Netgear Orbi
Verified101 reviews
Do not buy! Orbi app is useless, cannot turn 5G on and off. Login via web is near impossible and support is non existent. Supposedly a premium product, but in reality is sub standard!
I have not had a great experience with this router - Mesh system with 1 satellite could not cover a single story 3000 sq meter house. - Bought another Netgear extender and media casting started to fail. - QoS and even seeing what device is using how much traffic, security is all paywalled behind subscription. Went with Opensource OpenWRT based router next and very happy with it. My Router Firmware Version is V2.7.5.6 Show details
Biggest mistake was to buy this junk. Slow speeds, connection problems and non functional guest network. Took months of phone calls & log transfers before they finally agreed that it was faulty. Then was told there was no replacement stock available (even though they were still selling them online). After another 2 month wait (now over 6 months in… Read more
total), I contacted Amazon who agreed to refund it. Will never purchase another NETGEAR product, they treat customers like [Content Removed].
Reviews with attachments
Poor customer service and nothing currently working properly – Purchased this mainly because our printer has only wifi connection and wanted to be able to have the same wifi network throughout the house. After over a month still not working - gives about 2MB/S from the Router, even though without the Orbi we get around 95MB/S. Satellites are now not connecting at all. I would be happy to troubleshoot with… Read more
Customer Service, but so far I have spoken with 4 people of varying degrees of expertise, my call has been escalated twice (first time it wasn't done), and am now awaiting a callback (what do I do - sit by the router for 48hours waiting for this?). At a cost of over $1000 this is not acceptable. I just received an email asking if I would like to try some Beta firmware that the engineers have provided. What steps should I take now to get my money back, as I believe they will just keep stringing me along.
Netgear worse products on the market – One star is even too much for NETGEAR!! I purchased the system last year and ever since then I had nothing but on going mesh system wifi drop outs. Very Poor customer service and on top of all that they charged my credit card for an ARMOR Service which I never requested or even authorised for!! I am happy to pay premium price for a premium… Read more
product BUT I cannot justify paying a premium price for below average products. Don't waste your money! Do your research before you buy! And research the reviews online! I was going to spend a few more thousand dollars for Office and warehouse!! Luckily I didn't!! My biggest mistake
The Orbi Netgear is the worst mesh system available and the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE – The system drops out for days at a time. Customer services calls DROP OUT and even though provide them with a contact back number they have failed to call us back. On one day I have had to call customer service 6 times and gave up after dropping out 6 times with different Customer Service Officers. They do not have a Customer System where they… Read more
can record and recall the different cases to provide a more cohesive measure to fix and help support their system. I have had 3 Support Cases with Netgear and none of them have resolved the issue of the internet dropping out on 2 of the satellites. I am frustrated at the Customer Service and lack of help for the price of the System. It has been less than 4 months since receiving this product and it has done nothing but cause frustration and grief. We also run an at home business and you can understand the frustration of not having connection to the internet although our next satellite is less then 5 meters away from the router.
Very reliable however units quite physical big – Using the RBR50 + Satellite was by far the best wifi solution I’ve had for our large 2 story home. Nothing else was ever as reliable for speed and connection. The remote management tool for iPhone is fantastic - really good if you’re having to help less techy family members remotely. You can even turn individual devices off that are accessing the… Read more
wifi.
It’s certainly expensive and the units are quite physically big. But it works! Not a single hiccup in a year.
Ps oddly both the satellite and base ended up quite close to each other to get the best result - maybe 15m away. I was expecting they would need to be far apart to work best, but somehow it does the job!
In-depth reviews
Mesh that got some holes – This model of Orbi (RBR350+2s) at least seems problematic. It requires rebooting regularly, so much so that I fitted a power timer to the power supply so it turns off briefly at 3am every day and it still has issues. Why they dont build a routine reboot function into things I will never know. The second issue is the total lack of control over the… Read more
backhaul function. It decides everything and there is no way to educate it to be better. It should offer to do the backhaul on 5Ghz and the Wifi on 2.4Ghz, but it just picks random channels in either spectrum. This creates needless packet resends.
