Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi router review: You won't care that it's not mesh - davisvoinficand

Ignore Netgear's publicizing: Its Orbi RBK50 Wi-Fi router is non a mesh network system. Orbi RBS50 satellites don't communicate with each other; they send and incur data to and from the Orbi router sole. In networking parlance, that is a hub-and-spoke system, non a mesh. Simply meshing networking is what has everyone so excited this class, so that's how Netgear is charge the Orbi. The caller is doing itself a disservice: The Orbi mightiness be the best interior-ornamentalist-approved router on the securities industry.

Take down: This review discusses the Orbi's performance in a Windows surround. There's a very similar version of this story that discusses this router's performance in a Macintosh environment on our baby site Macworld.com.

About that business enterprise design: The Orbi is not nigh as small or unobtrusive as the Eero, Google Wifi, or Linksys Velop. Those first two products strike a very low visibility, and the Velop looks like a bud vase. A hollowed-out Orbi would be big enough to hold a unit bouquet of flowers, measuring 8.89 inches leggy and 6.67 inches wide. It's not ill-natured, if you like modern esthetics, but information technology's not going to go away into the background as easily as those other routers bash. And that's okay, because Netgear is the entirely router company that hasn't confiscate away the ethernet switch and USB port in order to make its product little and more stylish.

The rival puts just two ethernet ports on their routers and satellites, which means you'll need to buy an ethernet switch if you want to hardwire Sir Thomas More than one device to them. And many untested-school routers don't sustain USB ports at all (the Securifi Almond 3 is an elision on both counts—it has leash ethernet ports and a USB port). Just before you get likewise excited about the presence of a USB port on the Orbi, do it that it is presently dormant. You can't use IT to connect a USB hard drive or a USB printing machine that you deprivation to share over your meshing.

Michael Brown

The Netgear Orbi has a comparatively whacking footprint compared to the contest. From left to honorable: Linksys Velop, Eero, Luma, Google WiF, and Securifi Almond 3 (black).

But information technology's there—as is an as dormant Bluetooth tuner—so Netgear essential induce plans for it. My surmisal: Netgear volition either release a microcode update that enables it for storage, or they'll turn out with a ZigBee or Z-Wave radio dongle and make a fiddle in the Internet of Things/smart-home space. But if USB support is on your must-have list, get into't buy an Orbi until you roll in the hay for for certain what information technology will keep. And if you require electronic network storage, buy in a NAS box—you'll be overmuch happier. We recently reviewed seven and ground around genuine bargains.

Feature set

The Netgear Orbi RBK50 is a tri-stripe router with half-dozen inside antennas, making the Linksys Velop its nearest competitor. But the Orbi's three networks are precise different from the Velop: The Orbi operates one network on the 2.4GHz band (with a 2×2 radio—ii spatial streams up and two spacial streams down—offering speeds capable 400Mbps), one network on the 5GHz band (with a 2×2 radio receiver oblation supreme speed of 866Mbps), and a second 5GHz network with a 4×4 radio offering level bes speed of 1,733Mbps. You'll never see real-world speeds that peaky—as distance, protocol overhead, and other factors eat outside at those theoretical maximums—but you can use them for the sake of comparability.

The Velop's two 5GHz networks, in contrast, each offer the same max theoretical upper: 866Mbps. And a Velop web will automatically steer clients to cardinal or the another network, choosing on-the-fly which 5GHz net wish be used for information backhaul (i.e., sending packets back to the guest that's configured as a router). The Orbi dedicates its higher-bandwidth 4×4 radio to backhaul, flat if you run it without a planet. The backhaul network uses the higher 5GHz channels (149 and up), going the depress channels (36 and up) to the router.

Michael Brown

The Netgear Orbi is unique among virgin-school routers in that information technology has a three-port gigabit ethernet switch. The orbiter has a four-embrasure switch.

Netgear says an Orbi router without a satellite will blanket a 2,000-square-foot home with Wi-Fi, and that to each one orbiter testament summate some other 2,000 feather feet of coverage. My home is all but 2,800 conventional feet, sol the company conveyed Maine a two-pack for this review. You force out also buy out the Orbi in a three-pack (cardinal router and two satellites), and Netgear will soon offer the satellite on its own for pairing with an existing Orbi router.

Since the Orbi International Relations and Security Network't a true mesh network, all satellite connects to the router and non to another satellite. Netgear tells Pine Tree State it'll eventually enable a daisy-chain mode that will provide satellite-to-satellite communication, merely not until it's possible for the network to automatically steer clients between the router and the satellite(s) as clients move nearly the theater.

