NETGEAR Orbi Quad-Band WiFi 6E Mesh Network System (RBKE963), Router + 2 Satellite Extenders, Security Features, Up to 10.8 Gbps, Coverage up to 9,000 sq. ft., 200 Devices, 10 Gig Internet Port

My wife and I both work from home most days and while the system is very expensive, it is a significant improvement and worth every penny! Backrgound As a base, I have a 1GB/s cable connection and had a Linksys Vlop mesh Router + 2 satellite nodes in a 2 story city home built in 2003. Using the Vlop I experienced disconnects and very slow speeds daily; sometimes speeds went as as low as 15mb/s. Standing right next to the router node (in basement), I would get ~600mb/s, but speeds reduced to around 100mb/s anywhere else in the house. Using the Orbi and with the mesh satellites in the same locations, my speeds were consistently 600+mb/s anywhere in the house and 800+mb/s when near the router node. After a couple of weeks of use, zero network disruptions. Outdoor security cameras: Using the Vlop, I could view live feeds on my security cameras, but the quality and loading speeds weren't great due to less than optimal wifi connections. After switching to the Orbi, there was an immediate and noticeable improvement to and connection shows as 100% signal strength to all devices. Cost: The Vlop cost was ~$350 ($3.50 per 1mb/s) and at full price of the Orbi was $1600 ($2.67 per 1mb/s). So while very expensive, if high performance is the end goal the Orbi was cheaper in my scenario. Setup: Replacing the Vlop was quite simple and the Orbi setup made the switch easy. With the exception of a Reolink wifi camera, all of the devices connected automatically to the Orbi system. Speed Tests: In a side-by-side comparison, I ran a speed test while connected to a Vlop node (~10 ft away) and my speeds were peaking at 96 mb/s. Running the same test on the Orbi in the exact same location was 754 mb/s. Features: The Orbi app offers a lot of great features. I am currently on the free trial (an actual free trial, with no credit card required), which I found to be very useful. I haven't checked into the subscription fee once the trial expires, but if it's reasonable it is something I plan to set up for the long term. Final Thoughts: I would definitely recommend this setup for anyone experiencing speeds that are much slower than the advertised service provider. In a single story home, it is is quite possible to go with the single satellite option.

I replaced two separate wireless networks in my home because neither individually supported enough connections, but struggled to keep them running in the daisy chain I had configured. Both supposedly "worked" that way, but it was a constant battle to keep them working. Then, the last time my network went down, the Velop reset itself to factory settings, and I was going to have to start over. After hours of painful configuration, I went looking for a single mesh system that would support all my devices. Set up was dead easy - literally ten minutes, and most of that was waiting for equipment to come back up. The set up instructions and software were straightforward and simple, and worked the first time. Unlike my previous systems, it found its own satellites and configured them without my having to do a thing except to plug them in where I wanted them to live. In just a few minutes, my entire 3500 sq ft house was completely covered. Connecting devices was also straightforward. Even my legacy devices connected right up, at the right speed. No buffering on my TV streaming, no dead spots, and this thing is screaming fast even with all my crypto gear connected and hogging bandwidth. Even my finicky Helium hot spot came right up, connected, and went back to work. Roku, Ring, a dozen Alexa devices, five laptops, three crypto servers, 3 TVs, everything connected up. The worst thing that happened was that my Ring doorbell battery was very low and had to be charged back up before I could connect it. Several older smart devices running lights came right up and work too. I do think this is a pricey option, and most people really don't need this much horsepower in their homes, but my smart home and crypto operation need the speed and bandwidth, it won't need to be replaced any time soon with available 6E, and it was worth every dime. Love it, highly recommend.

