NETGEAR RBS750

The dream - is fast, solid, stable WI-FI in every room, with not much messing about during setup, and no need to switch from network to network. You are thinking to yourself "I want to just go up and down stairs, out to the shed, down the garden and in the garage on my WI-FI network. I Just want to connect and not think about it" - Well YES, this product will do that.Its fast, and once its working (read on) its really solid, sometimes my devices choose a weird base point to join, so for example, a printer in my office (next to an access point) has decided to connect to the living room base point which is a long way away ... it works its just odd? Can I change the default base station for a device ? No.I do like the guest network settings, so if you have a cafe, or B&B and you want to use EPOS and "private" devices such as laptops, tablets, Sonos speakers for example, then the private network is perfect. Then you can simply create another "guest" network with a different password and give different access to people.The setup was great - (but there is a down side so read on) - This system uses a wizard to set you up, it works and it took the pain out of it. BUT. a big BUT... If you want to play Jazz with it, like fiddle with settings, or do some pro setup of your network then you are going to be disappointed. It does it one way and that it... It works perfectly (mostly) but it's very restricted.Something that is REALLY GOOD, is the switch handling - So I have a load of devices, like Philips Hue, Smartthings, Hive heating, NAS storage boxes, Sonos devices, and the all need a base station type connections somewhere. With a Cable to a router somewhere. So buy a cheap Netgear (or whatever) un-managed switch like "NETGEAR 8 Port Gigabit Network Switch GS108 £25 on Amazon" and just plug everything in, then connect it to a single Ethernet port on the ORBI base station - and wow wow wow it just all works. If you want to tinker and play jazz (read on) you can't - it works but there is no controls you to touch - that might sound like heaven or hell depending on your skill level !It is very restricted to "home users" with kids... The safety settings, and internet restrictions are powerful but pointless if you just trust your family or want "normal" internet. I turned on Parental controls by accident, and when I tried to turn it off I managed to lock everyone (including myself) out of the internet. Support gave me nothing useful (using my phone 3g to access) so in the end I did a hardware reset to factory setting and started all over again. Painful day that was....Not sure I like the Rewards feature of the parental controls - granting "internet time rewards" for good behaviour sound like a house I would not like to grow up in.... but I am old and have no children so I will let you be the judge of this feature.Here is the BIG negative. - Netgear I expected better. - This system is basically only compatible with itself. There are lots and lots of NETGEAR ORBI models and kits, too many to count, and basically they all do the same thing - some faster, some with more concurrent connections, newer models with more whizzy stuff but in principal all doing the same job. EACH SYSTEM IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE OTHER - RBK752, RBK762 base stations and extension points will not work with other Netgear Obi systems - you have to have the exact model from a look up table on Netgears website to extend the system. That has got to be deliberate !I only found out this when I purchased an extra pair of satellite range extenders which looked identical but were not compatible - I Had to return them. BAD NEWS - I could not buy single or even (at the time) double satellites that were compatible with my existing ORBI system- even though it was pretty new, so after only 9 months, even though nothing was faulty with them at all, I had to but this system again NEW because it was the only way to get my hands on compatible satellites to extend the range. BOOoo Netgear.For a system that is supposed to be fully extendable, and totally "capable" of connecting everything together, that's is job at the end of the day, I fail to see why NETGEAR have chosen to build in incompatibility into their systems with no way to join or extend freely from the range.With the benefit of hind site - I should have just paid a lot less for a mesh network, I don't know how much better this is for the money, but I help a friend set up a DecoAX3000 the other day and it was brilliant, at a quarter of the cost. I don't expect that to last a lifetime but I can buy one every two years for a decade for the price of the ORBI !

I tried 3 other popular brand meshes and they simply performed poorly or didn't work. This is my 4th mesh in 3 weeks (yes!) before being satisfied it works wonderfully. I have a 600mbps broadband and a relatively small flat, but have some black spots due to the layout / construction. The other meshes were either maxing out at 100-150mbps, or unstable.Orbi has been a good performer, I can get about 550mbps from the main router, and about 250 from a satellite. Slightly disappointing the satellites don't perform as well given its got a dedicated backhaul as well, but at least it's a stable connection. Could also be my positioning and other conditions.The stability is really good. It was easy to setup. One peculiar issue I had with the other meshes was that sometimes Spotify connect would not work and hence could not play Spotify media my Yahama AV receiver. Not had an issue with the Orbi and everything seems to work wonderfully.My config is such I'm using a mixture of wired and wireless devices, with a wired NAS on the satellite, which performs equally well. Also compared to other meshes, Orbi has a web interface in addition to the mobile app, which is great as you can tweak a lot more settings. The other meshes were a bit limited on what you can change.One downside, £300+ for a set of 3 routers. It's a lot of money for a small piece of kit (not even commercial grade), but I suppose everyone has joined the bandwagon and charging the same amount.

Easy to set up and works a treat. Great signal even a long way from the nearest station.

Well, I got the RBR750 Orbi router system, with two satellites installed in my home - a large 3 bedroomed Victorian semi that previously had a number of dead spots in it that multiple wireless routers failed to overcome. I now get excellent speeds everywhere including previous dead zones and right down the garden. But it wasn't easy to set up.I wanted to set up the RBR750 as an access point and keep my existing router that acts as a DHCP host for 192.168.0.XXX (The Orbi gives out 192.168.1.XXX). Firstly, if you put it in Access Point mode it disables its own DHCP. Secondly, if you use anything but 192.168.1.XXX the satellites will not pair, as they operate on 192.168.1.XXX. What is worse, you cannot change the IP address on the satellites, even from 192.168.1.XXX.After a large number of hours on the phone talking to Netgear's tech support, having been passed from the first line up to the Orbi expert team (four levels higher), I have come to the conclusion that they do not understand subnetting!! And these guys are supposed to be the experts! Nice guys, by the way, but hopelessly under trained. They sell network devices but don't know how networks operate. Unbelievable. As for the phone app? Pretty and good for testing, but if you need to do anything below the surface, use a computer. Mac, PC, Raspberry Pi, doesn't matter, as it's all browser stuff.By the time I had finished on the call, I was informed to send the kit back and get a refund and buy another as it would never connect and, even if it did, as the Netgear guy updated the firmware, I would never get the satellietes to update. Wrong! Why does Netgear allow you to change the IP range and not allow you to change the IP addresses of the satellites? That needs to be corrected in a firmware update urgently as it defeats the purpose of allowing change.I went back to basics, ripped out the old router. Set the Orbi to router mode, reverted to 192.16.8.XXX and turned on DHCP. I then went through the network changing IP addresses enabling DHCP of a number of devices, including a couple of NAS boxes that I reserved in DHCP. The old router would only give out out 50 IP addresses, hopelessly inadequate, so a lot of things were on fixed IPs. With the Orbi, you can give out all 254 ip addresses if you want. With an increasing number if IoT items, this is becoming more important all the time.So, in summary, I was looking for a system that would last over six years, that would get rid of the dead spots and give very good performance. Does the Orbi RBR750 do that? Yes, I think it does - it has good range, the best speeds ever from a wireless system, WiFi 6 ready and also able to cope with full fibre to the premises which is due in a few months. If you want more range outdoors you can buy another, waterproof, satellite. In fact, if you have a really big house, or a small hotel, you can offer good wifi service to all your residents. Having spent enough time in these hotels, most need something like this.