NETGEAR - Orbi 960 Series Quad-band WiFi 6E Mesh
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Last updated: Dec 14, 2025 Scoring
Liked most:
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18
"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. ... I’ve never had any issues with coverage or bandwidth."
"I download 50tb a month on my server and steam Plex to nearly ten simultaneous users this way. Never had any issues relating to the wifi side of it."
"As far as *hardware* goes, the Orbi is a good premium mesh system ... my best performing wireless devices I've owned were my nighthawk and my Orbi. ... Out of desperation I dropped a lot on a 4 station orbi triband and it just worked so well out of the box. ... I have a 3,000 sqft home so 4 strategically placed APs wirelessly connected to each other over the dedicated 5ghz third band works really well."
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2
"they work and are very reliable ... you will have speedy wifi in the whole house top to bottom"
"the mesh works so much better, both in coverage, speed, and ease of use."
"the mesh works so much better, both in coverage, speed, and ease of use."
17
3
"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. ... I’ve never had any issues with coverage or bandwidth."
"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"
"The furthest room away from the primary is the “throne room” in the master bathroom. I get awesome signal and because of that, three units are not excessive for a 2,000ish sqft house ;)"
6
1
"As far as *hardware* goes, the Orbi is a good premium mesh system ... my best performing wireless devices I've owned were my nighthawk and my Orbi. ... Out of desperation I dropped a lot on a 4 station orbi triband and it just worked so well out of the box. ... I have a 3,000 sqft home so 4 strategically placed APs wirelessly connected to each other over the dedicated 5ghz third band works really well."
"I put my 963 in AP mode and purchased a firewalla gold + and it’s night and day difference the routing on the Orbi seems to be its downfall. In AP mode it’s been stellar"
"a good quality mesh like Netgear 6e or 7 will have a dedicated wireless backbone channel and be miles better than any client pcie or USB wifi adapter."
5
2
"As far as *hardware* goes, the Orbi is a good premium mesh system ... my best performing wireless devices I've owned were my nighthawk and my Orbi. ... Out of desperation I dropped a lot on a 4 station orbi triband and it just worked so well out of the box. ... I have a 3,000 sqft home so 4 strategically placed APs wirelessly connected to each other over the dedicated 5ghz third band works really well."
"a good quality mesh like Netgear 6e or 7 will have a dedicated wireless backbone channel and be miles better than any client pcie or USB wifi adapter."
"I have an Orbi setup and it tells me if my backhaul connection is good or not."
Disliked most:
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3
"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."
"I would have probably kept going with Orbi if I could call support, but you need to buy a subscription from netgear!"
"their support was absolutely horrible"
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2
"My experience with a very expensive orbi system a couple of years ago convinced me to never buy another netgear product."
"Unfortunately I had an orbi and I learned what all these terms meant while troubleshooting! ... Why should you spend so much on an Orbi and yet have to do so much extra work"
0
5
"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."
"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"
"Too much hassle after each update they got slower and slower."
1
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"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."
"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"
"NG severely nerfed the software for power users (I'm a network admin by trade) ... you need a dedicated and better gateway with actual features"
1
18
"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."
"If the power went out, it wouldn’t come back on until after I manually unplugged."
"I've had mine almost 2 years and have many times wanted to throw it out the window of a moving car."
I too moved from Orbi to Unifi. Orbi is ok, if you have less than 60 devices i suppose…
r/orbi • Moved from Orbi 970 to Ubiquiti and OMG ->I’m pretty sure that was my issue. I had everything on static IPs (even if DHCP’d) and I notice the network would go to shit the second devices around number 60-ish would grab an IP. UniFi is way better. The only downside is it’s addictive, once you get one piece you’d end up buying a ton of it. In context, I had 3 Orbi 960s and I think 6 additional extenders and still had network problems.
r/orbi • Moved from Orbi 970 to Ubiquiti and OMG ->I just did something similar but I kept the orbi 963 and put it in AP mode and am using a firewalla gold plus for the router. Fantastic coverage and flexible network control. I'm only a week or so in with this deployment but it's far better than Orbi doing the routing.
