New WiFi router review time. I got a Netgear Orbi router (“AX11000 Quad-Band Orbi WiFi 6E Router”) and 3 Satellites.
I actually had one of the first-ten Netgear Orbi’s, a WiFi Mesh router, and I didn’t like it. That was probably back in maybe, what, 2016 or 2017 if it was the first-generation model?
Why? Well, my house is mostly square, but there’s a weird little corner that is hard to get WiFi into.
The original Orbi didn’t quite work so great - occasionally I would get disconnects and things like that.
It was replaced with a Netgear router of some kind with lots of antennas, and later a Netgear Nighthawk with Stealth-bomber looking wings, containing I imagine more antennas. I was pretty sure this worked lots better than the mesh setup.
The one big super router was able to cover the whole house pretty well except for a few annoying dead zones - I couldn’t get WiFi in my “movie closet” (it’s a very small room, really, and has closet-style doors), and when trying to arm my security system you had to be in exactly the right spot in the driveway. Because my house has really bad cellular reception, standing in front of one window could cause WiFi calling to drop a call.
Now, this was livable, and I wasn’t really looking to switch routers, but recently got the genius idea (ahem) to move my Ring outdoor cameras and doorbell over to Simplisafe, so all my video was in the same system, and there was one less and app and subscription fee to deal with. That worked mostly fine up until I figured out that the WiFi radios in the Simplisafe cameras weren’t very powerful. (Aside: I completely recommend Simplisafe otherwise, and the interior cameras have much better WiFi too).
So, I’m slowly getting there - I decided to finally try Mesh WiFi again. I didn’t want to do the Google thing because Google kills products, and I didn’t want to try Eero because Amazon is getting to be a bit too powerful. With Ring, I’m still unhappy with how it automatically subscribed me to Amazon Sidewalk against my wishes and didn’t tell me, then said removal would take up to 30 days. Not the most consumer-centric company. The new Orbi seemed to be the leading mesh solution, despite being quite expensive, so I decided to try it out. I have had great experience with Netgear other than the first-ten model, and reviews seemed to be solid.
It turns out the new Orbi is really good - the Orbi has replaced the little wall-outlet-plug-in Satellites with satellites that are as exactly as big as the main router unit.
Each device has four ethernet ports, allowing me to remove two separate dumb switches from my networking setup, and also supports an ethernet backchannel link if you happen to have one a Satellite can use (otherwise it’s 6GHz or 2.4GHz WiFi, depending on distance).
I decided to order the 1 Station + 2 Satellite pack, and then added on another Satellite (for 3 Satellites total) which I think may have been unnecessary, but I did it anyway.
I ended up putting them a bit closer together than I thought I would - one Satellite is at the opposite end of the house from the router unit (and cable modem), one unit in the movie closet is on WiFi on the 2nd floor, and while I thought I’d end up putting the 3rd in my attic space, it ended up not being close enough to the router and didn’t seem to want to daisy-chain to the other satellites though that is apparently supported. After it showed that it wanted to connect at 2.4GHz, I instead moved it also the second floor, so I’ve got 2 units on Floor 1 and 2 units on Floor 2.
Setup was really easy other than some minor issues connecting the last satellite, and the configuration mobile app is simple and very good. You can browse each Satellite to see what speed the backchannel is, do a speed test from the router, and see what internet devices are connected to each Satellite or the router. Configuring a second named SSID for 2.4GHz devices is supported in the configuration menus.
Speeds and range so far are very good, with fibre providing close to 950 mbps, WiFi from the computers is at 450 mbps via fast.com, and I have WiFi range extending beyond the lot lines (note: my yard isn’t very big), sometimes approaching 450 mbps in the yard, sometimes closer to 150.
The obvious downside to the system is that it’s pretty expensive, but it’s good to not have some dead zones that I had before, and now those security system cameras I shouldn’t have bought finally work reliably.
Reviews indicate it automatically signs you up for some subscription services, but that doesn’t seem to be the case - Netgear has a paid service that scans your IoT/smart devices for vulnerabilities of some kind, but hasn’t found anything yet. I probably wouldn’t pay for it, there’s a slim chance I am automatically enrolled, but it didn’t seem to force me to sign up for anything else.
I also see on the website you can get the WiFi 6 vs WiFi 6E system for a considerable price difference - given I don’t really even know what WiFi 6E is, you might want to consider that option. I only know what Reddit knows about the Nighthawk mesh units, but seeing the price differential, I’d assume they have some major limitations and/or range issues?
Will see how reliable things are in the future, but good so far!
(One possible gotcha to be aware of, if you have Sonos system, be sure you have at least one of your speakers plugged into the wired network, which allows them to form their own private wireless mesh — it’s worth doing even if you have a single router. Apparently SonosNet is 2.4 GHz radio but not actually WiFi)