[Network|Orbi AC] Review ~ Great speed, lacks stability ~

This article was originally published on my other blog back in March 2019. I made a minor tweak.

After moving to 3800+ sqft home three years ago, one of the first thing I did was to set up Mesh network system. Upon conducting a thorough online research, I went with Netgear Orbi system (WiFI 5).  Here is my real life experience review with Netgear Orbi system.

Setup

Original set up consisted router and a satellite. However, it must be my old home construction, WiFi signal was difficult to penetrate in the basement even though it is walkout basement. Eventually,  I ended up owing following items.

RBR50 x 1 (AC3000)

RBS50 x 2 (AC3000)

RBW30 x 1

With all these together, according to the Netgear’s specification they would be sufficient to cover ~9000+ sqft area.  Definitely, it looks overkill for my 3800 sqft home. However, the range of coverage truly depends on home construction as well as placement.

During the time I had this system, my home did not have ethernet backhaul option, so these were connected via Wireless backhaul i.e. functioned as true mesh system.

★★★★★Features★★★★★

Speed

The speed of the system was excellent. In fact, Orbi system is often appraised for its speed multiple online review sites when I purchased the system.

Site like Tomshardware compared the systems speed agains other major WiFi 5 Mesh system where it showed Orbi RBK 50 peak performance was 552 Mbps where as competitors like Google WiFi, Linksys Velop, AmpliFi HD were much lower. Surprising part to me here was they recorded Eero peak performance (5ft) was highest with 574 Mbps. Technologically, this is perfectly capable and believable number. But my personal experience was Orbi had higher speed number on internet speed test than Eero but I believe this is due to the fact Eero has weaker range speed, and my experience indeed was looking at slowest speed in house than the fastest so I believe two are concordant.

Orbi with one satellite was considerably faster at close range than all of the mesh network routers operating a router and two nodes. The Linksys Velop was faster in the great room (green bars) and the home theater (red bars), but the Orbi was significantly faster than everything else at long range.

Macworld Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi router review

Although system I owned were WiFi 5 version, this trends appear to continue with WiFi 6 version.

It’s more than most people need, but the Netgear Orbi 6 was downright impressive in our speed tests.

CNet Netgear Orbi AX6000 Wi-Fi 6 Review

And indeed one of the main reason I purchased Mesh network was to get as fast internet speed as possible in my basement office computer as I did not have ethernet connection in my home back when I moved into this house.

While I had the system, my internet speed was 300Mbps for download and with satellite in basement office connected via wifi backhaul and then satellite to computer through ethernet, I got over 200Mbps internet speed test, which to me was very impressive.

After adding additional satellite(s), I also got 200Mbps speed on the other end of home in basement as well.

In comparison, Eero Pro setup, my personal experience Orbi was much faster at the same area (ranged test). Eero Pro had places in house where speed dropped to 50 Mbps.

Setup

One of the main advantage of the Mesh network system is ease of setup. It is almost just plug and go. The light indicator on the satellite will guide you whether the satellite positioned in enough proximity to the router/satellite.

Over the course, Orbi added option for network configuration topology including daisy chain vs. star topology. The difference here is whether all satellite has to directly connect to router (star) vs. satellite can act as a hop. Even changing this was easy.

Aesthetics

Orbi devises are not small but they look aesthetically pleasing.

Scalability

Back when I had Orbi Ultra-performance version (WiFi 5), there were many options from full sized Satellite to just wall plug satellite. Now those options are even more including options like WiFi 6 versions, Voice Mesh, and budget friendy AC1200. So adding more nodes if current setup is inadequate was easy with Orbi.

★★★☆☆Features☆☆★★★

Area coverage/Range

Originally in 2017, I purchased RBK50 2 pack (RBR50 router + RBS50 satellite), which according to the specification should be sufficient for my house sqft coverage. The main router was placed in the middle of house in main floor. The satellite was placed in the North end of house in basement as that’s where my office was located and needed the best internet connection as possible.

This set up resulted in relatively slow internet connection on the South end of main floor where master bed room was located. So I purchased a plug  in satellite (RBW30) to cover the other end of house. This addition improved speed in South end of Main floor, still slower than I had hoped but usable.  However, even with such addition I still had dead spot in our basement South end where the guest room was. This room seemed to be covered at least partly possibly mostly all by concrete wall. This is not even talking about laundry room and storage room behind (South East). But I felt construction of home is to blame on, so in order to give higher penetration/WiFi, I’ve decided to purchase full size Satellite (RBS50). So I essentially I ended up having almost 9000sqft coverage devices for 3800+ sqft home.

In 1/2019, after updating to the latest firmware on all devices, I tried to set up Orbi network again. This time, I started RBR50 + 2 RBS50 first, but I still had substantial speed drop area, which was ~50Mbps for download while I had 250 Mbps service. So I added RBW30 in attempt to cover the area better, which did not work well due to instability. All this experience I believed to confirm for my home I indeed needed 4 devices to sufficiently cover end to end of my 3800 sqft home.

So even speed was decent, for my home range/area of coverage was not the greatest. For the network performance I consider speed and range in combination.

Security

Network security is more and more important nowadays. Companies do recognize this as well; hence, major mesh network systems now have some sort of security service like antivirus on Windows.

Netgear has Netgear Armor option. This sounds like will cost $69.99 per year.

Features/Flexibility

Mesh network system’s primary sales point is the ease of setup and use. So it is natural by design to have limited feature and flexibility. However, when I compared Orbi’s features/flexibility, it had more options than Eero Pro. Still far from dedicated router, Asus AiMesh system or UniFi.

☆☆☆☆☆Features☆☆☆☆☆

Stability

This is the main issue I have had with Orbi network. This seemed like worsened over the course and likely due to firmware. It got to the point where I had to reboot system almost every day or every other day due to random complete lack of internet connection in one area (which was working before).

This issue became especially apparent when I purchased HEOS Wireless speaker system. These speakers individually connect to network via standard Wifi connection, which is different from SONOS where single speaker act as hub and other speakers connect to the hub speaker. So when HEOS speaker loses Wifi connection on network long enough, they disappear from the HEOS App and I have to re-synch.

In order to solve this issue, I tried various setting change but the issue persisted and initially I was going to blame on HEOS system but after through online research, even SONOS user had similar issue. So I figured it could potentially be network issue (Orbi).

So what I ended up doing after reading Orbi forum was that I made Orbi AP mode, and brought back my old Netgear Nighthawk R7000 as router. Then 2.4 GHz on Orbi, I manually set a channel rather than auto. The latter was changed because even though HEOS supports 5GHz, Orbi often allocated 2.4GHz network to the speakers. These changed improved stability but still was not perfect.

So I ended giving up on Orbi at this point and moved into Eero Pro Mesh. Eero Pro network never dropped HEOS devices from App for 7 months of almost straight use. So this experience confirmed issue lied on Orbi network system.

Conclusion

Despite ease of basic setup and one of top in the class speed, the Orbi network system had a major flaw, which was the stability. Also, for our home Orbi’s range did not reach to their claim, but this really depends on home construction. However, buyers must be aware potential of needing more satellites than originally planned, which adds cost. Overall, I do not recommend this system. After all, unreliable/unstable network does not matter how fast it can perform.