NETGEAR Orbi Ultra Performance Whole System

My Old Fellow Fernando Beltran Talk Do not buy this product!.

I purchased my Orbi system 4 months ago. The setup was easy and my system was up and running in minutes. It worked like a charm between January and the end of May 2017. Then, all of a sudden, the Orbi began disconnecting from the Internet (it showed the "magenta ring of death" at the top of the device) and there was no way to recover from this issue. Nothing has worked, despite multiple attempts and workarounds, including factory-resetting the device (twice), changing ports, changing internet cables, etc. When I factory-reset it, it worked fine for about 3 hours, but then it went back to the same issue. It wasn't able to connect to the Internet (The Verizon router never stopped working). As several reviewers have already mentioned, this issue seems to be firmware-related, but Netgear hasn't had the decency of notifying its customers about this problem or how to resolve it. Why do they make us register the product if they can't at least give us a heads up about known problems with their product?

However, that is not even the worst part. The biggest problem is NETGEAR's crummy technical support and return policies. Here's what you will be dealing with if your Orbi fails after 90 days. This from their website:

1. You must submit a valid claim to NETGEAR with an assigned RMA number (that you obtain by contacting technical support). HOWEVER,
2. With your Orbi purchase, you only get 90 day free basic phone support. You must pay for technical support if the problem occurs after 90 days of your new purchase, and
3. You must pay for the shipping costs for returning the defective product to NETGEAR

So there you have it. A promising product with terrible technical support and warranty policies. Buy at your own risk.

My Old Neighbor Brendan Stuart Talk What an embarrassment for NetGear..

ok, somehow this thing is getting glowing reviews and i'm not quite sure how. Perhaps these folks haven't had to experience a firmware update or something yet.

Background: I'm in IT, specifically security. I also have a very strong development background, including finding various hacks in software/hardware.

This system is poorly coded and implemented. You have to pray to the gods of chance for syncing and firmware updating. Auto-Firmware updates means, be ready to take a day off to deal with getting everything back online.

I have RBR-50 and two RBS-50 satellites. This system just sucks. It takes SO long for things to connect and when they finally do, you have no idea how long it's going to last because another update will knock the whole thing offline.

Now listen, i didn't just pick up this system. I've had it for over 6 months and in that time it's been completely knocked offline a total of 4 times. Tracking it all back down, it was always during a firmware update. You think you can do things manually, but it still breaks the system. Who doesn't want security updates and leave their system vulnerable? It's a zero sum game.

Furthermore, to get support, you need to go to the Netgear community page. That's right. After dropping over $750 on my "WHOLE HOME MESH SYSTEM" (haha) i have to pay $50. for 'Premium' support. Sorry, no thanks.

You clearly outsourced your development to incompetent development staff, god knows your 'premium' support staff won't be much better.

This system is embarrassing and shame on the developers, the product managers, especially the QA staff! Shame on you all. How could you guys not test this out and understand just how bad this is?

I'm now beyond the return time period, so i'll have to browse the community forums again in the HOPES that i can find something to make all of this work again.

I HIGHLY DON'T RECOMMEND!

My Buddy Erock tell us Was a great device until they released the 1.12.0.18 update which caused major disconnect issues.

My last few routers have all been Asus routers, I tend to by the biggest one I can get to get coverage in all areas of my home. My old Asus RT-AC87U router is located in my man cave which is in the basement of my ranch house and all the way at one end of the house. Because of this placement it makes getting a good strong signal upstairs and at the other end of the house a little difficult. I’ve tried various methods to extend the wifi in the past including using power line adapters and wifi repeaters, they’ve always been a little flaky so I always try and just buy a big router instead.

I’ve seen the mesh wifi routers becoming more popular, there big selling point is that everything is seamless to install and configure, you don’t have to mess with setting up multiple routers in bridge mode or anything else, you just plug them in and they all work together to form a big wifi mesh network. I started looking at the 2 that had been out for a while, Eero and Luma and they seemed fairly decent but had mixed reviews. Then I saw that NetGear had come out with their own, the Orbi. I had intended to just upgrade to another big honkin router, the Nighthawk X6 AC3200 but the Orbi caught my eye and was getting very good reviews so I thought I would give it a try instead.

