Netgear Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi router Reviewed

People are talking about the Mesh routers these days and how they can fill your house with strong and seamless connectivity. 

Why not try it out? But from where to start, which one of them is the best router. 

Well, Netgear Orbi is the definite answer and one of the best Mesh Wi-Fi routers out there in the market. It has the ability to fill your Home with strong Wi-Fi signals.

 Are you looking for something much powerful? 

 Netgear has that power, it’s a snap to setup and has more power than any other Mesh Wi-Fi routers. Orbi has a dedicated channel from router to extension, which makes it faster and more reliable for your online wants.

 Design

Instead of going for tiny and smaller devices like Ubiquiti HD or Google Mesh Wi-Fi, Netgear Mesh router and satellite are quite bigger. The Netgear Orbi towers are taller and wider, measuring 8.9 inches x 6.7 inches x 3.1 inches. Hiding the Orbi devices will be a little tougher than you think.

On the top of the Netgear Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi router, an LED in the oval shape around is present. Like all other mesh routers, it glows in various colors which indicates the status of the mesh router or satellite. If it’s blue, means everything is okay, if its amber which means the connection is weak and need your attention. But if it’s magenta, the connection is gone. 

Netgear Orbi used Tri-Band MU-MIMO Wi-Fi technology. The primary 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands provide a maximum speed of around 1.2 Gbps. The third 5 GHz radio band added by the Netgear, tackle’s the backhaul, the data which transferred between the Orbi router and Orbi satellites. This makes the internal connection between the router and the satellite stronger and reliable.

To improve the performance and strong signals, Netgear Orbi has 6 antennas around the perimeter. The Router of the Netgear and its satellite looks exactly same, but satellite cannot act as a router. You cannot pick a random satellite and make it a router. 

Router is able to connect with three satellites at a time. I hope in future there will be satellite to satellite connection.

On the backside of the Netgear Orbi are 4 Ethernet ports, a sync button for the synchronization of the router with the satellites, a reset button to reset the device, a DC port to power up the device, a power button for On/Off and a USB 2.0 port. 

The yellow port is used to connect the device to broadband, while the other ports can be used to connect to printers, laptops and PC’s.

Performance

Talking about the performance of Orbi router, it’s like Linksys Velop 2×2 router that can handle two simultaneous data streams at same time per frequency band. Also it adds MU-MIMO Wi-Fi technology to the game, which uses a separate band for sending data streams to multiple devices at the same time. 

Each Orbi device has a Qualcomm’s IPQ4019 Wi-Fi control chip, with the processor of 710 MHz quad-core ARM. It has 512 Mb memory and 4 GB of storage to support the device. A QCA9984 chip, which controls the Backhaul of the system.

 Netgear Orbi is a powerful device, it deliver the best speed and beat every router out there in the market. It gives best speed and most reliable seamless connectivity throughout the house. 

It can deliver a combined speed of 552.1 megabits per second at a distance of 5 feet, which is faster than Google Wi-Fi, Linksys and Ubiquiti HD 

Customization

Netgear provides a smartphone application for the Orbi devices. The Orbi-App has very limited features, they kept it to the very basics. Even you won’t be able to monitor the speed of the internet through the Orbi app. 

 The browser interface of the Orbi device is quite detailed and informative, with network usage and speed monitor. The web interface allows the user to use it, as a guest network so that users can access it from laptop and smartphones without using the main access password.  

You can also do the more complicated stuff there on the web interface. They provide bundle of features in there, such as port forwarding, IPV6 addressing and parental controls.  

Security and parental controls

As all the routers, The Netgear Orbi also comes with the default network name and password, which can be used at first and changed with time to make it more personal and secure.  

Netgear claims that they will soon add the capability of pausing the internet connection for some time. This can be done from smartphone app or web browser. This features will help during family dinners and get together. 

 Talking about the parental controls of the Netgear Orbi device. You will need to download the genie app from the store and create a DNS account. This is it, now you can add the unwanted sites and Orbi will filter them and will keep them out of hand.  

Final Verdict

The market is full of mesh routers. Google Wi-Fi is good for budget, Ubiquiti has an impressive design, and Eero is more customizable. At the end it always comes to personal preferences. Netgear Orbi is costly but it has everything design, power and features.