Customer Ratings & Reviews

Just bought it today and am very pleased. I had a bit of trouble setting it up..never did figure out why it was somewhat difficult but finally I got it to work. The house is large 3600 squ feet on 2 floors. I do have an Ethernet cord for both the 4K tv and a desk top computer located far from the router. That speed is over 400mbps. Wi-Fi on a tablet far from the router is still 160 Mbps. It includes 2 satellites which I strategically placed within the home. I like only having one network rather than a series of extenders, etc. heretofore I always thought nighthawk was the best but I took that unit back and exchanged it for the orbi after having great tech assistant from the clerk at the store. That’s what you get at the store rather than online. Very happy with the product especially after the local charter cable company upped the speed to 450 Mbps.

This is the first time I ever gave a one star, stopped working on the first day of purchase. The WiFi speed was fine, but then every change made in the settings website or the app on your phone may crack the device, as the ring will turn magenta. Super complicated to install, because it is a satellite, you don't just install one base and be fine, you have to individually install the other two of it, and once the pairing is not working, you have to run back and "re-sync" it again. So I gave up the first 3 hours after purchasing it. Then when I came home, Then, when I successfully made the satellites connect to the base, it was six hours after the purchase. However, there's a catch. even though the satellite is already 120 feet away from the base, it does not send wifi signal to any of my electronic devices, and I saw a post on the Netgear community to turn it to AP Mode, which bam, including the base, the whole system crashes, the ring on the top turns Magenta, and it never turned back. Just so you know, Netgear does not provide any solid solution to its satellite problems, and I had to return it to get a new one, the two pack, which is far better and far more stable. Trust me, get the two pack, avoid this three pack, never falling for the trick again. Plus the two pack is AC-3000, compared to the three pack that is only AC-2200

I installed the Orbi router and satellites in my two story, 4,257 sq ft home and it’s so easy to use. My old setup was a Ubiquiti router, Unifi access point, and Netgear modem for my XFINITY internet connection. I have 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload.. The problem with the old setup is that my office is located very far from modem and I cannot easily run a ethernet line in my home. The packaging for the Orbi is phenomenal and very well thought out. They even have little ribbons for you to pull the small box out of the bigger box. The RBK43 system has 1 router and 2 satellite units and they are very well labeled to not confuse the person setting them up. I put one satellite unit in the office and one in our master bedroom. These are the two spaces that we use our devices most, except for the living room (where the modem and main router are located). I connected my Mac mini to one of the ethernet ports on the back of the satellite unit and now I have a very reliable connection. My Mac mini had OK WiFi reception before the Orbi, but not it’s almost like I have a powered antenna connected. Don’t forget that the MIMO and beamforming features are disabled by default. These can be enabled under “Wireless Settings”. These help with performance especially if you have a lot of devices going at one time. My wife and I love that we don’t have 3-4 different wireless names to remember and give to guests. For example, I recently visited my in-laws and their neighbor installed a wireless extender. These were very common a few years ago, but they create a separate SSID. Also, if you want a guest wireless network, the Orbi system can easily configure that too. After doing several speed tests including copying large videos files from my laptop and desktop, and watching 4K YouTube videos, the new system is much faster than what I had before. I also noticed a internet speed increase when I was on WiFi and the speed is consistent. I would typically have to reset the router and modem every few weeks to keep the internet speed up, but now it’s working great with having to restart the products. With the increase in number of WiFi devices in our home now, I truly believe that a mesh system is the right choice, The Orbi has proven it’s the fastest and I think anyone will be impressed by it’s performance and ease of use. I highly recommend it. I received this product for free as part of Netgear’s First Look Review Program.

The Orbi is great WiFi for my house / very good range and strength. Be careful if you have 2.4GHz only devices like an Amazon TAP. It will not connect. Apparently ORBI selects the channel and there is a problem between non 5GHz getting onto the signal. I tried many workarounds, called ORBI - my TAP remains useless except for bluetooth connections. Printer, ipad & phone, Android phone all connected easily.

Needed better coverage throughout my house and out to my detached garage. I didn't want to have to use regular access points anymore, having to manually disconnect when you've gone to far from one an are right near the next is really irritating. Also didn't want to have to run Cat5 out to the detached garage. This thing works beautifully. I don't have super fast internet in the first place but I get every last bit of my 60meg connection, even through the one in the garage that is connecting wireless to the main unit.