One thing that stood out with the Orbi is it’s dedicated backhaul, which is the connection between the main router and the satellite routers, other mesh wifi systems use the same radios that is used for user traffic for the connections between devices as well. The Orbi has a dedicated radio for that to separate that traffic and not use up user bandwidth which allows for better performance. So after reading up on everything I could find about the Orbi and seeing good things I ordered the 2 unit model (router + satellite).

When it arrived I opened it and it was very nicely packaged, the router and satellite units are the same size and fairly big (also a bit slippery). I followed the quick install instructions, removed my old router, unplugged my cable modem, plugged it back in, turned on the main Orbi router, plugged it into the cable modem, placed the satellite upstairs and plugged in the power and finally plugged my desktop PC into the wired Ethernet port on the main Orbi router. On the Satellite unit, when I plugged it in it was supposed to glow amber and then change to blue once it connected to the main Orbi router, no luck there, it just kept flashing white despite it being only about 15-20 feet away from it. I gave up on that and went back to getting the main router configured.

I then went to http://orbilogin.com and that’s when my problems started. The first thing it does is check for an internet connection, it kept timing out saying it couldn’t connect to the internet. I checked the cable between it and the cable modem, I turned the Orbi router on and off and still no luck, finally I had to power cycle the cable modem again and it worked. It went through the setup process, then asked me to register it, I put my serial number and info in, it said it would send me a confirmation email and waited for me to acknowledge that email before it could proceed. I never got the email so I just closed the window and went back to the main Orbi admin page.

Both the satellite and main router had pretty old firmware versions so I went to the firmware update page, it detected new firmware for the router but was stuck on “Please wait” while checking for new firmware on the satellite, because of this the update buttons wouldn’t work either. I waited about 10 minutes and it was still stuck, I tried again and the same thing happened, finally I gave up and called Netgear’s support.

Trying to navigate to NetGear’s support was another fun challenge, they seem to hide any way to contact phone support on their main website. They also want you to take a picture of your receipt that you bought the unit to get to support. I wasn’t having any of that, I was already getting fed up that this supposedly super easy Orbi was already giving me problems. I finally google’d Netgear support phone number and found the number to call them.

The first guy I talked to was your typical, read from a script, I know very little type of support guy, I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere fast with him. He kept making useless suggestions and asking non-relevant questions, he also wanted me to move the satellite closer to the router. I told him I wasn’t going to do that, if those 2 units can’t communicate well enough from 15-20 feet away moving them closer wasn’t going to do anything. Finally I got fed up and asked to talk to a supervisor.

The supervisor didn’t seem any more skilled then the first guy, he said he could have someone from advanced support call me back, I finally was about to hang up and told him to forget it I’m just going to return this. This got me an immediate “I’ll transfer you to someone who actually knows what they are talking about” response. In a few minutes I was talking to their advanced support who did a remote session to my desktop.

They went through the process of downloading and manually updating the satellite firmware. Apparently there is a bug in the earlier firmware version where you can’t automatically update firmware through the admin console. Once that was manually applied the satellite unit re-started and then it looked like the main router unit updated it’s firmware automatically and re-started as well. From that point they were both at the latest firmware versions and everything was working. You can only make a first impression once and with the issues I experienced while setting Orbi up my initial excitement at getting a new wireless router quickly turned to frustration and aggravation.

I checked my signal strength upstairs and at the opposite side of the house (see above) and it was very strong, much stronger then with the single Asus router. Also note that I pretty much get 5Ghz coverage anywhere in the house now both upstairs and downstairs where I only was able to get it downstairs in the man cave and just outside before.

So after an hour or so of aggravation everything was finally working. I’m only on my first day with the Orbi, it seems to be working well now but only time will tell. The hardware seems solid, the admin UI seems laggy and is a bit plain and basic but it has a fairly decent amount of advanced networking features. There is also no cloud management connection required like some of the other mesh systems require were if you lose internet connectivity your whole LAN is down as well. The Orbi does have 3 wired Ethernet ports which is a big plus, I do have a NetGear 24-port smart switch that I use for a home lab but it’s nice to not have to use that if needed.

