NETGEAR Orbi - WiFi System App

I am blown away by the Orbi system. I switched from a normal tri-band router to this 2 satellite orbi (three piece unit) because I was unable to stream two roku sticks at one time. I have a three story home with one orbi unit on each floor. Not only are my streaming devices spit fire fast, but I’ve got noticeably faster upload and download speeds to my Xbox one console, my computer, work laptop, the families laptops, our tablets and cell phones. The app is easy to use and understand allowing me to password protect the router, check on the net time and traffic, and even check my speeds and diagnose connectivity with the tap of a block. If my net is down because of the fiber optic work the phone company is doing, my 4g/lte still allows me to connect to the unit! All in all it’s a very... VERY... powerful unit for what I believe is an affordable price. I feel like I spend less time working on the families computers and more time enjoying them and our streaming services. If you’re a multi level home or a multi player household, or even if you just have lots of friends, family, or company in your home, orbi is a must have in my book.

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I had a nightmare with the setup. It didn’t recognize the satellite when it was 10 feet away. This app provides nothing but endless waiting. Search for the satellite? How about watching a spinning circle for 3 minutes? Now do that 20 times and you will start to get the idea. For some operations there is a progress bar, but for most it is just a spinner and a message to wait for several minutes. After a reset the router forgot all admin passwords (including the default!) and was inaccessible. Finally after some combination of resets and new setups and power cycles, it finally found the satellite. Ultimately I started the install around 5pm, and everything was up and running by 9pm. The router has been working well for 8 days, but the app is broken. The device list is populated, but the app says none of them are connected to the network. The network map shows both routers, but no connected devices for either of them. The web interface for the router works as expected and shows all connected devices properly. So it is clearly an issue with the app parsing the data provided by the router. Finally, the app forces you into creating an account, and demands personal information. It automatically signs you up for trials of some virus protection BS, filling my inbox with spam from a company that I never interacted with. Welcome to a world with ads ON your router. This app is pathetically poor, and 2 stars is a very generous rating.

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I was wondering pretty excited about getting this WiFi router. I’ve been hearing such great things about mesh type WiFi routers. Setup was easy and comes in two flavors; the Orbi app or a web browser. I chose the Orbi app and it was easy. Our WiFi was up and running within 20 minutes. Every item we have connected easily to the router and speeds seemed great (no specific speed tests were run, just watched Netflix on each device). I have a 14 year old and needed to setup some limits. I had time limits for each day on my old router where it would allow a connection to the internet between 7am and 10pm on his devices. I also have a few websites blocked through my old router. I could not do this on the Orbi. You had to use Open DNS (separate website) along with the Orbi’s parental controls menu to setup websites or servers. You could not, however, setup times for internet access to devices. This is unacceptable to me. The Orbi has Circle Disney setup on it, which gives you more parental controls at a cost of $5/month?!?! That is also a separate login. Both Circle and what little parental controls within the Orbi router was just too complicated and lacking for me to keep the device, so we returned it and reconnected our old WiFi router. We now will be looking for another router manufacturer for our home.

I have 2 Satellites to have a triangulation of coverage in my two story house, which should provide excellent overall coverage. But the problem is, when a device is connected to the WiFi, which ever Hub or Satellite was closest on first connecting... that’s where it forever stays. Simply put, no matter where I go in the house, say with my phone, if I’m closer and better connected to a different satellite, the system doesn’t automatically switch my connection to the best connection. It keeps me at the first, which may be bad at the other side of the house. This is retarded and defeats the purpose of adding more satellites... other than to just extend that initial link, which is fine for a static device, but seriously, mobile devices need to be able to get the best connections always. I should also be able to manage at least manually how a device is connected with whichever base or Satellite I want. Give me the control if the system itself fails to optimize the connections automatically. This to me is a huge oversight and failure of the company and product. This needs to get fixed, if they want to be seen as a premier WiFi connection company.

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Just moved into a 100-year old multi-story house with plaster walls that were eating my old wifi signal alive, so I switched to Orbi after seeing the great reviews. Now that it’s finally set up it seems solid, and the reviews weren’t kidding: the 500Mbps wireless throughput still blows my mind. But Netgear has got to figure out why it’s iOS setup process is so terrible. I have as simple a setup as one could: pulled the router and satellite out of the box, plugged them in, but it took half a dozen tries for them even to recognize each other. And worst of all, every time the devices refused to cooperate, the app just sat there with no help, no advice. Netgear is clearly a hardware company, not a software company. I hope they’ll do some serious, advanced testing of their app—especially the new user onboarding process—so others won’t find themselves stuck in a seemingly endless loop of failure and rebooting as I was for nearly an hour. Finally, their decision not to devote the meager resources to enabling landscape mode in the iPad version of their setup app is a slap in the face to users. I use my iPad as a mini-laptop, with a keyboard case, and their app is one of the only apps I’ve seen that stubbornly refuses to rotate the UI to accommodate my setup.