freebox Ultra cost, separately, 83.93 euros/month. Suffice it to say, once the box is added, the savings made can be measured in several tens of euros. Whatever anyone says, the offer is very, very interesting from a commercial point of view. And that’s not all !

For slightly smaller budgets, Free is launching a second offer, “Freebox Ultra Essentiel” which focuses on entertainment (only OQEE by Free and Free Ligue 1 are included) and TV channels (230 instead of 280) , to finally offer a more accessible offer, at 39.99 euros/month for one year, then at 49.99 euros/month, with Wi-Fi 7 and speeds of up to 8 Gbit/s up and down. It’s now up to you to make your choice.