One thing I had wanted to know was the status of the backhaul connection between the router and the satellite to see if they were optimally positioned. The Orbi admin UI just simply says “1 Satellite connected” but tell’s you nothing about the status and strength of that connection. The LED ring on top of the satellite only works when you initially plug it in and then goes dark. I’d like to know that the satellite is working and how well it’s working, it would be nice if that LED ring would stay on or could be turned on if desired to tell you how the satellite is doing. I also hate looking at the main router and having no visible indication of what the hell it’s doing, it could be off for all I know. NetGear put that LED to work and make it configurable in the admin UI. How about different colors for certain states and pulsing speed based on how busy it is. It would also be nice if the admin UI could show you more detail on the router-satellite connection.

There are really two big components to a wireless router, it’s hardware and it’s software, you need the combination of both of these to be good to have a great product. I won’t dispute NetGear has always had great hardware and that looks to still be the case with the Orbi, but quite frankly there software has always been pretty crappy. My past few routers have been Asus and if it’s one thing that Asus has nailed it’s their software which totally kicks ass, there admin UI is feature rich, very nicely laid out and easy to use and they update it constantly. You can even get the Merlin builds which are based on the stock software which take it to the next level. Coming from Asus, looking at NetGear’s UI is a big let down, it’s plain, basic, lacking and it looks like a 10 year old designed it. You also have to download a separate Windows NetGear Genie app to do certain things, why can’t I do it all in the web based UI? Also how about being able to show a network map and maybe some basic device usage reporting? NetGear if you would just give your admin UI an overhaul you would have a killer product.

Now let’s talk Parental Controls which is one area that NetGear has always sucked at which is one of the major reasons I always chose Asus over them in the past. I would of thought by now NetGear would have been able to figure out this important feature to any parent and implement it correctly. Instead they have a half-assed & weak Parental Controls in their admin UI and then they punt and say go use Open DNS if you want more which would work great until your kid figures out how to change their DNS server. On my Asus router, I had full Parental Controls built-in including the most important one to me, time of day access control by MAC address so I can shut my kids internet off at night at a specific time. While NetGear has time controls built-in it impacts every device connected to the router not just specific ones. Is it really that hard NetGear to implement time of day controls by MAC address?

All in all if I would say I’m satisfied with the Orbi so far and will likely keep it, what any wireless router has to do really well is perform and that is what counts the most as you are using it day in and day out. Things like the admin UI you do not frequently use so as long as my wifi is fast and gives me good coverage across my entire house I’m all good. It would be nice if they improved the admin UI, parental controls, LED light functionality and other things. The Orbi is still pretty new so hopefully the software improves over time which would make me even happier.

UPDATE (12/11/16):

After living with Orbi for a few days now, all I can say is: damn this thing kicks ass. I get awesome coverage all throughout the house and I can get 5Ghz anywhere. From one of the farthest points from the main router and satellite my iPad speed test is around 170Mbps, crazy fast. My PC that is wired to one of Orbi’s Ethernet ports does a speed test at 232 Mbps. Also in that same room were I would regularly get the flashing wifi signal in Clash of Clans meaning I’m about to get disconnected (CoC tends to be latency sensitive), I have not been disconnected once with Orbi. I’m very happy with how well Orbi performs and would recommend it to anyone looking for whole home wifi, NetGear please just work on your admin UI and I’ll be even happier!

UPDATE 2 (12/13/16):

NetGear yesterday released a new Orbi firmware version (1.4.0.18) it was mostly minor but contained support for a new IOS/Android app that was released yesterday for management. My initial thoughts were, great now I have to go through another painful firmware upgrade process, and also cool an app that might make device management easier. The firmware upgrade went OK without issue this time around, I upgraded it through the admin UI and it was pushed out to both the main router and satellite. I downloaded the admin app to my iPad hoping for new management goodness and when I launched it found it to be a bit of a joke, you can do almost nothing in the app and it’s got to be the most basic app I’ve seen looking like someone wrote it less than an hour.

When you launch the app you’re greeted to their dashboard which is nothing more than a screen with a giant picture of an Orbi with the only information shown being your Wifi network and password. If you browse the limited menu they have stuck in the corner all you can do is show device info (nothing more than the model, MAC address and the firmware version only for the router) and connected devices and that’s about it. My excitement of having an iPad management app quickly went to this royally sucks, app deleted. Again NetGear looks to not have a clue at designing a useful and nice management UI/app, they are lucky their hardware is keeping me a customer because their administration interfaces are trying real hard to push me away.