And on that topic, the ping times are woeful on the satelite units with wifi backhaul. I mean I expected a little more delay but forget playing real-time games like fortnight, typically 800ms.
Lastly, the App cannot distinguish multiple sites. The only way to diferentiate sites is by different router models. So dont buy multiple kits of the same model. Also this model does not seem to offer the anywhere access, at least on my system.
I really thought netgear would do a better job than this. Maybe future firmware updates will fix the issues, but in my experience, dont hold your breath. I hope they learn from this missed opportunity.
Not a bad setup – I have had my router+satellite setup for a year now, it mostly works flawlessly.. I havent noticed the dropouts I used to get on my phone, it works in the backyard now.. mostly im pretty happy. A couple of things to note: o the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks get combined.. this can occasionally be a problem because some things like arlec grid adapters… Read more
for example, they only like 2.4GHz.. so I sometimes spend a lot of time trying to get them initially setup.. similarly when you are troubleshooting wireless devices it would be nice to separate them out.
o I do have 1 Nintendo Switch that drops connection to it, but another than is 100% solid.. so maybe its not the routers fault here.. im experimenting with a few things still.. the router admin page is pretty good.
o I do have some strange noises coming from my power adapters (both of them), thats something I've been dealing with netgear support about.. I believe they will replace them.. but this doesn't seem a common issue, I cant find anyone else on the web with the issue.
Really happy with the results – We must have about 80 devices that connect to the internet between all of the Alexa's, home automation etc. Our old router from the ISP was struggling with that many devices and would keep booting devices off of the network as it wasn't able to manage that many devices. But the biggest issue was super slow internet speeds. So I purchased Orbi… Read more
and have been so impressed. We have HFC NBN, and I thought this replaced the ISP router. However Orbi it still uses the HFC box and ISP router - it is just that Orbi plugs into the router. Set up was really quick and easy - kept the network name and password the same as it had been on the router.
Now have much better wifi coverage over the whole house, much faster internet speeds (so it was the wifi that was the slow point), and all our devices are able to stay connected to the network all of the time. Super happy.
I haven't needed to get any help with this product though, it was easy enough to set up on my own - a lot of the complaints listed here seem to be if you need to contact Netgear customer service.
Recent reviews
Not Recommended – Great when it works. Have had the mesh system for about 2 years. Did have constant drop outs for first 12 months and NETGEAR Service was just awful. Told me firmware updates via app do not work so I had to download from their website on a USB etc. unacceptable for something that cost this much. When it works it is super fast and stable. Last 12… Read more
months I have only needed to reboot about 3 times so hope this lasts! In retrospect would not buy again as I don’t mind paying premium prices for premium products and service but NETGEAR offer neither.
Constantly dropping out – Constantly dropping out. Have called my Interner provider multiple times and rebooted multiple times. Which helps for a time but then back to dropping out. Most of the time i use the data on my phone of I'm.in the middle of something so I don't.lose my place. I'm on the hunt for a better router if anyone has any advice??
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Orbi - Very unreliable – Drops the internet every day every few hours and more. Tried everything to get it to work. Our old Lynksys router worked for months without ever dropping connection. Support helped at the start now want money for the existing issue. In my experience probably the worst customer service. I would say, don't buy Orbi or Netgear until they have addressed the issues. Show details
Bad experience – Moved to new adress, switch from 2 degrees modem to Orbi modem. The Orbi modem is soooo bad. Our smart TV can't even pick up the wifi and it's next to the modem. We've had the orbi for a week now and it's crap. Having endless problems picking up the wifi on ALL devices.
