NETGEAR - Orbi 770 Series

Hi, i recently got the orbi 770, upgrading from an orbi RBK752. First thing i would definitely say is that with this new system i am getting ping spikes randomly, on my previous orbi i was not getting this at all. The only reason i upgraded my previous system was because that was gigabit, but my ISP provides me with 3GBPS up and down. I will say tho, the speeds between the router and satellite is amazing, but not ideal if you need low latency. I wanted to get the orbi 970 but it is very expensive.

Yes. Barring any potential for back doors baked in via firmware, I'd consider TP Link. They usually pull consumers in with price. The specs on both the BE 75 & 85 look very nice. Better than the Orbi, actually. 4x4 on all bands. And you don't absolutely need that dedicated backhaul band on the 85. The Orbi 770 wouldn't be a terrible choice for a smaller network, but your 5 Ghz WiFi 6 clients would suffer with those 2x2 radios. When I see 2x2 on 5 Ghz, I think pre-2020 tech. Although some can get by perfectly fine with it (especially with Ethernet backhaul to mesh nodes), it's not ideal for someone with the odd range consideration or latency via WiFi considerations.

Got the 770 with the CM3000 had an old Orbi and I have had no issues after being online for 3 days. Only thing I did was download latest firmware. I am not sure what others are complaining about

Just replaced my ORBI RBR / RBS20 Mesh system with new ORBI 770 series. Happy with speed and throughput improvements and more consistent and reliable coverage. So far so good

I tested 770 and range was pretty good. I had to move my satellites to avoid congestion

I never tested older system but I am using 970 right now. You can always buy a 3 pack of 770 from best buy and and test it out. I tested 770 and then went with two pack of 970 because I dont have large space so three pack was overkill but since I am using wireless Mesh i went with 970 for quad band in the end.

Speedwise 770 worked fine for me. I di dhave issues with new iphones disconnecting but that happened with 970 as well until they pushed out new firmware and I relocated my satellites. Looks like 853 had better antennas compared to 770 and that might be the cause for range issues. 770 is considered an affordable Wifi 7 option so some compromise is to be expected I guess.

Personally, if you don’t think it’s likely that you’ll upgrade to internet service beyond 2.5 gigabits, I’d go with the 770 series. I have a set myself and it has performed well.  The IoT network is primarily to limit stubborn devices to 2.4 GHz, for instance. It isn’t segregated from the primary network. So far, I’ve had no need for it. Your mileage may vary. 

I had good luck with Eero, but the problem with Eero is that unless you’re looking to spend serious $ on a Max 7 set, the ports are somewhat limited. The Pro 6E, for instance, has one 2.5gb and one 1gb port. You need to choose between more internal bandwidth or handling up to 2.5gb internet bandwidth but limiting your internal wired devices to 1gb.  I went with the Netgear Orbi 770 last year since every port is 2.5gb. It has been great. 

I have a NetGear Orbi 770, 1 x router and 2 x satellites (wired backhaul), works very well and has a stable 5Ghz connection to all my Sonos speakers.

I’m a massive fan of the Orbi 770(3) (1 x router and 2 x satellites). I upgraded from my old Nighthawk MK63 and haven’t looked back. Speed throughout my home is consistent, topping out at over 900Mpbs, my fibre package is 900Mpbs so I get more than I pay for. I have a wired backhaul set up which works well, haven’t tried with wireless backhaul but I’m sure it’s more than up to the job.

Most mesh systems take a few days to adjust and will move channels until it finds the best scenario. Netgear orbi’s do this as well as the eero systems. But once there fully optimized they should be set it and forget it and just work. Speed fluctuations are normal but I did find the eero did have less speed than my netgear with identical locations and settings. So I reset the eero from scratch and then the speed was where it needed to be. I believe it has something to do with firmware as I get the feeling the updates don’t always go well with some older firmware lingering after the upgrade. Reset seems to clear it out

If you have the XT8 and are satisfied with there performance you can always get the ET8 which is the 6E version. I would avoid the Orbi 770 series they have been firmware nightmares as of late. The Orbi 960 system is very solid and has insane range and speed. I have personally had the all 3 systems I mentioned the ET8 is my backup system just incase the my 960 fails at my summer house. The 770 I had for 3 weeks and returned it as it was very unstable and went back to my 960 series Orbi