Pluses:

3 wired Ethernet ports
Fast and strong wifi signal
Nice looking hardware
Dedicated backhaul channel between router & satellite
Router is pre-paired with satellite unit
No cloud management required
Has a decent amount of advanced networking features

Cons:

LED light rings on top are fairly useless
Crappy admin UI is fairly bland and a bit laggy
No way to see details of router-satellite connection
No time scheduling parental controls by MAC
Firmware upgrade is buggy
IOS app is terrible
Support isn’t great unless you tell them you are returning it

UPDATE 7/13/17:
Despite an initial rough start with the NetGear Orbi Home Wifi System I’ve been a big fan of it up until today. The reason I bought the Orbi was because I kept having wifi drops in some areas of my house with my Asus RT-AC87U router. I play a lot of online games like Clash of Clans and if you know CoC the dreaded wifi symbol while you are playing is not something you want to see. That symbol means your connection sucks and you are about to get dropped, I would get that frequently with my Asus router. Once I had Orbi up and running my wifi problems were completely gone for 7 months, until today.

Netgear pushed out a 1.12.0.18 update to my router and satellite last night and today I awoke to constant and frequent disconnects on both my iPad Air 2 and Galaxy S7 Edge. I could literally not go a minute without a disconnect. I called their support who was basically useless, they said to enable Implicit Beamforming which has been disabled by default many updates ago because of issues it caused with some devices. I tried that anyway and it seemed to help a little with the iPad but not the Galaxy S7.

Ironically Netgear had a big focus on fixing wifi disconnects with this update which has apparently plagued them from the beginning, read the Netgear forums and there are lots of threads on this issue like this one and this one. They also have problems with the Orbi losing connection to your internet device (i.e. cable modem), I also experience this frequently as well, the only fix is to reboot the cable modem. Most of the updates up until now have not really done all that much, this one had a lot of big fixes as seen below:

Fixes the iOS disconnection issue.
Fixes the Dropcam disconnection issue.
Fixes the convergence issue when an Ethernet connected device moves from one Orbi to another.
Fixes the issue where the Orbi app can’t find the Orbi router if the router is using IPv6 and is in AP mode.
Fixes the issue where the Orbi app can’t display more than 20 connected devices.
Fixes the issue where the installation assistant might not display if the device is connected to the Orbi network wirelessly.
Fixes the issue where the 2.4 GHz backhaul setting is disabled if the fronthaul MU-MIMO and TxBF is disabled.
Fixes the issue where IPv6 devices on the guest network can access the Orbi router’s web GUI.
Includes security fixes for the following security vulnerabilities:PSV-2016-0133, PSV-2017-0607, PSV-2017-0615, PSV-2017-0736, PSV-2017-2190

So an update that supposedly fixes disconnect issues (which I never experienced) does the opposite and starts causing them instead. Thank you Netgear for breaking my perfectly wonderful wifi system. Apparently their engineering team has been spending most of their time introducing new Orbi devices and not spending much time refining their current firmware.

I ended up downgrading both my router and satellite to the prior version which is 1.11.0.20 which has been working perfectly. In fact I have never had an issue with an Orbi update until now, I’m beginning to suspect the reason why is that they haven’t really done much with any of their 11 updates up until this one. Look at their typical release notes for the last 3 updates:

1.10.1.2 – Fixed few bugs
1.9.1.2 – Fixes bugs and security issues. – Improves the firmware upgrade process. – Continuous improvement in wireless connection stability
1.8.0.6 – Fixes bugs and security issues. – Supports Korea wireless region

Now that they have finally starting to pay attention to some of the serious issues that Orbi has had they have apparently tried to fix some things and broke other things. At this stage with this new update I’m not going to update past 1.11.0.20 until Netgear gets their act together which is a shame as I will be missing out on potentially other fixes and enhancements. I loved my Orbi up until today and just yesterday was recommending it to people. However after this update dropped I will not recommend it anymore and may just end up migrating to one of the competing systems from Ubiquiti, Google and Eero which is a shame as Netgear had a good thing going with Orbi. Ultimately it comes down to what works best for me and if Orbi can no longer deliver that anymore than it’s adios amigo.