Orbi mesh syst – I have had the Orbi mesh system for 2 years and in that time it has not worked more times than l care to remember. Also had it replaced under warranty. It’s unless system even worse is Negear service. They want $90 everytime you call. Don’t buy this product. Show details
Fast but often unreliable – This is a great system when in works properly which unfortunately is the minority of the time. Constants device dropouts, failing to resolve local device names constantly, IOT devices being randomly dropped, the list goes on. We have had the same router across ADSL, Fibre to the Node and Fibre to the Premises and all have experience the same… Read more
problems. The latest firmware resolves the issues with some of the devices dropping out by introducing a seperate IOT 2.4 network but introduced random restarting issues. We had the device replaced but it appears to be a consistent software fault.
We have had 2 sets of Orbi devices, the previous model we used was 2.4ghz only and had similar issues, we thought it was just because it was an early model. That turned out not to be the case.
If you need reliability avoid the Orbi line, they are excellent when they work but do t expect that to be very often.
Didn't Work from day 1 – I paid a fair amount of money for this setup, from day 1 it has not worked, the 2 satellites stay at status of not synced - I have spent over 8 hours on the phone to the Netgear experts who can not fix the problem. Every time I ring I get someone new who wants to trouble shoot, these things have been reset and mucked around with at least 8 times,… Read more
they do not work - I am currently on hold with them again after demanding a replacement - all they want to do is trouble shoot again and again - I have read of others having the same issue - I will not be buying a Netgear Orbi set up again and would advise others to stay clear
DO NOT BUY NETGEAR ORBI – Hours and days wasted on the phone with Netgear technicians to try and get the router to connect to our NBN NTD. Seriously the biggest waste of time. Days later it finally connected but then proceeded to lose the wifi connection every 30 minutes/60 minutes. On my 5th support call, the technician said that he has been through all the… Read more
troubleshooting and couldn't fix it as the router is faulty - which is what I said days ago. But it's out of warranty so my only option is to buy another one.
My advice and the advice from others leaving review is DO NOT BUY NETGEAR ORBI unless you feel like wasting hours of your time.
Worst system I can imagine – Have had this system for over 3 years, worked well first 6 months, then satellites kept going of line, sometimes only hours after being reset. Then satellite range for signal seemed to shrink. After money invested I got more satellites, same problem after 3 months. Now all have fallen over and the last satellites are not even a month old. Show details
Talks the talk, doesn’t walk the walk – I purchased a Netgear Orbi system with 2 satellites in June to replace an aging Google Mesh system, as we had recently upgraded to a FTTP connection. It worked brilliantly until our power was turned off during some electrical work, cue 3 hours of hair tearing, swearing fun to get everything back online. Got over that hurdle only to have the NBN… Read more
contractors, who were upgrading next door, cut off our internet. Yep, you guessed it, off we go again. Gave up trying to get everything reconnected until we came back home from our holiday. Tried to get the last items reconnected and it bricked itself again. That was it, back it went. I have since found out that there is a problem with the way it handles DHCP addresses, which Netgear has known about for at least 3 years and have not resolved. The fact that they only give you 3 months support ought to tell you something. I have since replaced it with a Google Nest Pro, which just works! Buy at your own peril.
Orbi RBR850 Pathetic Device – Spent around $1000 to buy a Orbi Router and Satellite. The connection keeps dropping and the support is just bad. They just have around 3 months of support service which is not enough. When tried reaching their support team to sort out the issue they keep saying nothing wrong with the device and push you buy the water toy for 3 months which is around $100. DON’T BUY THIS PRODUCT. There are better mesh network availability in the market. Show details
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I will never again buy a Netgear product! – I will never again buy a Netgear product. I rang about an issue with my Orbi which was just outside of warranty by one month and they made me buy a 3 month support package where I call almost daily for over a month to try to resolve my issue with the router to no avail. They then promised to send me a new Orbi after we had exhausted all… Read more
troubleshooting options but now after 8 months of waiting as they alledged to have not stock, they have closed my case with no apology or recourse. WARNING: Please think twice about purchasing a Netgear product as they will not provide you with any type of support or assistance and do not honour their promises.
