NETGEAR Orbi WiFi System - 3 Pack


NETGEAR Orbi WiFi System - 3 Pack

I got this same set about a month or so ago at BB, almost wish I waited. I’ve always had trouble getting a signal from the second floor to the basement. I use to use those wall wart power line network adapters but they weren’t as reliable or fast as this setup is for me. It works really well. I like how the satellites have two Ethernet connections each besides the WiFi repeating. I use one to connect my Nvidia Shield Plex to my NAS drive. No issues up to 4K . Now I have a strong signal in the house and my smart devices have strong connections. I guess my only complaints are the setup options are relatively limited compared to the D-Link DIR-895L this setup replaced. Also, the main unit only has 3 Ethernet connections. Setup was relatively simple though.

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I have been using Orbi with a single satellite for about 3 years. It is awesome. Basically maintains near-wire-line speeds, wirelessly. Compared to older routers and the first gens of linksys and netgear single-router implementations for the home, the Orbi blew them away. I am not sure when Netgear makes an Orbi that is wifi 6/802.11ax, when I will upgrade… probably when lags or high capacity streams dictated (like 8K TV streams). Anyway… these refurbished ones come with a second satellite so are better than half price. Only thing I wish is that the USB port were USB 3 or C, and were capable of connecting and hosting a network storage drive.

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I bought the single satellite version here about 18 months ago. It has been rock-solid. A couple unexpected bonuses - it has Disney Circle built in which is great to keep the kids safe. Also, the satellite units have RJ45 jacks so we can plug the basement desktop computer into it. We have a perfect signal everywhere in our 4,500 sq ft house, plus the yard.

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Don’t do it!

I had this exact system and after 6 months of fighting with Netgear, I realized the Orbi cannot handle your Modem issues. It would literally stop working about 3 to 10 times a day with random reboots and more and go up and down depending on the new firmware pushed.

Read the forums. Not a stable mesh network product.

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I have the big brother( RBK53S-100NAS that I bought from Costco) to the system RBK43 here on woot today. I love the system, it works well coverage is nice,even and fast. The one issue I don’t like about mine, and I assume this is set up in a similar fashion, is that the wifi shows up as 1 access point to join (it’s not separated into 5G and 2.4G), then the router decides which band to attach your device to. Normally it does pretty well, but sometimes it will pick a 2.4G band for a device that I want on a 5G band, and it takes a little playing around with the device to get it to connect to the correct band. One of my computers does not have the option to turn off the 2.4G band on the wifi, whereas other computers/devices may have that option. After going to the forums at one time they had a firmware that would allow you to split the bands out, but the device will auto-update to the latest firmware and then that option disappears. I have to say that the ORBI system is really pretty good, between phones, smart devices, laptops computers TV’s …I have like 40-50 devices on my network and they play really nice, it’s rare I get an IP conflict, and the bandwidth is distributed well based on demand- this would be the perfect system if only they gave me the option to split the bands.

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Last year I bought the Orbi RBK23 from amazon for 238 which is the also a 3-unit ac2200 mesh setup, but my Router/Satellites have 2 network jacks instead of the 4 that this woot version has. This deal gives you more ports and a better price, vs refurb instead of new.

I was abled to do wired backhaul because our house is wired for ethernet. It is doing Really Well in a large house, coverage throughout, I thought I’d need to add more satellites but I don’t, we get full signal everywhere.

Good management utility and setup over wifi using an app or browser. Some competitors only work with an app - meaning their mesh system will be useless when they stop supporting the app. Some competitors use bluetooth for setup, which IMO just gives hackers another way to get to my devices remotely. The orbi does not have bluetooth, so it doesn’t have this exposure.

I believe if you log in to the web client for the routers instead of the App there are advanced settings to change this. Don’t quote me on this though…

I bought the refurbed RBK50 version of this with 1 router and 1 satellite last year from Woot. Has been rock solid since installation. The transfer rate for RBK43 is slower than the RBK50 but not something that would be noticeable for most users. Highly recommend this.

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Thanks for the suggestion, that’s one of the first things I did. When I got an old firmware that still had that option, it was the web client that controlled it. So I was able to set it for about an hour then it auto updated and wrecked everything. I’m sure there must be a specific reason why they took that option out, but there are people out there looking for workarounds. There’s only 2 or 3 devices that will get switched sometimes, that are an issue, do I don’t worry too much about it, even on the 2.4 I can download at 30 or 40 Mbps so it’s not horrible.

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I bought this last year. Works great. Very few issues.

I wanted to turn on the guest WiFi to only 2.4 but there is no option. Like you said it’s both and the system decides. Normally not a big deal but most smart devices only work on 2.4 and in order to set them up, you need to turn off 5GHz. Not an option with this device. Even so it seemed the smart devices I have still hooked up even though they said they saw the 5 and would not work.

Heads up to anyone that has these units. They are great but if you are using the web based interface and check for a firmware update, it will say there are no updates. That’s not true there is a new “hot” firmware update on their website you can download and manually update. check here Orbi RBK43 | WiFi System | NETGEAR Support

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