NETGEAR - Orbi 870 Series

I was told by my tech who did the research they were considered the best in market tho expensive. Went with the 870 and it was constant aggravation with mine. Installed it and it was great for a few months. For the past 6 weeks, WiFi connected devices would just drop while using them. Would have to forget the network and re-login in order to reconnect. Tried all the suggestions to fix it finally gave up and got an eero system so far so good. Eeros management console app is much better IMO, and so far great speeds and no dropped connections.

Are your satellites connected using Ethernet backhaul? I’ve used the 770, 870 and 970 extensively and have noticed they just don’t work as good when run on ap mode. I’m not exactly sure why

My Experience With the Netgear Orbi 870 (Returning After 30 Days) Hey everyone, I wanted to share my experience with the Orbi 870 system after owning it for about a month. I’ve been part of the Orbi family since 2022 when I bought the AX4200 / RBR753 WiFi 6 mesh system (three-point setup). That system served me extremely well for three years — truly a set-it-and-forget-it experience. With my ISP upgrading to gigabit speeds and new devices supporting faster WiFi, I decided it was time to upgrade to WiFi 7. I found what seemed like a good deal on the Orbi 870 — not cheap, but $699 on Amazon for the router + satellite felt fair enough given the specs. Unfortunately, that’s where the issues began. While the speeds are great immediately after a reboot, they never stay consistent. I cannot maintain peak performance for more than about 12–24 hours. There appears to be a serious issue — whether firmware or hardware — where the satellite’s throughput degrades by roughly 50% after being online for half a day. Every single time. Over the past 30 days, I’ve: • Rebooted the system almost daily • Done countless factory resets • Repositioned the satellite endlessly • Re-flashed and updated firmware on both router and satellite multiple times • Spent way too much time tweaking channels, bands, WPA settings, etc. • Rebuilt my entire WiFi setup trying to troubleshoot I even created a WPA3-only main network and a separate IoT network for my ~40 smart devices to offload traffic and avoid compatibility issues. That didn’t help either. On the topic of IoT network, I’ve realized that the satellite does not allow IoT devices on either band to connect to it, only to the main router. Again, I’ve tried factory resets, firmware reinstalls and it always falls back connecting to the router only. Coming from a previous Orbi system that just worked, this has been the worst hardware experience I’ve ever had. On top of the speed-throttling issue, I also ran into multiple problems setting up the IoT network while trying different configurations to stabilize performance, where the IoT network just would not broadcast as a 2.4GHz network unless I first enabled both 5GHz and 2.4GHz, and then turned 2.4GHz off. I reached out to Netgear support with options of factory resets being the only solution, but given this is still within Amazon’s 30-day return window, I ultimately decided I’m not going to continue fighting with it. I’ve now initiated a return and will be sending the system back. It is apparent that the firmware is problematic / immature, and maybe 5 updates and 2 years later this basic functionality might be fixed, but at $699 I don’t want to take that chance. I bought the 870 after seeing positive reviews from DongKnowsTech, RTINGS, and Tom’s Hardware, and I really hoped I’d have the same experience. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. So for now, I’ll be returning the Orbi 870 and looking into alternatives like TP-Link, Eero, or any other mesh system users here recommend. Would love to hear suggestions from anyone who moved away from Orbi and found a stable WiFi 7 mesh system that actually stays consistent.