10/23/2022 Update The issues continue with the Orbi 960's. We still have 5 gig service, but the Orbi is only reporting 3.7gigs, all the way down to 3.2 gigs, during its direct speedtests between the gateway and itself. Where did those 1.3 or more gigs go that the gateway is confirmed to be receiving from its speedtest? we will probably never know. My ASUS Tufz590 motherboard is a 2.5gig board with a 6e WiFi card and as close to perfect setup as one could ask for. We showed a ONE time download of 1.3 gigs. Anytime after that the system reports the exact same download/upload speeds as any other device in the house. At multiple points in the day we have to disconnect our devices individually because of slow download issues. Once reattached to the WiFi the issues abate, for a while. Here's the bottom line for us. We receive the EXACT same download/upload speeds as our old Linksys MX53's. Nothing is better or faster, but in fact it is the opposite. Everything is buggy, and in need of some sort of our attention. Orbi's customer service and support is hot garbage. They cannot understand you, nor you they. I can describe in perfect English what I am experiencing and the person on the phone reflects something completely differently back to me. Unfortunately I do not speak Hindi. It is beyond infuriating. I have removed the two star down to a one star. Buyers beware, you have been warned.... *begin intial review after 10 days of usage We have AT&T 5gig fiber service (yes we have devices that use that can handle it) our gateway is a Nokia BGW320-5 series. We purchased the Orbi RBRE960 because of their future upgradability "upgrading" from our MX53s from Linksys (an awesome system). We also have devices that are able to run on the 6ghz frequency. Once setup we realized we actually needed a satellite to get the "horsepower" needed to run our detached office. So, we purchased an RBSE960. We then turned on the 6ghz channel (this is "off" unless you turn it on yourself inside the web interface, not the app). Doing this immediately started causing our gateway to crash. We had AT&T diagnose their hardware all the way back to their area office and ended up realizing there is a hardware/software mismatch between the RBRE960 and the BGW320-5 series gateways. If we turn off the 6ghz channel the system is bedrock stable. Turn the 6ghz channel back on and boom within minutes the gateway starts crashing. *notes* the gateway is setup to be a pass-through gateway, and the WiFi transmitters are all turned off. We have CAT8 cables (that have been verified and tested to be working perfectly). All hardware is running on the most up to date firmware, and no physical issues have identified by other company's tech support. So, before anybody responds with setup questions we have beat that dead horse way too many times... Attempting to work with Netgear's tech support is an exercise in futility and incompetence. We have had five support tickets opened (Netgear has closed them without our consent) regarding this issue. They just cannot seem to get it together and get us the help we need. We have yet to be upgraded past their front line (poorly trained and unable to understand English well personnel). They keep you on the phone on hold and go ask somebody else that probably knows exactly what the issue, but they refuse categorically to upgrade our service ticket to a senior advisor. We finally just gave up and are running the system with the 6ghz channel turned off. Lastly, the amount of data loss between the RBRE960 router and gateway is astonishing. The gateway has a 5 gig port. The RBRE960 has a 10gig port. We have a short run (3ft) of CAT8 cable going from the 5gig port on the gateway to the 10gig port on the RBRE960. When we run speedtests to the gateway we are actually scoring above 5gig of up and down. However, between the gateway and the RBRE960 we only see 3.7gigs down and about 3.4gigs up. This is a loss of 1.3gigs just between the RBRE960 and the gateway (BGW320-5) via a CAT8 cable ( for those of you who don't know a CAT8 cable running 5gigs is barely a brisk walk ). So, if the gigs are getting to the gateway then why are they not getting to the RBRE960? Well, nobody can tell us... Please consider, in depth, prior to making this sizeable investment the issues we are going through. If we had to do this over again we would not make the investment. We are past the return window and are now stuck with hardware that just does not work like it is marketed. We have communicated the issues, at length, to both AT&T and Netgear with both companies blaming one another. There are several threads inside the AT&T customer forum with the exact same issue(s). Again, we have just acquiesced to the situation in the hopes someday Netgear/At&T will get the issue fixed, but until then we are only able to enjoy about 2/3 of what this system is supposed to deliver. Netgear, you simply must provide better tech support...

I bought this to replace a Google mesh system that I bought to replace Ubiquity mesh system. The Ubiquity system wasn't bad but in a 2 level double brick house, we needed 7 satellites to get an average signal across the house. The Google Nest mesh system had the same result except its interface is so dumbed down that you can't do anything like port forwarding or VPN. The biggest difference with the Orbi system is that it is about the only domestic grade mesh system available that has wired backhaul. This means that you can plug each satellite into your hard wired network so it isn't trying to contact the router via wireless. In our new house which is 3 levels with a concrete floor between 2 of the levels having wired backhaul means that there is 100% signal strength across the whole house. Wired backhaul also means that data going back through the router isn't using any wireless bandwidth. It also means on a large property you could run a network cable underground out to a shed or outbuilding and plug in a satellite and then you have full wireless strength even though you may be well away from your main router. In mesh systems without backhaul I found that for far away areas the satellite would have to daisy chain back to the main router which created a massive drop off in speed and reliability. Setup was a breeze and the speed is amazing, I'm easily getting 520mbps wirelessly across the house. It has a great feature where you can have all your smart home devices on a separate wireless network which is good security-wise. I bought an additional satellite to go outside in a weatherproof box so now with 1 router and 3 satellites I have 100% signal strength across our 10,000ft2 block and 3 level house. It's what wireless was always promised to be but never delivered until now. The phone app is very good and it has a great feature where you can see and control your network even when you are out of the house. The web interface to the router is good and allows a lot of control over permissions and data usage by device and user on the network so you can say prioritize your apple TV device so no matter what others are doing on your network you don't get caching when you are trying to watch a 4k movie. My only gripe is Netgear only offers 90 days of technical support unless you pay monthly for support. I would agree if it is novice support on network setup but when it is due to a firmware update that has dozens of reports on their chat pages of having issues I don't think you should have to pay to get a simple answer as to whether the firmware upgrade should be rolled back to solve a particular problem. Especially when you have paid thousands to buy the mesh system. The backhaul is 2.5gbe which is unbelievably fast so if you plug your PC into one of the 4 data points provided on each satellite and you are using backhaul you can have file transfer rates of 250Mbps across your network (as long as if you are using a switch the switch must be at least 2.5gbe). I put in a 10GBe switch and now our home network and wireless is comparable to enterprise-level fast. Netgear do offer an Armor subscription that you can then install on your computer and then the router and the software offer a very high level of malware and intrusion protection. However, I found that it was so intrusive that it blocked a lot of legitimate programs and operations so I uninstalled it. It is crazy expensive for a home wireless setup but in all fairness, it is so much better than everything else I've tried, the wired backhaul alone is worth the price of entry.