My Old Man Xtasy Talk Major firmware problems cause disconnects all the time.

I didn't buy the product from Amazon. Buyers beware. Since this is a very expensive product. you don't want to end up regretting the purchase. This router is hands down the fastest when it's working. But the newest firmware destroyed a perfect product. Connection drops randomly all the time. And the worst thing is that the router auto update to the newest broken firmware. And there is no way to disable the auto update. Netgear customer service is not communicating with users regarding the issues. Many users are furious and frustrated. Save yourself some headache. Do your research before purchase.

My Old Fellow C R said FIRMWARE v.1.12.0.18 renderes router useless - and you can't avoid it.

Constant disconnects from internet provider a common issue for many with latest firmware. It's also difficult to disable 'auto-updates' to use an old firmware. For about 2 weeks I found a way to disable the system upgrades by hacking settings. Eventually though the router phoned home to update. Why on earth netgear forces firmware upgrades is beyond me...

My Old Man Eric Fleming say Great Product.

Looking for a mesh home wifi solution? I've now bought 3 of them, here is what I bought and my results:

1. Linksys Velop Tri-band Whole Home WiFi Mesh System, 2-Pack (coverage up to 4000 sq. ft) - http://amzn.to/2xCaDyf
2. Luma Whole Home WiFi (3 Pack - White) - http://amzn.to/2xmmDEE
3. NETGEAR Orbi Home WiFi System: AC3000 Tri Band Home Network with Router & Satellite Extender for up to 5,000sqft of WiFi coverage - http://amzn.to/2w7NENN

1. 120mbps at base unit, 40 mbps at satellite unit, 5 mbps at farthest point from base unit in my house
2. 120mbps at base unit, 25 mbps at closest satellite, 15 mbps at furthest satellite, 10mbps at farthest point from base unit in my house
3. 120mbps at base unit, 120mbps at satellite unit, 65 mbps at farthest point from base unit in my house

Orbi is the clear winner for me.

My Fellow Corey M Kruse say Not working as well as advertised..

I did a ton of research on what mesh network system would be best for my new house. I trusted all of the reviews on the Orbi system and went ahead with it. It seemed very promising right off the bat, but then it just got frustrating and ridiculous. This leads me to believe that all the expert reviews are not long term tests.

After about 2-3 weeks of being up and running my WiFi speeds dropped to 1/5th the original speed (I have Fios 1G). I thought it was just wireless. I did the run around with Verizon but they were right, their service is working fine. I even went at our builder and thought their Ethernet cord was bad...it’s not. Both wired and wireless would drop after about 24-48 hours of resetting. I’ve changed a billion settings, I’ve been doing online chats with Netgear support, and my own research. Nothing would consistently work. When it works, I get 4-500 both wireless and wired. But then for no reason it would drop. Always checking the Fios Router to make sure that wasn’t the cause (never was...always ran fine).

A new product shouldn’t have to be reset every 2 days. Not now a days. So I recently had my original unit replaced, and the new one had the same problem, it dropped to 1/5th the original power within 2 days. After doing research, I am not the only one that this has happened to. And Netgear has no clue how to fix it. It seems that it is a software issue. I don’t have too many devices going. I’ve even eliminated all devices but 1 to make sure there wasn’t any virus plagued device doing it or even too much congestion on a certain channel. I’ve checked off all of my boxes. Nothing works lastingly.

My hands are tied because my set up at my house was designed for this. I need the ports in the back. But I can’t return this to Amazon because it’s past the date. No clue if Netgear will refund me. But I think I’m off to the Linksys.

My Old Man Chris Mulkey said Lots of features trumped by major instability..

We probably didn't *need* a mesh networking system for our new place, but we wanted optimal coverage throughout the entire house; we figured mesh was the best way to do that. After three months, it's safe to say I was mistaken.

Orbi was on our short list. It was one of the only mesh systems that offered a built-in VPN server; most other options weren't on par with the Orbi's AC3000 either. It was one of the most expensive choices available, but I was hoping the premium we paid would provide a set-it-and-forget-it type purchase.