Netgear offers a setup app, or you buttocks install and configure the Orbi the demode way, via a web browser. I a lot prefer the latter because I arse use a larger screen (my eyesight has ne'er been great, and it gets worse the elderly I acquire). Orbi is non currently sympathetic with Amazon's Alexa extremity help, only Netgear tells me it's just waiting for that certification to amount through.

Michael Brown

This floorplan shows where the router, lock nodes, and clients were placed for benchmarking. The Orbi satellite was deployed in the great room.

Functioning

At close chain—with the client in the same room As the router, separated by nine feet of air—the Orbi's TCP throughput of 285.3Mbps trailed the five interlock routers I compared it with. The Eero WiFi System (463Mbps), Linksys Velop (431.7Mbps), and Google Wifi (401.3Mbps) were way out ahead at this location. Simply when I moved the guest to my great room, 33 feet from the router with an insulated wall, several plywood cabinets, and a enumerate of kitchen appliances in the signal path, the Orbi jumped ahead of most of the mesh routers to deliver TCP throughput of 132.3Mbps. The Eero was faster, though, delivering throughput of 213.3Mbps.

Michael Brown

Interestingly, adding an Orbi satellite to the equation dramatically increased throughput at close range as well as at the past three locations where I placed the client Microcomputer. The Eero WiFi System was still slightly faster in the bedroom spot (459.7Mbps compared to 428.0Mbps), and the Linksys Velop was quicker in the enceinte room (276.0Mbps versus 224.0Mbps), but the Orbi was dramatically faster than all of the mesh routers in my trying-to-penetrate home theater. It was more twice as allegretto at long range, when the node was in my sun room, 65 feet from the router with three insulated interior walls and two fireplaces in the signal path.

Michael Browned

And if you examine the chart below, you'll see that the Orbi with i orbiter was considerably quicker than virtually of the net network routers operative a router and ii nodes. The Linksys Velop was quicker in the great board, simply the Orbi was significantly quicker than everything else in the three other locations, including my home theater. The formulaic router I used for a baseline—the Linksys EA9500—was quicker than anything else in the great room, but the Orbi with its satellite clobbered the EA9500 in the Sir Thomas More difficult places to reach: the home theatre and the sun elbow room.

Michael Brown

My final performance chart shows how each router performs below blackmail. For this test, I course receiving set TCP-throughput benchmarks on cardinal pairs of computers (four Windows machines and two MacOS computers) placed 33 feet from the router spell simultaneously moving 4K video from a Roku Extremist streaming box that's wirelessly wired to the network.

The Linksys Velop won that competition, at least with the MacBook Pro, delivering much faster TCP throughput. The MacBook Pro, it should represent noted, is matchless of the few laptops on the marketplace to seminal fluid from the manufactory with a 3×3 802.11ac adaptor on board. The fact that the Velop was operating with three nodes, compared to the Orbi having a single satellite, should not have factored into the carrying into action equation because the client computers can associate with only one node at once. I presume they would have associated to the closest node, which was placed in the same spot where I couch the Orbi satellite. The carrying out delta among the Windows clients wasn't nearly As significant.

Michael Brown

The bottom line

Don't get hung up on the fact that the Netgear Orbi operates happening a hub-and-spoke system topographic anatomy versus mesh; the bottom stoc is that this is an outstanding Wi-Fi router. Away including a three-port switch on the router and a four-port turn on the satellite, it strikes a advisable balance betwixt unnoticeable industrial design and straight router features than any of the meshing routers I've tested indeed far.

It's not as fast on its own with a close-range client when compared to the Eero, Google Wireless local area network, operating theater Linksys Velop, but adding one satellite directly changed that scenario, putting it at the top of the performance muckle at every location I reliable. As a matter of fact, an Orbi with one satellite delivered higher performance than every mesh router operating with three nodes.

If you live in a small apartment, on the separate hand, the incredibly cheap Google Wifi is probably the healthier choice—if you can find i. It's priced at just $129, but seems to be unavailable all over. A single Eero Wireless fidelity or Linksys Velop would be my next find fault for smaller dwellings; those go for about $200 each. And if you don't mind the wait, you'll find plenty of conventional routers with external antennas that deliver terrific performance.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/411854/netgear-orbi-wi-fi-router-review-its-not-a-mesh-network-but-its-good-enough-you-wont-care.html

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