SXK50B3

I had researched the Netgear Orbi routers and ordered the three tower package. They arrived on time and were packaged carefully. Unfortunately our Xfinity Internet went down and they could not get the signal other than intermittently. I did not open nor install tge Netgear Orbi towers. I had to return them until we get an adequate internet signal from Xfinity or change carriers to get a steady signal. If needed I will buy them again due to their high rating in the industry.

The orbi hardware did exactly what I wanted. The router is in my water well pump house covering the entrance of our property. I then have the ethernet cable routed underground into my house with the first satellite in our living room. All my entertainment equipment is plugged into that first satellite. The second satellite is tucked up under the eves at the far end of the house providing coverage to the yard an master bedroom. It’s a daisy chain configuration and because of the extra ethernet ports on the pro series it allows the flexibility to connect that way. The wifi 6 has excellent penetration thru walls and the last satellite in the chain is just as fast as the router so I couldn’t be more pleased with the hardware. The apps on the other hand are totally useless garbage imo. The insight app wouldn’t let me register the new router and to retry it wanted me to reset the whole system to factory settings and start over! The Netgear Genie app won’t work at all and the nighthawk app is useless for orbi devices. That leaves me with the consumer grade Orbi app, well it won’t work with the (pro) series hardware. I spent hours waisting my time trying to get something to work to no avail. The only RELIABLE way to control the orbi pro devices is directly logging on using the IP address or routerlogin.com which is fine but seriously they need to spend some time making the configuration control apps actually work with their products if they’re going to promote their use. Somebody at Netgear needs to actually try using these apps! I would give 10 stars to the hardware and minus 5 stars for the apps. All that being said I was able to access all the settings necessary to set up my system exactly as I wanted using routerlogin.com and I’m very pleased with my purchase and think it’s an excellent value.

I purchased the Orbi Pro 6 with 2 satellites that is supposed to cover 7000 sq ft, however, even with only 12 devices using Wi-Fi, the signal is ALWAYS weak & intermittent (We can’t even stream Netflix without constant buffering) it is constantly disconnecting/reconnecting & we have several complete dead spots in a 3600 sq ft home. (Our home is built with standard 2x6’s & drywall, so ‘construction materials’ blocking the signal is NOT the issue.) I have watched every help tutorial I can find, have tried placing the satellites in different rooms/areas, have done more factory resets than I can count and have reached out to customer service several times with NO response. I have spent HOURS upon HOURS trying to fix this to no avail. I really wish I had listened to the many reviews stating these same issues before wasting nearly $700 on a system that is pretty much useless & is outperformed by our old $150 Google Mesh! (which I’m pretty sure is the original we bought in 2017, yet is still more reliable than this Orbi!) I usually NEVER write reviews, especially negative ones, but I wanted to hopefully spare someone else from the same experience. I’m at a total loss! :-/ I hope this helps someone.

I bought this for home - 3700 sqft on 3 levels including basement. Normal sized residential lot. I have security cameras around the house and property and outdoor patio spaces that were weakly served by my Nighthawk gaming router which was not wifi 6. This is a very solid platform that was pretty easy to setup with just a few bumps. My first speed test was disappointing because I started with the Wireless1 network which apparently is also the backhaul for the satellites. Netgear should have made Wireless3 the backhaul as it is normal to start configuring Wireless1. The doco doesn't address this. Wireless1 cannot split the SSIDs by 2.4 ghz or 5 ghz, it must be both. So my phone kept connecting as 2.4 and I saw lower bandwidth than my old router. Once I realized I could split the SSIDs on Wireless2 and Wireless3, I replicated my old setup with same names and passwords on Wireless2, splitting the 2.4 and the 5 each with a different SSID. Now I can connect to 5 for certain, and wow, the speed is amazing. I have a gigabit fiber connection. Now I am actually taking full advantage of it. My old router would do 135 mbps to my phone sitting in the same room. I now get almost 900 down and 900 up. My wired xbox gets better performance too. The satellites were very easy to setup since they came in a kit and were already synced to the base. I am still tweaking the satellite locations, but I have excellent coverage inside and outside for all the iot stuff and when using all corners of our outdoor space. I would highly recommend this system for home use for those with lots of smart home stuff, streaming, gaming, and working at home. It is on sale at a great price since the wifi 6E stuff is now out. I do not have any 6E devices, and while 6E is faster, it is also less spread out. Better coverage with wifi 6, and the speeds are great. I'm seeing 500 mbps on the far reaches of my patio and 180 mbps in the former dead zone of the patio against the house with lots of stone on an inside fireplace. Simply amazing for $350 and a couple hours of setup. I did have to reconnect a Ring camera and Ring doorbell, even as 4 other Ring cameras connected without issue. The network management site is pretty good. I have 24 devices connected and things that move around like phones, tablets and laptops move to the best connection seamlessly.