Our experience... We tried/tested the 770 setup (because we NEEDed that sweet WiFi 7... we didn't) and went back to our RBK863 system. Maybe we should break the 770 back out and try it again now, but for whatever reason (and I can't really give specifics, but the 863 system just "feels" like it works better) for us anyway. Not sure that helps in any way, but we tried a 770 setup and went back to the 863. (Realize its 853 vs 863 but it's what we have). MAYBE we used the 770 too early on in its release/development/firmware cycle (as they do tend to improve things some after initial FW release) but as I type, it is on the RBK863 system. (At least that was our experience, 1 adult, two constantly streaming/gaming young adults). We are using the RBK863 all wirelessly currently (no wired backhaul) and everything just works well, it's solid and stable and as intended and no one whines about internet as set up.

Sounds like OP already made the switch, but I can provide my specific experience for the benefit of others. I ran the RBK852 config for the past three years and it was absolutely rock stable. Never had any issues with it despite a house full of devices and multiple 4k streaming TVs. I was itching to try Wi-Fi 7 though as my Pixel 9 Pro comes with it. As luck would have it, I was gifted the Orbi 770 for Christmas. I ran benchmarking speed tests all over my house and yard with each setup. I'm on 1 gig fiber internet. To start, the 850 does have better max range. In most locations (short and medium distances) there's not much difference on the download speed, but at farther distances the 850 performed better. For example, on my outside patio I would get 40mbps with the 850 and 18 Mbps with the 770. Where the 770 really shines is in the consistency of both upload and download performance. With the 850 I would get something like 500mbps down and 300 Mbps up. With the 770 I get 480 down and 450 up. Imperceptibly less down performance, but way better up performance. I saw this pattern in every location around my house with the 770. I was nervous about the 770 using MLO for back haul instead of a dedicated channel like the 850, but the back haul works perfect. Satellite performance just has the same range limitations as the router, no fault of the back haul. I'm keeping the 770. I like knowing that my future devices will be on the newer 7 standard. For my house I don't need the absolute most amount of range. I just need solid performance within the walls and the 770 does that great.

My experience: The Orbi 850 has a better range, but the stability is much better with the Orbi 770, especially with iPhones not dropping anymore. Additionally, the design is sleeker, faster Ethernet ports (although less), you can use all WiFi channels (no channel is reserved for wireless backhaul although you might not use it), it got virtual patching, and WiFi 7, of course. I am happy with my change to Orbi 770.

I also love my Orbi 770 system.

It just works perfectly with my iPhone and other Apple products. I am still very happy.

Agree. I love my Orbi 770s as well!

If you don’t mind me asking, how big is your place? Recently bought the Orbi 770 w/ 2 satellites to replace my standard AT&T router for an approx. 1800 sq ft home. Reading through this thread has me regretting my decision tbh.

Yea ngl. So I bought the orbi 770. Installed it. Was on the phone with customer service before the day’s end. The signal dropped so many times. On top of that, the signal that was relayed to the satellites sucked. No more than 20 megs more than what my ATT modem provides. Highly disappointed and would not recommend for a home. Back to the drawing board I guess. Feel free to rec any mesh WiFi products.

My experience with the Orbi 7 mesh router wasn’t entirely positive. I wouldn’t recommend it to others.

I have an Orbi Wifi 7 Mesh and it works well for me. Might want to think twice about TP Link. The government is considering a ban. [https://www.wired.com/story/tp-link-router-ban-investigation/](https://www.wired.com/story/tp-link-router-ban-investigation/)

I just replaced my Orbi seven mesh system for an EERO max seven. Same experience. Once you have reliable Wi-Fi, it’s hard to understand how we tolerated the Orbi for so long. I really wanted to make it work! Good luck with it!