I’ve had 2 previous mesh systems. Neither could maintain a signal or handle streaming music or video on my devices. I went with this because the backhaul speed is fast (many manufactures tell you the download speed, in a mesh system it’s how fast the data can backhaul to the router). This one is amazing. It's easy to setup, fast, reliable, does not just drop connections and I rarely reboot it. It handles all the traffic with ease. For context, I just looked and have 49 devices online. My door locks, lights, thermostat, 16 HomePods, 2 Apple tv’s, iPads, 3 Apple watches, 9 powered 4k camera’s are all running on this. That in itself is amazing. Add that I live in a 1940’s house with rock board/wire mesh/plaster walls, a concrete block exterior- the signal has to go through 2 block walls to get to the garage, after it passes through a kitchen with restored metal cabinets. So yeah, I was impressed and still happy with the spend.

SUPER fast, but is it worth the insane price? This will be my third Orbi system. I had the original, then the Pro (which was hamstrung by 2021's requirement to pay monthly for a service to get full support out of it), and now this one. In our home we cannot easily run cable so the dedicated backhaul has always been a highlight for me vs. other mesh systems. Even with our Orbi Pro we weren't getting that great of performance. We have AT&T Gigabit Fiber, and we'd never get more than 200-300 Mbps on any device. Our desktops (and a few devices) are wired to the satellites and the dedicated backhaul should have been sufficient to give us better than that level of performance in our ranch style house. We decided to move from the Pro to this even though the cost was super high. Awfully expensive compared to anything else in its class. Yet we both typically work from home and need stability and speed for all of our devices and computers. We thought we'd give this new 6E system a try and if it weren't better, we'd return it. (I was almost hoping it wouldn't be better to avoid this price point!) Well... it IS better. Insanely better. WOW! I have my AT&T Fiber Modem in IP Passthrough mode (I hate their interface) so that we can use the Orbi as the router. We are consistently getting 700-950 Mbps down and 700-over 1000 Mbps up on computers wired to the satellites (NOT wired to the router, using the dedicated backhaul). Absolutely amazing. Phones and tablets on Wi-Fi to the system are getting 400-600 Mbps. Modern laptops on Wi-Fi are getting 500-700 Mbps. Pings are in the 5-7ms range. That's the fastest I've seen with any router / access point setup I've done with this fiber connection unless I'm hard wired directly to the modem (which will typically get me over 1 Gbps both directions). The bottom line is that this thing is solid and fast! Now we've only had it for a few days. Time will tell how it holds up. Is it worth the money? It depends. If you have a 500+ Mbps WAN (Internet) connection and really need the fastest connection and can't go wired, then yes. Lots of streaming meetings, games, TV, all at the same time... totally worth it to save your sanity. Otherwise, I don't think it is. You can get something good (even other Orbi systems) for 1/3 the price. But if stability and speed are paramount for you and you have a limit on being able to go wired, then this thing just might be worth it for you.

This is a very strong router with excellent signal everywhere. You may need less satellites than you think. I read all of this reviews about dropping signal and it happened to me, but that’s simply because I thought I needed a lot of satellites. Using Netspot app I saw how strong each signal was from each of the satellites and noticed they were causing interference with each other as they were all super strong. For me, when I had connections drop, I removed one satellite and spaced the other one to the other edge of the house. That worked miracles and my internet speed is through the roof all over the house (and even outside of the house). An excellent choice of router I highly recommend.

