Orbi 850 Series Tri-band WiFi 6 Mesh System (RBK853)

Sounds like a user mis-configuration issue here. The 850 series is a solid system. If it's not deployed well or not configured well, then ya, Orbi or any other brand MESH will not work well. I had my 850 series online a short time ago. Zero issues: [https://community.netgear.com/discussions/en-home-orbi-ax/share-your-orbi-350-750-850-or-960-series-system-uptime/2339936/replies/2450694](https://community.netgear.com/discussions/en-home-orbi-ax/share-your-orbi-350-750-850-or-960-series-system-uptime/2339936/replies/2450694)

The rbr alone probably can’t handle you home. My 853 system handles my 5k sq ft home beautifully.

I bought an 853 and it sucked. Even bought a Netgear cable modem thinking it could improve the experience. Nope it was bad.

Same. House is ~3800 sq ft including basement. I have one unit on each level. Great coverage everywhere.

I have and RBR850 with two satellites. Upgraded from the RBR50. Had issues on the first one with drop outs and random reboots and I work from home so it was pretty annoying. I put them in AP mode behind a TPLink router I had. All was fine. New home and Gigbit fibre thought I should upgrade the wifi speeds. Now I have the Satellites back haul wired but still getting drip outs a few times a week at best sometimes multiple times a day. I read on another thread about the Ubiquity Cloud Gateway Fiber and using that as the router and putting the Orbi’s into AP mode. The best combination of a solid router that doesn’t have issues plus exceptional management capabilities and still great Wi-Fi speeds. So I ordered one and it comes next week.

My ORBI 50 series worked flawlessly, until lightning got it. Then I bought an 850 and it's been great also. Running three satellites with it. Connected to a Netgear CM-2000 modem.

I have an Orbi RBR850 with two satellites, been pretty solid so far

Having also got a property without scope to wire the place, I've recently dipped my toe into the UI world with a UCG Fiber and a couple of USW Flex 2.5G switches, whilst retaining my existing Netgear Orbi (850) mesh, which has been pretty rock solid. Despite having wife approval for some wholesale network changes, I decided to stick with the existing kit in AP mode at this point as the UI mesh definitely seems lacking according to research here. The killer, as I understand it with UI Mesh, is the lack of dedicated wireless backhaul at this point which degrades the speed at each hop (there is an article on the UI support site explaining this better than I can. Also, quick search suggests that the Google mesh doesn't have dedicate backhaul either, which may explain issues you experience with it). This sub will overwhelmingly tell you wire it, that's the way UI kit works best and wireless mesh is a fallback - but, many of us simply can't wire it (my house is made of brick and very little drywall to be able to run cable). I guess it depends on what speed you get and how much you want/need from each AP, but, it's an expensive experiment to find out how things perform in your exact building. My Orbi is running really well in my setup, I appear to have the best of both worlds at this point (for me); the wireless backhaul that works and gives me peak of c750Mbps on my satellites and the excellent OS that the UCG Fibre gives, allowing me to have 5G failover for those occasional ISP outages and copious amounts of data and control to the nth degree of what is happening on my network which the Orbi simply doesn't provide. Mesh generally is about finding the optimum spot for your nodes to maximise performance. Not sure that necessarily answers the exam question, but, thought it might help.

My 850 has not skipped a beat since I got a UCG Fiber and put the Orbi in AP mode. It’s not like I’m losing any notable functionality on the Orbi side, given there really isn’t any of note and the UCG gives so much more insight to what’s going on on my network.