NETGEAR - Orbi 960 Series Quad-band WiFi 6E Mesh
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Reddit Reviews:
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Based on 1 year's data from Feb 24, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
5
1
"this set is doing a great job on 1GB Fios network."
"The orbi 963 in AP mode has fantastic speed ... Fantastic coverage"
"I get max speed on Fios."
18
14
"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."
16
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."
"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 ;)"
"Deployed 2 Orbis with wireless backhaul in my brothers house that is an open floor plan and he have the best coverage ever."
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."
6
1
"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"
"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."
"The orbi 963 in AP mode has fantastic speed ... Fantastic coverage"
Disliked most:
1
14
"When it works it is fast but the connection drops sometimes out of the blue and it is unstable. ... With the Orbis I know everyone is complaining about dropouts"
"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."
0
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"
1
8
"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"
0
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"
0
4
"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"
"constantly buggy and dropping out"
bklyn_xplant 1.0I too moved from Orbi to Unifi. Orbi is ok, if you have less than 60 devices i suppose…
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.
ChordXOR 1.0I 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.
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.
ChristmasStrip 1.0I'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.
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.
davemchine 1.0Main 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.
Dr_ZeeOne 1.0As 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.
dstranathan 1.0My 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.
furrynutz 1.0No 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.
hoyahokie 1.0I 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
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.
Leather_Ad5215 1.0I 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.
Longjumping_Ad_5443 1.0Had the RBR50 and three satellites for many years. Replaced with RBRE960 pack including two satellites. System far out performs the RBR50 and has better reach than the four previous Orbi nodes. Haven't had any software issues. recognize that there were some issues with 50 and this system is very solid out of the box. didn't have to finagle with settings like on the 50 to optimize performance. It does 6E great. Not sure getting wifi 7 now to 'future proof' makes sense because by the time enough devices have the capability, there will be several generations of improvements. I'm pretty tech astute and like getting current devices, and 6E is on about five devices out of 60 on the network. Not following the latest Orbi offerings but this set is doing a great job on 1GB Fios network. It's boring because it just works.
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