We have about 30 devices on our network - 10 over 2.4Ghz, 12 over 5Ghz (half of which are just idling Google Home devices), and the rest are wired. The claimed range is 5,000 sq. ft.; we only have 2,100. Range doesn't seem to be the issue - but the range is worthless since the whole system is unstable!

With WMM on, our IP set-top boxes (nVidia Shield TVs, Apple TV, and Rokus) stream video like they should - until *any* new device hops on the network. When that happens, the whole system just seizes up. No packets in or out; no administration page. Nothing! It just stops working. A few minutes later, it starts working again...
With WMM off, the system never seizes, but streaming video buffers - constantly - with every video service and every device we've tried. It's just for a second or two, but it's frequent. (Three or four pauses within a one or two minute window. It's incredibly frustrating!) Our phones show they're connected to the wifi network, but it takes 15 to 20 seconds before data starts to flow. Speedtests show 150+/150+, but that's *after* the 15 to 20-second window.

We've toggled Beamforming, MU-MIMO, Parental Controls, Access Controls, and the Traffic Meter on and off. We've tried different radio frequencies. Performance changes with each of the setting combos we've tried, but it's never good.

The QOS settings aren't really settings - they just offer a SpeedTest. (I even did a factory reset because this didn't seem right... but's all the QOS page offers in the device's settings, before and after reboot!)

For the price you pay, it should work for you, out of the box - it definitely doesn't for us.
For the price you pay, it should have advanced features that enhance your experience. It has them, but it doesn't matter since the whole system is unstable.

I'd love to sell mine, but at any cost, I would feel like I was taking advantage of the buyer. I'd sell it back to Amazon for a fraction of what I bought it for, but they won't buy it.

My Fellow John Ross Talk It has issues. That you wont be able to fix..

Words can not Express my frustrations and disappointment with the netgear Orbi. It's been over a year dealing with this thing dropping the internet connection constantly. Some days over 310 times it goes off. I've done tech support constantly. We have done firmware updates atleast 13 times, changed channels turn the power down turn the power up. I know every setting this device has. Oh I forgot the support favorite reason why the internet keeps disconnecting,its because the satellite is to close to the base. EVEN after I told them i don't have the satellite connected. Their second biggest reason is! Its my ISP equipment fault, my ISP sent a tech, he changed wires and modem and rewired to the pole it didn't change a thing. Still dropping the internet all day. I think I have been overly tolerant and understanding with netgear with new tech. On my last call to tech support we yet again updated firmware and it seemed to work the internet reset once or twice a day. Then out of the blue the bug came back. Now the orbi resets everything. I mean the whole dam thing resets every 15 min. And they wont fix it or replace it! It's my ISP fault. Well I am out my time my money and patience with netgear. I replaced it with a linksys router, guess what no issues. If you research the net it is a common issue. Save your money buy something else.

My Old Neighbor R. Hsia said Potential Buyers, Please Do Your Research Before Buying.

Buyers please beware! It's amazing to see how highly rated this system is, but in some ways it's not surprising. Many users, including myself, had great results (very high speeds and great coverage) with the system for a significant period of time (months to a year+), but eventually had an inexplicable downturn that has never been solved. Do yourself a favor and read the original post in "What you can expect with your Orbi system" by t_k in the Netgear community website. At least this way you will be mentally prepared. Keep in mind a one month evaluation period may not be enough to expose the issue, so again, consider this post a friendly warning.

The problems are very clearly explained, and ultimately what many of us experienced was random internet freezes/lockups that persisted from one firmware update after another. As is explained in the post, some people may not notice the problem depending on their usage and use case. And the "good" news is it seems to always be linked to the satellite(s), such that a reboot of the satellite temporarily clears the issue. But... once it starts happening, it seems to happen again and again and you end up just having to get used to it. As was pointed out on the forums, the more you use your system and in the more locations, the higher the probability you will encounter it. If you are working from home and on the internet all day, you may experience disruptions multiple times per day.

Ultimately, consumers deserve better than this. Netgear as yet has not offered a solution or even acknowledged this specific issue. None of the suggestions or workarounds or firmware fixes they've issued have changed things, and there's a growing list of people who are starting to see the same problem.