UPDATE — November 18, 2025 After a few more days of testing, I wanted to share an important update on my Orbi 870 experience. I finally managed to consistently connect several devices (iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPad Pro M2) to the 6 GHz band, and when they’re on 6 GHz, the system absolutely flies. I’m getting full gigabit speeds everywhere in my home, maxing out my ISP connection without any issues. Honestly, this almost made me reconsider the return — I even have my UPS drop-off scheduled in 2 days. But then I went back to test the 5 GHz band, and unfortunately the problem still exists. My iPhone 15 Pro can’t get more than ~300 Mbps on 5 GHz, even when standing right next to the satellite. Meanwhile, the 6 GHz device beside it gets 900+ Mbps. So the speed degradation is clearly isolated to 5 GHz only. This also confirms that the issue was never my wireless backhaul, house layout, or concrete construction. If it were, the 6 GHz performance would suffer — but it doesn’t. The system pulls full speeds flawlessly on 6 GHz. If I reboot the Orbi, the 5 GHz band works perfectly for about 12–24 hours, giving full speeds. But after that time window, the speeds slowly collapse again, always dropping to around one-third of what they should be. At this point, it’s very clear: the Orbi 870 hardware is incredible, but the firmware is not stable, at least on the 5 GHz radios. I truly hope Netgear fixes this because these units could be amazing if they worked properly. As of now, I’ll be moving forward with the return. Photo below for reference: My iPhone 15 Pro Max connected to 6 GHz pulling full gigabit speeds, while the iPhone 15 Pro next to it on 5 GHz is capped under 1/3 of that. [https://imgur.com/a/MA6Ef6o](https://imgur.com/a/MA6Ef6o)

Had a very similar experience , I had upgraded my modem to a s34, and got the orbi 870, bc my old first gen Google wifi mesh system couldn’t do my new upgraded speed of 2 gigabytes so wanted to take full advantage of the new speed. It was 3 weeks of hell, thought it was the modem, then thought it was internet provider, then thought it was the orbi mesh system. Spent countless hours with tech support from all three. I had the issue that my internet was super slow was going like 2-25 megabytes and upload was less than 1 megabit at times. Oh god I was mad spent so much money on all this new tech and was frustrated that all the tech support people were like Just restart/reboot/factory reset. After all this time I finally figured out what was wrong, it turns out on these high speed internet plans if you coax line has a splitters at all the signal depletes over time sometimes it takes a couple days for it degrade so your system goes into survival mode and you get this poor ass internet speed. Anyways I went into the attic removed the splitter and put in a good quality barrel connector and it’s been weeks and my internet is working great.

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

The 770 870 and 970 are all just hot garbage. The firmware is absolutely atrocious. I had a customer want the 770 for there home I said ok but there not very reliable at the moment they wanted it anyway. It took 3 days and they got fed up with it then they decided they wanted the 373 series and lone behold it actually worked better than the higher end models and hasn’t been a problem for them go figure. I actually installed another 373 series a week ago for a friend of mine and that one is also very solid. My only conclusion is it’s something in the firmware of the true wifi 7 models that have 6ghz band. The 373 doesn’t have the 6ghz band but as a dual band system it performs well from what I have seen so far.

If you’re heavy on Apple devices then WiFi 7 won’t be coming for a while and you should be okay with a WiFi 6E router for the next 5 years. However, if you want to go forward with you can look at Ubiquiti CG Fibre and U7 or UX7 AP. The router should be future proof and allow you upgrade your AP nodes based on which band you want. If you want a different mesh brand then you can look between Deco (best on budget), Asus Zenwifi BT10 (tri-band) / BQ16 (quad-band) or Orbi 770 / 870 / 970. This are the top 3 brands with top mesh systems and best coverage. Nevertheless, your bandwidth and devices should decide your choice (added with budget) Honorable mention will be Eero Max 7 but it’s barely customizable and you have to do things the Eero way

Same experience but with the 870. Had an issue with upload speeds on my lan. Reboot fixed the issue but it happened all the time. Had to fight with support of a month and after my rma no issues.

I was in the same boat as you and went with the 870. I haven't had any issues and am generally happy with them. Got a huge boost in speed across the board in my home. Actually had to upgrade my switch to one with 2.5GB ports to take advantage of my plan and the mesh system.

I have had the orbi 973 system since it came out ... Absolutely love it ... I did have one issue with the router last year and netgear replaced it... I installed a fan on it and never had a problem since. I did purchase a 800 series orbi about 3 years ago and returned it, nothing but problems . This 973 orbi is the best.. Before this orbi 973 I had the Asus et12 that is also a great router but only wifi 6E not 7 Routers and wifi are very difficult today .... I have lots (45 plus) of devices on the orbi 973, no problems at all....

The Orbi 770/870 have great range but the buffer bloat is terrible. I returned mine and purchased an eero 7 Pro 3-pack. It’s been easy-sailing since then.