Yep I got mine in October. 0 issues unless j forget to do a firmware update. I to connected all my slower devices to my LOT 2.4ghz only network. Works exactly the way it's supposed to

I have an orbi wifi 7 mesh system, it's not cheap but it works extremely well

In the process of ditching my 50 series Orbis now for similar outdoor expansion reasons. Bottom line, hardwired is always better and more stable unless a specific device has firmware or hardware issues like the new WIFI 7 Orbi series all have. Swapping all of my Orbi units with Grandstream's outdoor/indoor GWN7664ELR AX6000 wall/pole mount access points instead which have dual 2.5Gb ports for a redundant 5Gb lagg fiber optic & POE backhaul. My 50 series Orbis do still run great and rock stable 866Mb wifi at each satellite with CAT-6a wired backhaul. Netgear's current options could never accommodate the outdoors well for full bandwidth AND signal coverage even in their top tier models, wireless backhaul on any brand is trash if you have more than one room or any walls or floors in your house or trees outside between each node, slower and slower each node down the chain. The RBS50Y would be an entirely different contender if only it had a wired-backhaul port. Been using my Orbis in AP only mode with pfSense as my router for years now so migrating to more reliable simple access points was just one step away.

I actually paid through the nose and moved to the Orbi WiFi 7. It seems you can expect around 500 mbps with the AX4200 Linksys router. It’ll be nearly impossible to beat the $15 price, even if you buy 2 and spend $30.

I agree with your thoughts on UniFi, that’s what I have, works great, but significantly more complicated setup than others. However, I do not agree on NETGEAR/Orbi. Yes, they are easy to setup and fast, but NETGEAR is so slow and unresponsive to security vulnerabilities that I would never recommend them. I say this as a former Orbi user, had multiple issues with the router itself getting hacked even with strong passwords and most features disabled.

I've had an Orbi router for years, and while frustrating, it's worked okay. It finally crapped out on me and is stuck on, but without the ability to access its interface, so I'm looking into a new setup. The network diagram is mostly correct, but omits ioe stuff like garage doors, thermostats, lights, etc. I'm looking to purchase unifi's cloud gateway ultra, but could use some insight into access points, as I'm unfamiliar with the market and have been using Orbi's mesh satellites as quasi APs. I'd like 3 or so APs, but I have a rental house next door that I've been providing wifi as a free utility (my guest network) via Orbi's satellite. It's not wired, so am also looking for thoughts/recommendations on a device that I can put in their house that extends my network.

Same here. Orbi was pain in the ass. Netgear told me to factory reset after every firmware update. It took over one hour every time…They write it in every forum thread. They never fixed their firmware. This was an awful experience. Never netgear again. And you cant configure anything that matters with orbi. For example the router and ALL Satellites are alwayw on the same wifi channels. You cant so anything about it.

I use Orbi. But only recommended models with a dedicated backhaul

I do this with Netgear Orbi. I have a router running in bridge mode and 2 satellites with a wired backhaul. Great coverage and works flawlessly. The key with the Orbi is running the backhaul on its own vlan. I use 5 port Netgear or TP-link Mansged switches. I get them on sale for 25.00.

+1 to this, I had Orbis and they never worked well. Both my Asus router and Unifi APs have worked far better

I've had good experiences with Netgear Orbi and with TP-Link Deco mesh systems. I'm currently on a Deco BE22000 WiFi 7 3-Pack mesh and it works very well, some teething pains when it first came out that were fixed via firmware but that's about it. I get well over 1Gbps via on WiFi 6E and 7 devices. My past Mesh was an Orbi and that worked great for 5 years or so. Primarily consider the speed of your internet connection and try to look for a mesh that can make use of that bandwidth. Generally speaking a WiFi 6E mesh should do the job and considering your layout, a 3-unit mesh would be ideal specially if you can connect them via ethernet cable for backhaul.

My Orbi system works reasonably well except for IoT stuff. I've basically given up on that. We're moving soon and I plan to install a Ubiquiti set up. We have one in a vacation home and it is bulletproof. Everything just works.

I’ve tried Orbi and Linksys mesh systems and wouldn’t buy them again. Orbi was the absolute worst. Firmware updates would regularly break HomeKit. Linksys was better but still not great. Eero is largely reported as reliable but has almost no customization or configuration. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you but lots of people complain about not being able to change channels and many other basic settings. Synology gets no love because everyone looks at their NAS but overlooks their networking gear. SRM is very easy to use and offers a lot of more advanced features without the mess that is Ubiquity. You can mix and match the units as needed but are very solid.

I had nothing but problems with my Orbis. Dropped packets, dropped connections, and way too many reboots. I agree with OP, these are garbage. Went to Ubiquiti, never looked back.