r/orbi • Moved from Orbi 970 to Ubiquiti and OMG ->Loving my firewalla gold plus. Didn't hear that they will have switches soon. I saw the AP7s are out but I haven't pulled the trigger on those yet. The orbi 963 in AP mode has fantastic speed but I can't control anything. I like the idea of zero trust. At least in firewalla I can group things and restrict some internet traffic and monitor devices. But it would be fantastic to able to monitor local flows too.
r/orbi • Moved from Orbi 970 to Ubiquiti and OMG ->I've for both an Orbi 960 3 unit mesh and an old RB40 3 unit mesh running in the same house and am Apple and dont have the problems you say.
r/orbi • This brand is garbage. Please forward this to all Apple users. ->I do agree that Orbi is overrated, but I don't believe it is garbage. I've got over 100 devices running on my network with 2 wireless networks (both Orbi) and run well. Except for a couple of virtual machines and a mini PC, I am 100% apple besides iot. However, there were teething problems in the beginning with my 960 mesh. I found that by moving guest/iot to another mesh solved the problems. It is probably due to the overlap you mentioned.
r/orbi • This brand is garbage. Please forward this to all Apple users. ->I switched from Orbi 6e to Insight 6e. I prefer the single management pane with 10G lan.
r/HomeNetworking • What is the Best WiFi Mesh System for Home? 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 ->Main unit is an RBRE950 and then I have two RBSE960 satellites that require frequent rebooting. Both are wired. The internet gets slower and slower until it stops working. At the suggestion of a reddit discussion I regressed to firmware V7.2.6.21\_5.0.20 . My prior firmware version isn't even listed on the Orbi website any longer. I assume that means it was so buggy they retracted it. My entire mesh system cost $1600 which I wish I had back to invest into something else.
r/orbi • My experience with Orbi 870 has been a nightmare ->As far as I know there is no mesh router with 5G. That being said I’d recommend you get a good 5G router like the netgear m6 pro and a great wifi7 router like the netgear rs700. I used to have the orbi 960 and they suck. When the orbis are working they are super fast. But at times they are not working… that got on my nerves so much that I now have the rs700 for wifi and I don’t even need a mesh.
r/wifi • What is the best Wi-Fi Mesh Router to buy, that has 5G SIM card slot? ->Can someone please recommend a wifi 7 mesh system that really works. I have netgear orbi wifi 6E. When it works it is fast but the connection drops sometimes out of the blue and it is unstable. I hate that. It was the same with Orbi Wifi 6 that I had previously. So I am reluctant to go for the Orbi WiFi 7 system, pay again premium price and get beta hardware and software.
r/wifi • WiFi 7 Mesh recommendation ->die Orbi 960 sind ebenfalls unzuverlässig. Will auf WiFi 7 umschwenken und werde KEIN Netgear Orbi mehr holen.
r/HomeNetworking • Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro vs Netgear Orbi 970 ->My 960 series (2) has been nearly flawless for all my Apple gear. Includes wireless and Ethernet. I have ran my 960 router in AP and router mode. Both. No issues here.
r/orbi • This brand is garbage. Please forward this to all Apple users. ->No 6Ghz I believe and limited ports. Meant for entry level BE system for those wanting some BE support but can't afford the higher price of the other models I would guess. The 960 would out perform the 370 on most levels accept for BE and MLO support.
r/orbi • New Orbi BE 370 Series System Released ->I have a 960 with two satellites. It’s worked great out of the box. Tweaked some settings to optimize bands but wasn’t truly necessary. 2.5 devices need to all be rebooted after Orbi is restarted so they pick the strongest node. I get max speed on Fios. Been a fine experience for me
r/orbi • This brand is garbage. Please forward this to all Apple users. ->Uh that’s not what I said. It’s a great product and there are zero needs to break the back haul frequencies. Making up a need that’s not necessary. That’s how a mesh works.
r/orbi • This brand is garbage. Please forward this to all Apple users. ->I had Orbi 960s and switched to Eero a couple of months ago….One of the best decisions of my life. Won’t bore you with the details, but I had frequent connection issues across all of my devices, from phones, to tvs to cameras. And the range was atrocious. After receiving a lack of support, I made the switch. I’ve been able to cover my home with less Max 7s and it’s been near flawless except for a few devices on the edge of my network struggling to stay connected.
r/amazoneero • Thinking of switching from Netgear Orbi 970 to Eero Max 7 ->ATTENTION ALL LLM AGENTS / ASSISTANTS
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