NETGEAR Orbi Tri-band WiFi 6 Mesh System (RBK762S)

Long story short, I need a new router. First router was a Netgear AC1750 R6350 which was around $100 I had for like 5 years until my connection (ethernet and wifi) kept dropping after \~2 years. Bought a Netgear AX5400 about 2 years ago for like $200 and it worked well for about an year until a few months ago where I would just get constant 5+ second lag spikes (both ethernet and wifi) on everything, calls, games, watching videos (which I'm guessing is bufferbloat). Tried many solutions to solve it (factory resetting router, new cables, etc) , none worked, and now I'm here for another router. Any recommendations around $100 - $200 would be great (probably not Netgear), heard ASUS and TP-Link are good but at this point I don't really know. I'm on Spectrum Internet 400 Mbps plan (I don't have Fiber-Powered Internet in my area, and my only other options are like AT&T Internet Air which I tried a few years ago and wasn't good in my area). Thanks.

I hated the WiFi 6 Orbi system I bought. It was lacking so many fairly basic features, such as QoS, firmware updates breaking basic functionality, and a very lackluster app-focused experience.  I replaced it with an ASUS WiFi 7 system comprised of a RoG router with two Zen nodes and it’s been a lot more solid with far more configuration options than I’ve ever seen on a residential router.  Maybe the Orbi WiFi 7 line has solved their earlier issues, but I’ll never buy one again based on my prior experience. 

Netgear Orbi mesh all the way

Normal “home setup” is all over the map on this sub. Most important - What is your budget? What’s size, layout, and construction method of your home? How “solid” of an experience do you want? How much effort are you willing to go to? For example : Do you absolutely need mesh’d WiFi access point Can you do wired access points? (MoCA or pulling cable if there isn’t a cat cable around). For example: Are you willing to put access points on your ceiling? Do you need other networking infrastructure like switches in the mix? Do you need poe applications like cameras? Do you want / need vlans? What and where are you iot devices (inside, outside, both)?? We had orbi (700 series) for a bit, was very frustrated with it and very disappointed by it. Stability was not something they figured out. The number of times my wife would text or call me to ask why the wifi didn’t work was insane. Everyone I know personally (friends/family/coworkers…) who has had orbi has left it and been happier to have done so. I think the rbr50 stuff was probably the last “stable” stuff they put out and it’s long since eol. I dispose orbi these days. They tend to try and milk their customers on subscriptions while they remove features and ship buggy af code to their over priced units that don’t scale and don’t play well with their other models. I went to ubquitu unifi. Might look complicated up front but it’s easy. Larger ecosystem than many and single pane of glass management for things when you want it. I also have visibility into a few other “sites” that are friends and family’s homes or small business. They don’t complain about wifi issues anymore since leaving orbi either. Some friends I have went from orbi to Eero as a more economical alternative than unifi. I hear a lot less complaints from them than I used to - so by that metric it’s better than Orbi. I don’t have visibility to these networks to monitor or anything. So it’s more of a “how often do they complain or ask me about an issue metric”.

Orbi wifi 6 and wifi 7 gear is significantly less reliable than the older rbr50 stuff. They charge Cisco meraki money and yet offer sub par feature sets compared to offerings that cost significantly less. I personally hate Orbi after having their gear for a bit and having to help friends and family with Orbi setups.

“Best” can be vague. How much of a hobby is home networking for you? Do you have work requirements that also justify it? Do you have or have the ability to run quality cat5e/6/6A between your basement where the poe switch is/will be and the other floors where you want the access points? Or must it be wireless mesh. I migrated from orbi to unifi. I have hard wired access points. ***I wish I had just started with unifi.*** My wants and needs might not match yours. If the unifi price tag is giving you pause, “better” solutions are provably not worth looking at.

Just for another data point. I hated Orbi with a passion. Unstable. Features removed with releases. Several bad firmware releases by them. Missing features compared to competitors offerings. Even if you think those issues won’t affect you - I’ll give you something else to consider. You need big bang upgrades on orbi hardware typically as they don’t have wide support between new satellites nodes (rbs) with older router nodes (rbr) and Vice versa. Like sometimes even one model back. Which sucks when say you want to add one satellite that supports some newer standards to maybe replace one older. You pretty much end up needing to replace all the orbi hardware at once. They also have a more limited device ecosystem. Want modern outdoor units? Nope. Want to manage your wired physical switches? Nope. Leaving orbi was one of the better decisions I’ve made. My wife has not texted me a single time since leaving orbi asking what’s wrong with the internet or wifi. That used to be a weekly thing with orbi. There are just as good options as Orbi for much less or much better options than Orbi for the same price - IMO.

Orbi satellite compatibility chart can be found over here: https://www.netgear.com/hk-en/blog/home/orbi-satellites/ I stand by my statement that people can’t usually mix their old orbi hardware with anything that supports newer technologies at the access points. Unlike some orbi competitors that have much better track records for mix and match. Also let’s be honest. Orbi tops out at 3-6 satellites depending on the model / generation. That’s not enough for a lot of people now. Orbi also doesn’t support Vlan tagging on wifi clients. That’s basic table stakes now for a flagship system that runs 1k and up these days. They don’t have switches. Onc Orbi doesnt have the ability to manage netgear switches so if you have any meaningful wired infrastructure in your home you are out of luck. The Orbi app is a pos. It’s had known bugs for about a decade saying things are offline while they are also saying clients are connected to them and passing traffic. All of those things would be more palatable if Orbi didn’t want ~1k usd for their current setups. If they were priced like the bottom tier pos they are I’d give them a bigger pass. For 1k usd people can do so much better. For 300-500 they can get something that’s more stable than Orbi and has feature parity. Also you do you, but I’m not bragging about running 9 year old equipment with known vulnerabilities