I picked up the BE1100 last time it was on sale at Costco. My old Netgear Orbi main router crapped out after 5 years. The main reason is the 2.5gbe ports. I run them with a wired backhaul. I live in a pretty congested wifi area about 5 strong signals not including mine. After optimizing the channels (unfortunately you can't manually pick) the speed with wired backhaul has been amazing. I have 2 wifi 7 devices that can max out my 1gb isp, though they aren't battery optimized so they drain the mobile battery like crazy. The signals are strong on all my 40 devices. Pro tip: any devices that's stationary and don't move, I would select them and turn off the mesh connection. This way it locks them to a single node. This prevents hunting wifi signals between nodes if they overlap too much (that single dropping and connecting) After doing that the network has been solid since I bought it.

I used Netgear Orbi mesh Wi-Fi for 2 years and had issues only once. Now my setup is different and I’m hard wired via Ethernet to one of the satellites which, in turn, is hard wired to the modem. No issues as well.

MoCa is just Ethernet over coax. You can get gig speeds with them now. You're better off keeping Fios for your internet. Then find all the coax cables in your apartment and put them and only them together on a splitter. Then get however many MoCa adapters you need and connect them to the coax jacks in your rooms. Then connect whatever to the Ethernet. You can throw your wifi adapters on them and keep wifi. You can put a small switch at each one and use a wired connection for what you can and wifi for the rest. That said, does your mesh connection give you a status of everything? I have an Orbi setup and it tells me if my backhaul connection is good or not.

I bought 6 of TP-Link’s newest Deco WiFi 7 mesh access points, as well as 4 of their Deco outdoor units. I just tested them last night at my other house from my neighbor’s house to mine (their house is 200’ away and brick). I plugged one indoor Deco into their modem, then put one of the outdoor units 60’ away from their house, then another one 60’ further, then one on my back porch, and then one more indoor Deco in my house which is also brick. All of the APs had full signal strength and I got 657mbps speeds at these huge distances. Just the one Deco WiFi 7 I put inside my house was providing full signal strength throughout my entire house and even in my garage. I currently have a Netgear Orbi system that can’t even do that with 3 APs. I’m hoping when I go back to my other house tomorrow and install all of these new Deco units they will be strong enough to fully bathe the indoor and outdoor with WiFi signal. Supposedly 3 of them can do up to 10,000 square feet and I bought 6 of them, plus the four outdoor units. Everything seamlessly connected together and it scanned for interference on each channel and set them to the best for each band. If this works I’ll be happy. If not I will just ship them back to Amazon. They are expensive (~$350/unit) but if they work they’ll be worth it.

I had the same issue when I moved into my current home. I bought the Netgear Orbi mesh system with three satellites and it’s worked brilliantly for me

My experience with a very expensive orbi system a couple of years ago convinced me to never buy another netgear product. Switched to ubiqui and it was game changing

I've used Orbi and eero meshes and the only times I've ever seen latency (let alone jitter) higher than 5-10ms within the network, a reboot fixed it (the Orbi was particularly bad like this). This level of latency is not what I would consider normal on a well-behaving mesh.

Unfortunately I had an orbi and I learned what all these terms meant while troubleshooting! Now I have a different mesh network and it just works and I didn’t have to learn anything or do any troubleshooting. Why should you spend so much on an Orbi and yet have to do so much extra work and then pay Netgear for the privilege of using customer support? Quit while you’re behind and move on to a better system.

I would have probably kept going with Orbi if I could call support, but you need to buy a subscription from netgear! Dodged the bullet

I've tried Orbi several times over the last few hardware generations and it had been the same shitty experience for me each time. It seemed there was always something up with it, and the parental control options were junk.

Orbi to the rescue.

I had a similar experience but with Netgear Orbi. They gave me so many problems and their support was absolutely horrible. Once I switched to Eero I was delighted. My only wish is that Eero Plus should be cheaper, half price if that.

