Netgear Orbi – Review
Wifi is not only great for connecting your devices to the internet, but it has also become the “wiring” system for many home automation devices to communicate. Although my house isn’t super big, like many people, was having challenges with good Wifi signal throughout the house. Compounding matters, for the sake of a clean look, my AppleTV box is now in the garage, far from the router, and the connection just wasn’t reliable. I have already purchased a Wifi extender, but that wasn’t doing the trick either. So did some research on the new Wifi mesh network systems, plunged in and purchased a Netgear Orbi….
I purchased a 2 unit system, it came with a base and one satellite. I purchased it from Best Buy for $379, at the time the price was the same as Amazon, and Best Buy had it in stock, so I purchased it there. I also found the product at Costco, but they only carried a 3 unit system, one base and two satellites, so it was a better deal “per unit” but since I was going to be OK with the single satellite I didn’t purchase it from Costco.
Since I’m a home automation person, before I purchased the Orbi, I made sure it had key functionality that I’d need to enable me to connect to my devices while away from home. Many of these new systems are designed around “ease of use” which is great for many users, but I needed good signal and lots of functionality. The Orbi supports port forwarding, IP address assignment, a guest network and DNS. More info about how these things helps you connect is available here. While the guest network was a “want” rather than a “need”, all other functionality was needed to ensure my existing home automation systems continued to work well.
I purchased a mesh system for a few reasons. First, extenders use the same wireless communication channels to communicate as the items that connect to it. So anything that connects to the extender uses 2x the bandwidth, once to connect to the repeater, and once from the repeater to the router. The Orbi is a “tri-band” device, it uses two of the bands to provide Wifi, and the third to communicate with the base router, leaving the regular channels open for device connectivity. Another benefit of Orbi is that the SSID of the satellite is the same as the base. So connected devices can connect to either the base or the satellite, using the same SSID and login information, and if they move around the house (as some home automation devices do) they can connect to either without any issues. Finally, if I ever move and want even more coverage, the system supports additional satellites, so I can add-on later if I need to.
I’ll cover the pros and cons…
First the pros, and there are many!
This is the first Netgear product I’ve ever purchased with a beautiful “out of box” experience. The product is packaged like an Apple or Sonos product. Opening the box feels like you’re getting a high-quality product, and you are. Once unboxed and plugged-in, the setup software started up automatically on my PC. Not sure how it did that, but it was very cool. The satellite unit has 4 ethernet ports on the back of it. This is really handy if you have a device (such as a printer) that can’t connect wirelessly and you want to get it onto your network, you can plug it into the base or the satellite of the Orbi (the base has 3 available ethernet ports, the fourth is to connect to your modem). The units are attractive, they don’t “look” like routers, and they look ok in a living room, on a bookshelf, there are not any visible antennas. My satellite is on a coffee table in my living room and it doesn’t look out of place. Both units have a ring of light that you can see around the top of the unit that can help with setup, and of course the big one… the Wifi signal now rocks everywhere in the house!
I’m happy I purchased this product and recommend it, there are some cons though…
The software that comes with Orbi is much better than my old Netgear router, but it still has a ways to go. Small things like 4 different “wait” icons, the menu structure is still awkward, and there is functionality that I saw and then can’t find a way to navigate back to it. So the software is going in the right direction, but still not at the quality level as the packaging or the hardware design. I was really hoping for a Wifi “meter” function on my cellphone (so I could check signal strength in different areas of the house), but didn’t get that with the software that comes with this product. My biggest beef are the power adapters. They are very large boxes that plug into the wall. You can’t change the orientation of how they plug-in, so using them behind furniture or in tight spots will require a short extension cord. Given the size of the units they shouldn’t need a big power adapter plug, but if they do, they should have had a cable from the power brick to the outlet, so you have more flexibility plugging it in. As mentioned earlier the base station only has 3 ethernet ports to plug hardwired devices into, my previous Netgear router had four, so that’s a bit of a con, although easily addressed with an inexpensive ethernet switch (I need one anyway because I already had more than 4 devices to plug into the base). Another frustration was that the products arrived with old firmware, and the updating process was a bit confusing and time consuming. I didn’t realize that it needed updating at first, until I couldn’t find the “guest network” functionality. Checked online and realized that I needed the latest firmware to do that. Another odd thing was that the firmware update for the base and satellites are different, but have the same file name, so it’s easy to confuse them when you download them to your computer to update the devices. I accidentally used the base station file to update the satellite unit, it was smart enough to tell me I had the wrong file, but it was a time waster going through that. The last con was that during the initial setup, the satellite was very fussy about where it could be located. Once I had it setup and the firmware updated and everything working I was able to move it further away from the base, but during the initial setup it was a bit scary how close it had to be to the base to connect.
The Setup Experience…
From the time I opened the box until the system was up and running as a basic home router was about an hour. That included unboxing, plugging in the units and following the standard setup process. It could have been faster but (as mentioned already) I had to update the firmware on both units, which took some time. I didn’t at any time have any difficulties with the setup software, or instructions. Once the system was setup and working I did spend another few hours setting-up my DNS, IP address and port forwarding settings, but that is advanced stuff that only related to my home automation system, and that would have taken the same amount of time on any router. If you are not an experienced person handling routers, I’d leave a “worst case scenario” window of about 2-hours to set this system up, during which you and the rest of the family won’t have internet access.
The verdict…
Yes I recommend the purchase of the Netgear Orbi for general home use, and also for home automation users. It’s simple enough to setup for users with very basic networking skills (or none at all) yet has the depth of functionality needed for more complex home automation setups. Since I’ve installed the system I haven’t once seen my AppleTV buffer, and since I gave-up on cable tv, that’s really important!