Not great even for the sale price of $209.99. My RBK50 had infinitely better reliability. This thing has more features, like the VLAN, but also so many more bugs. It sometimes needs to be factory reset to even access the router via web portal. It may also just reset all your settings after a reboot. The VLAN could be cool if it could remember its settings, but unfortunately, that's not the case. The connectivity is good though, except when it decides that it shouldn't connect the ethernet devices with the wi-fi devices or when it decides that a certain device shouldn't be able to connect to the internet anymore. I can see why it was on sale and also why the discontinued it so quickly. It shouldn't make sense that this device was retired before the RBK50 that came out in 2017. Overall, probably gonna go for a different brand in the future.

I have always steered clear of NETGEAR and friends because the "normie" networking gear brands are way overpriced for what they are and usually dumbed down for mass market (Install the "Networks for Babies" app to configure your router - enter credit card number to enable Hacker Stopper(TM) and "supercharge your Streamie-weamies", etc..). However I can't argue with success here. These replaced a Quotom industrial PC that I turned into a router/AP and a MikroTik Cloud Switch. Both had issues with stability, and in the case of the MikroTik was slow and needed reboots. Those two have been relegated to the lab. These AP's are solid, fast, and I'm glad I bought them. I just hate paying these "prosumer" prices for stuff.

I purchased this product to expand and speed up my wifi system it did slightly but not nearly what I expected, I have 1gig service from my isp but the most i can get is 60 mbps in my farthest room, my house is 2200 sf so I expected the Orbi system to handle that distance with ease, but unfortunately my Television still experienced lots of buffering and the system often had to restarted . This isn't working for what i paid . I want to set it up, get good coverage and speed and forget about it. so far thats not happening

Couple of tips here that can prove valuable to higher bandwidth packages. Setup: after you complete the setup process, you'll see that there are about 3 different networks that can be configured. The first is the default "Orbi" network. On testing, I could not obtain nearly the speeds provided from my girlfriend's internet package which should have been about 456 down over 22 up. I was getting around 150 down. After playing around with it I gave up and configured the "wireless 1" network to separate the 2.4 and 5ghz bands. This produced the speeds I was looking for on the 5ghz band. The one annoying thing I found is that I have yet to find a way to turn off the default Orbi network. Since we are using the wireless 1 profile, the orbi profile is unnecessary. Onto the review. Solid design, 4 ethernet ports on all devices (i have the 3 pack ((1 router, 2 satellites))), heavy for a router which I like. Wifi 6 in my testing takes your higher bandwidth further and at a lower loss. The directions were fairly straightforward but I've set up hundreds of routers. Girlfriend's house is about 2500 Sq ft but she's got a bigger backyard and I wanted us to be able to get wifi about 150 feet back by her fire pit. So the router is centrally located on the main floor, both satellites are at opposite ends of the house upstairs about 25 feet from the router. I'm getting about 2 of 5 bars and about 25mbps back by the fire pit which I'm happy with. Longevity I cannot comment on since I just set this up yesterday. I can try to update if something goes wrong but I'm optimistic this will last the industry standard 5 years if not longer. We'll see.