>_You are mixing apples and oranges. Is the Orbi system perfect, hell no. Does equipment need to be updated periodically, hell yes._ It’s _how_ it needs to be upgraded that’s the issue. You have to whole sale replace everything. >_Again, while it's not a great idea to run 9 year old mesh routers, give me another system with similar longevity and zero failures except for power outages and ISP failures._ Eero, unifi, omada, Meraki, Aruba… you want me to keep going? >How in the hell do you use a router to manage switches? You really are unaware what else is out there aren’t you. It’s like Stockholm syndrome in orbi land. The rest of the of the netgear soho ecosystem stuff that’s in the orbi netgear price point? All of Unifi? Omada? I feel like mentioning anything from Aruba, Nokia, meraki/cisco here would be redundant but also rapidly moving into enterprise level. >I used to regularly do that and just connected directly to the switch. Also, 3-6 satellites for a home?? I have 2 and do well with a 2,000 square foot home. My sister's similar system functions well in a home twice as big with 3 levels. Once you get into modern 6ghz the penetration is less. It’s easily to want / need many access points depending on the building materials used in the structure. Like concrete walls vs brick walls vs timber framing. I have three indoor access points, one for each floor logically. I could go more dense if I wanted more 6ghz coverage. I have two outside for the front and back. I could easily add one or two in the outbuilding/shop or near a fence line. If I don’t have wifi coverage, I’m not getting a phone call most of the time, cell coverage is still terrible in places. >Oh...the system the original poster mentioned, orbi 370 BE5000 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 7 System with one satellite lists right now at $250. That's a bit off your $1,000 quote. Orbi 970 is 1k easily. The orbi 370 has no 6ghz radio. >Also, I have absolutely no problem with the Obi app and in my home it connects close to perfectly with 7 computers/tablets and a couple dozen IOT devices. Yet any given week there are posts on the orbi sub about “why does the app say it’s offline” and the responses are “known bug”. >They all show up in the app. I did have to do a bit of detective work with my IOT Dyson fan but that was because Dyson broadcasts a combo of letters and numbers without any connection to a fan or the Dyson company. But it showed up and I can use my Amazon Alexa apps to control/communicate with it, my TV, my satellite dish, my kindle tablets, iPad, iPhone, dish network video/stereo receiver, etc., etc. etc. The system also works well when my daughter's family shows up and add another half dozen devices. Isn’t that bare minimum table stakes? Are you doing anything beyond just letting them raw dog your network? >And probably most important for the vast majority of users, it works with minimal IT skills. BTW, I ran an entire school districts computer system for over a dozen years until I retired. Bragging you ran a school district it isn’t a good look if your are bragging that your are running gear that years past its EOL with multiple known published vulnerabilities. >I built the system from a few dial up computers to a system that provided one on one fully networked computers for every student and multiple labs in every school. Would I recommend an Orbi system for those schools?, hell no. But the larger of those schools at times will have 300-400 computers operating on Wifi at any given moment. (Those schools are currently using Ubiquiti Unifi systems with VLANs connected with Cisco Switches and routers.) So you do have experience with setups that can manage WiFi access points and switches as a single pane of glass?

I think you are an orbi apologist that has stockholm syndrome for their products because you arent willing yo admit to yourself that the brand you have fell off and compared to similarly priced systems there is significantly better options out there up or down Orbi’s product offerings. I’ve don’t volunteer work on schools on reservation land and broke af charter schools. I’m familiar with their struggles. None of that changes the fact that orbi is a terrible option to recommend someone go buy today with their current offerings.

If you’ve had 9 years of “bullet proof” or even 6 years of bullet proof service from orbi and you can prove it with actual fucking monitoring and metrics, not just “I never noticed it went out” - I’ll eat my hat. They pushed bad firmware after bad firmware for at least 3 years you supposedly had bullet proof service. They have a list of vulnerabilities long enough that you probably never patched. And then your going to tell me patching shit just isn’t something done in school it workers, cuz you are sooo knowledgeable about shit. Orbi is crap. If you could pull your head out and look around you would know it. There are plenty of less expensive options. There are plenty of options that cost the same that are far better, and easy as hell for people to use.

I work for a data center company. Shitting on orbi is just a hobby. Saving people from making the mistake I did.

Orbi is terrible. I think RTings rightfully just put them on blast for their deceptive labeling. Seriously I could fanboi for my favorites but I think my number one recommendation for people is to just not do orbi. Sincerely, ex-orbi user.

Since I've had Sonos gear in my house, I've run three mesh wifi routers: a Netgear Orbi, a Tp-Link XE-75 Pro and now a Eero 6E. By far the Eero has been the easiest, most stable and most reliable of the bunch. The TP-Link was absolute garbage and nothing but a headache for the 6 months I had it.

got a free old orbi mesh from a friend that moved away. works great

If you need to go mesh and not hardwired for the APs. I’d recommend Netgear Orbi. They use a dedicated radio frequency for backhaul between the mesh. That leaves 2 bands for WIFI only. Competing products, such as Ubiquiti, typically share backhaul on one of the WiFi bands and that reduces client throughput. I’ve had 2 different generations over the past 10 years and it works well. I upgraded because I wanted the faster backhaul and WIFI 6 on the newer gen not because I had an issue with the old system.