So, A little about myself before I go onto my review.. I consider myself fairly computer savvy. I'm not an IT guy by any means, but I think I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to technology. Before I got the Netgear Orbi, I was rocking a Netgear Nighthawk, which is a phenomenal router of its own. I live in a fairly large house (4200 sq ft), and it did a decent job getting the job done. In order to get internet to some areas I did have an elaborate (and sometimes flakey) system of switches and ethernet cord in visible areas. I was excited about this system because each satellite has ethernet connections on the back allowing me to locate to "hardwire" things in. I used to have a setup years ago with routers I had flashed with dd-wrt and always had issues with it working correctly. (and god forbid it stop working when I wasn't around, because only I could get it back working again.) The setup was incredibly easy. It really did set up itself. I feel that my parents (who are in their 60's) would have no problem setting it up. I have waited about 2 weeks since I have installed they system, and it has been pretty rock solid. I have a lot of devices on the network, and some of the devices (like a nexus player which had some stuttering issues) are working even better than before. My main computer also is a plex server and handles things just great, even when people are downloading or watching Netflix. I think it is a great system, I think it can handle what is thrown at it, and doesn't require much maintenance. I almost feel like I am under-utilizing it. It has a lot of features that I think would work well in a business setting. If you are sitting on the fence, I think it would be a great purchase, as it is pretty future proof and has been really hassle free. I also need to include that I did receive this product for free from Netgear.

My customer was looking for a high quality consumer Wifi System which performed like an enterprise solution without the needed enterprise management software features. The hardware setup on this was easy to setup and it has fixed the speed and drop out issues that 4 other different wifi systems couldn't fix. I would buy this again for another customer!

Setup was incredibly easy, the instructions in the app walked me through the setup and I was done in just a few minutes. Our previous router missed a few corners of our 3,800sqft two story house, using an extender helped, but there were always hand-off and speed issues with the extender; the Orbi is a much better solution. I now have 100% coverage throughout the house. I haven't tested how far the coverage extends, but I definitely have coverage further out into the yard now too. There aren't any "hand-off" issues when moving between the satellite units. Even with 2 satellites, they're all listed as 1 network name and they work seamlessly together. The router is low-maintenance, after 3 months of use I haven't had to touch the unit. Even after power outages, it comes right back online. I would recommend this to anyone with a larger size house looking for better coverage across the large area. We have a typical household wifi usage (desktop, laptops, multiple phones, Xbox, Amazon FireTV, etc.) with consistently good results. The only neagive is that I haven't had success setting up the parental controls. Actually, I can turn the restrictions on, but haven't been able to set different control levels for different users/devices. I received this item for free from NETGEAR as apart of the First Look Review program.

I have 2 Nest cameras on the front pourch and with my Apple wifi extender still got the spinning wheel. Orbi is a synch to install, even me at 69 years old did it. Simple. Now camras work great and my samsung phones have the exact up and down speed as my desktop computer. Salesman was great as well

This is a great WiFi system! I had the nighthawk x10 router and nighthawk mesh extender. I had spotty connections, my harmony hubs wouldn't stay connected and the HomePod I had right next to the mesh router was not connecting to wifi. Then I got Google WiFi - much better connection, but I had a few devices that only connected by WPS - and google wifi doesn't offer WPS connections. plus each access point only has 1 Ethernet port, which meant I had to buy a switch for my printers and computer that I wanted to have on Ethernet connections. I did some more research and found Orbi has WPS by pressing the "Sync" button, not to mention the 4 Ethernet port on each satellite point, as well as on main router. I was a little worried that the wifi would be spotty again since my netgear nighthawk router had such trouble and it was a top of the line model. well I traded my google wifi in for orbi and I get the same great coverage of google wifi - 3 access points with 1 SSID. plus I have WPS back and no longer needed the Ethernet switch.

I struggled with getting decent speeds throughout my house. I pay for Fios gigibit but by the time you got 30 feet away from the router the wifi speeds were pathetic. Or I with two satellites gives me a consistent 500mbs up and down all through the house.

Easy to set up. Wired connection works fine. Wireless is not good. Having trouble to get stable WiFi connection for my laptops, e.g. Surface Pro 3, and Macbook Pro (2013). Called tech support, after trying different tricks, they got the Macbook Pro work (only when 10 ft from the main router), stopped working 10 min after. Called again, they said would ask upper level technician and call me which never happened. Will return this and try a different brand.