WARNING: Several modems (including SpaceX's StarLink specifically) have issues renewing DHCP leases. Constantly unplugging the WAN port from RBRE is required for new lease and internet functionality! REVIEW: Buying this for “the best of the best” is quite frankly the biggest tech disappointment I’ve ever had to endure. Think of it as upgrading from a 2018 Mercedes Benz (RAX200) to a 2022 Mercedes Benz (RBKE963) - the 2022 goes a little faster, but every feature inside the car has been stripped away completely. Seriously, how can you guys charge $1,499 USD for a mesh hardware system that comes with software that is an abysmal mess. - First of all if you use a Static IP, forget about it, prepare to rip your hair out during initial setup and reset the unit several times just for the static to function correctly. - Want to split your 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands? Nope, not possible. You are forced into using one SSID that combines them all. This will cause all sorts of issues on certain smart home setups, specifically legacy ones. - Want to force a daisy chain setup due to your specific satellite placement. Nope, forget about it, not possible to choose/force a daisy chain, the router decides automatically and 80% of the time decides wrong in specific house configurations, meaning both satellites will connect to the router and one will have terrible connectivity, you need to continue rebooting to get the daisy chain system you’re looking for, hoping you get lucky. Literally who thought of this? Why not let the users choose their own setup? This now means every power outage you get, your system becomes an utter mess and you’ll be forced back into rebooting to possibly get the daisy chain working again. Want to change the 5ghz channel to anything but default? Oh prepare for the biggest several wasted hours of your life while the satellites fail to sync correctly due to firmware issues. I near returned the unit at this point. It’s only when rolling back to the default 5ghz channel that things started to slowly sync up, after another hour or two mind you. This is likely some design failure seeing as the satellites use the 5ghz channel to communicate. (2.4 and 6 channel changing seems fine though). - Want to be sure who’s on your network at all times? Nope, prepare for ghost devices that access control just cannot see. I’ve been setting networks up for years and this is quite clearly a horrendous software. 95% of devices show fine but you WILL have ghost devices. - Want to make use of the features you had in previous non mesh standalone routers, OFDMA being one of many examples, nope, not possible. It’s all been stripped away. - Want remote web interface based management (since the app barely has any settings) for your router when you’re away from home, NOPE, remote management is only available through the terrible iOS app now, setting up a custom port to access the far more sane and functioning web interface has been stripped away, completely! - Want to create a guest network without a password temporarily if you’re hosting a party? You guessed it, not possible, passwords are now forced. Unsecured guest networks are suddenly a thing of the past, because you know, Netgear has decided we’re all dumb and can’t manage our own security practices. - Want a stable iOS application that can enable/disable access control, well, you’ll have it, 10% of the time, the other 90% it doesn’t allow for this easily and doesn’t even show you groupings of devices (which are connected to 2.4, which are to 5, etc). Device grouping and proper access control management will literally function 1 out of 10 times on app opening. (iOS 15.3 19D5026g). I’ve closed and opened this joke of an app at least 100 times, to the point where I feel like making a video on this issue just to demonstrate it. And I’m not even going to get into the fact the entire app is buggy, barely loads your configuration, and is designed for a 6 year old, who I bet would still get frustrated with it lol. I have no idea who gave the green light on such a dumbed down non-functional design. - Want an advertisement free experience as an advanced networking administrator, nope you’re out of luck. You will be PLASTERED with advertisements for parental control subscriptions (because apparently we all have kids) and Netgear armor spam. Seriously, we’re paying $1,499 for this? Oh and don’t forget parental controls are a monthly subscription for those who do care about that, don’t even think you get those out of the box lol. - Want tech support, or even a forum where perhaps a Netgear employee will visit from time to time to answer the communities concerns. Ha, in your dreams! Tech support is utterly useless, the community forums are dozens of times more useful, yet nearly all community members still continuously mention that not a single Netgear employee has been seen there in years to address any concerns. Meanwhile competitions router brands listen to their communities, actually communicate with them in an official capacity, push continuous firmware upgrades that ACTUALLY give the people what they want, and genuinely support their products. Meanwhile Netgear is as it’s always been. Release product, make money, release next product. All in all, will you have wifi in your house? Yes. The internet will work lol. Is it worth $1,499? My god, it’s barely worth $400 seeing as it’s completely stripped away several features and butchered its entire interface and application functionality from their previous high end non Orbi systems. You are wasting your money, buy the cheaper Orbis, or better yet look for a competitors product. Guys, nothing to see here. My wallet and I have bit the bullet for you and can safely say pass on this one. Hands down. If only there was a review like this prior to my purchase, I’d have saved a lot of money. EDIT: WARNING TO ALL BUYERS: Netgear has gone as far as to delete my review off their website. The netgear site falsely advertises customer satisfaction! (Further edits at bottom of review). EDIT 2: Netgear has released version 6.0.3.82 & 6.0.3.85. These updates not only fixe nothing but were never even recognized by both their iOS app and router administration page. It’s only because I stumbled upon them on the community forums that I realized updates have been released. To install these you must do so manually, and you must do satellites followed by router. (Doing it the other way around can render your unit useless, unless you have the downgrade firmware.) So through all this time, we have received useless updates that fixes nothing, and came to see yet another problem with this unit. An auto interface based update process that is non-functional at all and must be done manually. Seriously who is behind the engineering & IT team at Netgear?