Power outage, always problems – I bought 1 router and 2 satellite orbi system. I want to use the mesh wifi in Access Point mode. When ever I lose power. I lose control of all my lights everything. It is always a hassle to get it back up. For some reason, everytime, i need to put the Orbi in Router mode. Then back to AP mode. As my pc is wired not to the Orbi it is always… Read more
annoying. Netgear also give no support 3 months after you have bought your device. 3 months... after that I need to rely on the community to help me. (The community won't be issuing new firmware to repair this problem). I wish I bought a dedicated access point setup. I am over it and want to sell them.
Constant drop-outs, regular reboots – I have not stopped having problems since I bought these three units. And they were not cheap. To make matters, worse net gear keeps peddling their bitdefender subscription service that claims just stop problems. This should not be an ad on to an already expensive product. Either create a quality product with all the necessary add-ons that make it… Read more
fit for purpose or discontinue it. We have constant drop-offs with the main unit and the satellites disconnect 2 to 3 times a day. This then requires a reboot. This is therefore a nightmare for running zoom training sessions for an IT training business and streaming entertainment at night. Have decided to bail and gone to Starlink with mesh satellites have had no problems since. Netgear have permanently lost me as a customer, and I will be sharing the story with all of my students.
Headaches and nightmares – Expensive Limited 90 day support. You have to pay for support after 90 days. This is unacceptable for such an expensive product My App and web interface show zero devices connected when there are at least 15. Devices slowly disappeared over time. At least they are still connected. Difficult to connect new devices. Parental control which you have… Read more
to subscribe to and pay for is a waste of time and money. Looks good, performs well when running correctly. Trouble is that all was well for a short period of time before troubles began. The only recommendation that I can give to a prospective purchaser is to avoid
Router / Modem have manufacturing fault - Breach of consumer guarantee – Netgear products are not so bad but Netgear CC is worst than Kogan customer care, Online chat box does not allow to connect to Agent, Phone care is almost 1hr 20 min wait and no call back in case of call drop (you can imagine the frustration to dial again), If you can imagine the worst customer care you have come across than try this and plz reply… Read more
to my comment if you find any other company :), I wish we have customer care awards like oscars ;) it will be great to see netgear runner up for worst CC.
Don’t buy it – Does work, sometimes, but is completely unreliable and needs constant attention just to function as it should. Terrible purchase. Save yourself the trouble. Show details
Netgear has terrible (initial) customer service - fixed the problem but took a lot of effort – I have had the orbi for not quite a year and I have recently been trying to subscribe to the parental controls from the app. The problem is I am unable to select the 'terms and conditions/privacy' tickbox (a green circle) which then allows me to place an order via the app. It won't let me select either the green circle or the tickbox. After… Read more
several customer service calls I have been advised 1. after being passed around like a football; 2 that it was the apple platform, 4. to use an alternative parental control app?!! 5. they would contact me to process the subscription. It's been a week since I started trying to set up the controls and nothing has changed or happened.
update - To be fair to Netgear I have now received parental control for the orbi now and it's… Read more
Works and good coverage – I've had a two pack for 6 months now and it is very stable- or as good as it can be on NBN's terrible FTTN. It recovers ok from most outages and the wifi coverage is good. Setup is a little awkward and pay attention if the satellite is not happy with the connection. I have 40 devices hanging off it and no issues. Itis extremely expensive but its the only mesh system that has worked for me Show details
Unreliable and expensive – I replaced an older very good Netgear Orbi system with the RB850 router and satellite 2 years ago. It was very expensive and has been unreliable and time-consuming to keep running. Now that it is 2 weeks out of warranty and has failed again, Netgear will not provide support without paying at least $119. Show details
Toilet app can’t connect – App has no buttons keeps you caught in time out loops. Website login not available IP address doesn’t ping. Beyond frustrating at every corner. Show details
Do not buy this routrer – Worst customer service I have ever experienced. Told the only way that they can help fix a $1000 router is if you give them another $300 dollars. The product is not even 6 months old. Drops out at least ten times a day. Buyer beware. Show details
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Wonderful Officeworks accepted the return, Netgear just sent me a rambling offer of a replacement… Read more