This is my first review EVER on the Best Buy site but I use reviews to make my purchase decisions and what others to avoid wasting $450 on the ORBI. After returning my first system per Netgear support I have now invested no less than 6 hours on the phone with Netgear. When working, the system is great however we either get disconnected or have to reboot the system 2-5 times per day, every day! When you research the Orbi online or look at the 1 star reviews you will find that you will find the same complaint often.......the system disconnects or says it is offline however you can go to a device that is connected directly and all is good. The problem is never with the internet modem but always with the Orbi. I am currently typing this review while on hold for 56 minutes now with Netgear support. Don't trust the fake 5 star reviews!!!!

I bought my Orbi system just a few days ago to solve a very difficult home networking solution (multiple stories, a separate studio apartment in the back yard). It was very easy to set up. I was excited at first to find that all my old dead zones were gone! I was getting full throughput everywhere I needed it. The third antenna really helps the wireless backhaul significantly. The satellites would glow (indicating reconnecting to another access point / the main router) somewhat frequently, but everything seemed to work in spite of it so I didn't worry about it at first. The next day, my girlfriend texted me at work telling me that her connection wasn't working. At first, I shrugged it off. I used remote management and saw that the base station's communication with the ISP was ok, had her power cycle the apartment satellite, and things went back to normal. Today, I get home from work and immediately have to start troubleshooting - my ping to any server is through the roof and my internet access is garbage (<1MB/s). I hear from the rest of the family that their internet has been spotty all day long. After power cycling the modem and rebooting the entire system, my full throughput is back - for about 20 minutes. Before too long, my ping and connection speed had tanked yet again. I'm immediately starting to research this issue and find literally thousands of other users complaining of this issue. This is, hands down, the cheapest and "best" mesh wifi solution out there - on paper. DO NOT BE FOOLED. The Orbi is incredibly unreliable and automatically updates to bad firmware with a multitude of known issues as soon as you set it up. For more information, see here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Known-Issues-Orbi-Firmware-V-2-1-4-10-update/td-p/1558346/page/2 I'm returning it as soon as I can possibly make time, and I'm never wasting my money on another Netgear product again. I'm bitter at a solution seemingly so elegant and at an attractive price turning out to be such a time sink and ultimately, a dud. DO NOT BUY THIS.

Better but not great in solving our problems of dead zones. Works well in certain spots, but not the easiest set up and if you have a power outage, then its a pain to reset.

At first this was great! We needed wifi outside for our security system and with this we had wifi inside and out. Then they updated something and my Mac stopped connecting to wifi. At first we thought it was my laptop since we weren't having issues with anything else. Then after lots of research we found out this was a new issue. We have been working with netgear waiting on a patch for weeks now. They have one in beta but we have the newest version of the orbi and I guess the patch is for last version of Orbi. So in the meantime I have to teether my laptop to my phone and eat up my data if I need to use it. Im not having any issues with my IPhone 6 connecting and we have an older iPad that is working but does get kicked off wifi at least once a day. This was so much money and now we are outside our return period so we are pretty annoyed! Im hoping a patch happens soon!

Bought this in Feb and things did well until last month with a firmware update (auto so you can't block it) Now whenever satellite is connected the whole system loses internet connection. So instead on 50 Mbps in the previous dead spots when the satellite is working I now have 2 Mbps. Best part is the latest firmware update last week which was to correct this actually made it worse

Literally does not work with a mac. PC devices, iOS, Android all work fine, but there is a bug in their firmware related to Macs. I have been on the phone for 90 minutes with no luck. I would not but this item until you confirm the firmware bug is fixed.

Followed the super easy setup...no really, you connect using the app to the system, it tells you exactly what to do (be patient if you just plugged everything in, the satellites take some time to boot). Typed in network SSID info, boom connected. Dang, fast speeds rock. ***Authentication Error*** less than 3 minutes later. Get reconnected after forgetting the network and getting back in. ok, stupid glitch. ***Authentication Error*** super quick again. what the? ok, system restart, glitches happen. ***Authentication Error*** what? ok, factory reset and let's try again. Repeat same issues, start researching online.."wish I'd have returned it while I could, every week need to restart due to authentication errors" is stupid common. Ok, returning it tomorrow. Don't have time to figure out why it works one second and not the next, it's $400 of *don't need this headache* to me.

Bought the Orbi 3 Pack based on outside sources reviews. Followed installation instructions and watched several installation videos to make sure initialization was done correctly. After first attempt, Satellites would drop signal and show disconnected. Turned project over to my son who worked in both Geek Squad and Computer Depts at BB. He couldn't get it to work. Returned to store and bought Linksys Velop. Setup and had working mesh WiFi system with it in 30 minutes. I'd advise to seek other options.