I have used Linksys Velop, Netgear Orbi, and currently on a Unifi system. While I will always recommend Unifi I know some people just want a simple plug and play system. Linksys Velop was my first Mesh system it greatly boosted my HomeKit setup and made it super reliable. The only issue is my wired backhaul keep dropping from 1 Gbe to 100 MB which I saw a huge decrease in performance from my video doorbell at the time. The parental controls were lackluster. But overall this is what got me on my journey of making the network solid. Moved to Texas and was tired of the Linksys issue so went out and got the Orbi system. I was eye this before I got the Velop but was hoping the Linksys was going to add HomeKit Secure Router to the Velop. But that didn’t turn out and Apple drop the feature altogether. Got a decent deal on Orbi and was very impressed with the performance with my small HomeKit setup. I was renting and keep my devices to a few items that the owner had already installed; like a Ring doorbell and two stickup cams (used HomeBridge), two Ecobees, two Apple TVs, and two HomePods. Finally moved into my new house and went all out with Unifi and I saw why there was so much hype. If family members ask what I would recommend. I will say go with Unifi but if you want something simple out of the box go with Orbi.

TP-Link Deco BE33000 user here - I can’t compare this to other WiFi 7 devices, but I will compare it to my previous mesh networks. I have found that Netgear Orbi seems to be easier to manage all around. If i didn’t get a steal for my Deco BE33000, I would get rid of it and buy the Orbi (still might do that). Hope that helps.

I’ve installed hundreds of netgear Orbi products zero issues some systems are covering 15,000 square feet.

TP Link Deco definitely requires an app and an account and although there is a web interface, it can't do much. Nice gear, but not acceptable under your policy. Netgear Orbi may have required me to install an app and get an account to get it setup (I didn't try to get around it.) But the web interface is full fat and I've never opened the app since installing.

I personally have a Orbi system in my house (using a wired backhaul) and it is terrible - would not recommend

I had a set of very expensive netgear Orbi which I put up with for a couple of years. They were horrendous and I vowed never again. I switched over to the Deco BE11000 units and LOVE them - they just work and they’re always stable and blazing fast. It is sad to hear that you’ve had trouble with your decos - that’s just not the experience I’ve had.

I LOVE my Deco mesh system. I have base + 5 satellites and they work flawlessly and are easy to configure. The Deco replaced a crappy and very expensive Netgear Orbi which was absolute crap for me - constantly buggy and dropping out. If the power went out, it wouldn’t come back on until after I manually unplugged. The wired backhaul would constantly drop too - so in the end, I threw them out!

Unifi stuff is not very difficult to set up. It’s pretty plug and play. If you WANT to get into the weeds , sure you can do that too. And it’s much easier to troubleshoot if something goes wrong. I used to have Orbi and the web interface is a joke.

I got rid of my Orbi system and switched back to eero. Won’t make the mistake of buying Netgear again. I’ve always regretted.

Personally, we got rid of our Orbi’s. Too much hassle after each update they got slower and slower.

I bought an Orbi when it came out to cover some dead spots in my house. All my streaming video stuttered. I wasted days troubleshooting this issue. I went back to my old router for a couple of years then I moved to a Netgear RAXe500 recently and finally was able to coverall the dead spots in my (3100sf) house and get the performance I was looking for.

If you want good enough, simple outta the box, then Orbi mesh is great. I have a 2 story 2350sf house. I have an Orbi with the master AP upstairs in the hall covering all the bedrooms rooms. Downstairs I have 2 Orbi Client APs on either end of the house covering all the downstairs, garage, and outside. The master Orbi router is in pass through mode. In the wiring closet where the 1gb WAN comes in I have a unify UCG Ultra Cloud Gateway Router. That has 4 ports. 1 port goes to the Orbi master router in the upstairs hall way to provide WiFi. 1 port goes to the living room where it’s plugged into the Apple TV 4K Ethernet to provide streaming TV to the main TV without hogging up Wifi bandwidth. 1 port goes to the master bedroom TV to provide streaming TV without WiFi. 1 port goes to my office where I gave a switch for the laser printer, computers, NAS, etc. It’s been dead simple to administer. I’ve never had any issues with coverage or bandwidth.

I'm on eero in... 6 households (parents, siblings, etc). Some have 1st gen that are still working (no updates) and some have Max 7. It's still the easiest and best I've used. Velop drove me mad, Orbi was ok but sometimes unstable and an eyesore. Asus XT something (I forgot) I used for 3 days and returned due to frequent lost of wifi. I'm a power user and I now ended using pfsense for the router aspect because I needed somethings on the firewall side that the eero couldn't do but most users won't ever need in a home environment.