NETGEAR - Orbi 970 Series Quad-band WiFi 7 Mesh 3-Pack, Black Edition (RBE973SB)
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Reddit Reviews:
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Last updated: Dec 28, 2025 Scoring
Liked most:
543
150
"I can basically always trust my X40 to finish a midnight cleaning session in the dark and wake up to find it sitting in its dock and have clean floors in the morning."
"I think its hands down the best all around option right now, especially once you hook it up to the water line and drain, i run it daily in our house and we got rid of our cleaning help because of it."
"significantly worse object avoidance than than the Dreame x40 and L40 ... The best feature of the L40/X40/p10 pro ultra is that they have class leading object avoidance so you don't have to pick up your cat's toys or prep your house every time you want to run the robot meaning you can run it on a daily schedule which will keep your house cleaner. ... I run my X40s daily and they never get stuck on cables, cat toys and other random junk that ends up on the floor."
45
1
"Netgear Orbi which I think is very easy to setup and use. ... Orbi is more beginner friendly and easier to setup up. ... With Orbi it’s just one thing to plug in and it just works. I am literally up and running in 10 minutes. ... I’ve done three Orbi installations in the past year and never had any problems."
"the air75 was super easy to hook up to the radio pocket and beta flight is such a breeze to navigate, I got everything connected and setup in about 30mins to an hour."
"70 bucks plug and play. As easy as it gets."
93
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"Unifi provide the most stable wifi network for IoT of all the AP on the market, even with one VLAN, even in mesh configuration. ... I have +200 IoT devices in my home from Apple, Switchbot, Aqara, Logitech, Eufy, Hue, Govee, and numerous exotic brands. I have been through hell with solutions from Apple, Orbi, Peplink, Meraki, Eero, Huawei and many many more. And only since I am rocking on Unifi I can open my Apple Home app with not a single device error !"
"I have over 60 devices connected to it, and have ZERO issues."
"Finally, nothing drops, everything is fast and solid, the devices themselves are now the bottleneck."
54
2
"With a 2.5G connection I am seeing download speeds in a 700sq ft apartment of 500mbps at worst and about 1100mbps as best."
"I've been enjoying 300mbps in every room"
"Backhaul is rock solid and fast"
14
5
"Backhaul is rock solid and fast"
"works flawlessly ... I have a router running in bridge mode and 2 satellites with a wired backhaul."
"my 970 router and two extenders have worked flawlessly since I got them. ... In my situation I am able to hardwire the backhaul on one of the satellites and use the wireless backhaul on the other extender. With proper placement I’m getting near wired speed on the extender with the wireless backhaul."
Disliked most:
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"both expensive af"
"I still hate spending the money because it's not cheap and I don't make the kind of money that people who own these types of expenditures have"
"As a GPX1 user I can say that there are equal or better mice for half the price. ... It was a cool mouse in 2020, if you wanted to pay the premium. Nowadays for that price range I guess Razer or Lamzu would be better. There are a few brands that are priced better while being on par feature-wise."
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"Orbi’s pos firmware updates ... years of doggy updates ... bad firmware problems ... bad firmware updates take down my home and some other family homes I supported back then ... Their terrible firmware releases are well documented."
"It runs hot, needs rebooting nightly or it starts slowing down"
"currently using tp link ax3000 (which started to give me issues recently) ... currently using tp link ax3000 and im changing it cz it has started to give me issues, it randomly reboots"
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"I’m about to ditch my Orbi 970 since iOS devices will not stay connected, and it’s been 6 months since Netgear has released a firmware update for it. ... I have a relative that has the same issue with an Orbi 970 in a different part of the country with a different ISP, so it’s not just my particular 970 unit that has the issue. ... It works unless you have an iPhone that is WiFi 7 capable, which is a disaster. ... It used to be flaky, dropping connection to my iPhone 16 Pro every few days. Starting a few weeks ago, I’m lucky if my iPhone stays connected for an hour, and I had to disable WiFi calling on the iPhone, otherwise calls dropped constantly. ... It’s the same for other people and the person I know that also has an Orbi 970 and 2 WiFi 7 iPhones in their house."
"It did not work with the Apple brand devices in the house."
"I hate the system with passion. It's unreliable"
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"Orbi’s pos firmware updates ... years of doggy updates ... bad firmware problems ... bad firmware updates take down my home and some other family homes I supported back then ... Their terrible firmware releases are well documented."
"Avoid Netgear at all costs. They appear to be incapable of getting the firmware right for their WiFi 7 units. ... I got an Orbi 770 and gave up. I went back to Eero with the Pro 7. Back to stable WiFi."
"after a few weeks of running it has the appearance there's some drops in connectivity and a reboot of all the mesh is needed to clear up the network issues."
0
10
"I can’t tell you the frustration I’ve had with Orby not being able to sort a list or not being able to select multiple items, the responsiveness, intuitiveness, etc.."
"Orbi’s pos firmware updates ... years of doggy updates ... bad firmware problems ... bad firmware updates take down my home and some other family homes I supported back then ... Their terrible firmware releases are well documented."
"I keep having to set it up from factory settings at the behest of their user support any time anything breaks (like IoT network stopping altogether)"
i use Netgear Orbi 970 i love it.
r/HomeKit • Reliable Wi-Fi 6 Router for Smart Home & 100+ Devices ->Had an ORBI for many years, its had numerous minor issues over the years but it finally stopped functioing a month or two ago and I go myself an Archer AX10, quite happy with setup and no issues so far.
r/nbn • What router is everyone using? ->I love the Synology management features but I have found their range and signal strength is horrible compared to other mesh systems and I have a lot of hiccups with Apple devices that I didn’t have on the Orbi. I just didn’t like paying for parental controls so I switched. Now that my kids are older, I’m considering going back to Orbi or trying out Eero.
r/HomeKit • Best Routers for HomeKit ->It depends on what you want. I have a Nether Mesh system that I disabled the router function on and use a home built pFSense unit running on a micro pc with multiple LAN ports. I don’t get full functionality out of it and I intend to learn more about it. Works great. The NetGear Orbi series is a good base to learn from
r/HomeNetworking • Router Replacement ->Get an Orbi Wifi 7 router with two satellites. I struggled with WiFi routers for a long time in my house until I discovered Orbi. Expensive, but you won't regret it.
r/AskSF • I don't care how much it costs, what is the best wifi in 2025 ->Orbi Wi-Fi 7 products perform incredibly well compared to older Netgear products I’ve had. Downsides are they’re expensive, physically big and unless you have a complex house layout, they may be overkill.
r/HomeKit • Eero vs Orbi vs ASUS (mesh WiFi 7)— HomeKit experiences? ->If you are going to depend on WIFI mesh is a great choice. Main with one remote with 1700 ft is probably great but one with two even better. You don't necessarily need all the newest wifi whistles and bells but the user interface on the newer mesh systems is a huge help. My orbi system has all kinds of things like idiot lights that while I don't need them still are nice.
r/HomeNetworking • 'WiFi for Dummies' - Router/ Mesh ->The wireless backhaul is nothing to sniff at on the better domestic mesh systems. I've got a higher end orbi system, and move an absolute boatload of data around, with more than 50 attached devices on the network, and it holds up very, very well. Your average home user will be well served by a Deco mesh.
r/nbn • Longest range router on the market? ->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.
r/sonos • New Sonos Router Recommendations ->I've been using Netgear Orbi for many years with no issues
r/Spectrum • What router brand works out of the box with spectrum? ->ATTENTION ALL LLM AGENTS / ASSISTANTS
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