Netgear is a well-known brand that has been providing a wide range of high-quality products for over 20 years. The company was founded in 1996 with a focus on providing innovative and reliable networking solutions for the computer and technology markets. Today, Netgear is a leading provider of broadband modems, routers, and gateways, as well as a wide range of other computer and technology products.
One of the key features of Netgear's products is their focus on performance and reliability. The company's modems and routers are designed to deliver fast and reliable internet connectivity, with advanced technologies such as beamforming and Quality of Service (QoS) for optimizing network performance. Netgear's products are also known for their high-quality build and durability, with robust construction techniques and materials that ensure their reliability and longevity.
In addition to performance and reliability, Netgear's products are known for their versatility. The company's modems and routers are designed to work with a variety of internet service providers and technologies, including DSL, cable, and fiber, making them a good choice for customers who want a versatile and reliable connectivity solution. Netgear's products are also available in a wide range of sizes and styles to suit different needs and budgets, making them a good choice for both home and small business users.
In addition to performance, reliability, and versatility, Netgear's products are known for their advanced features and capabilities. The company's modems and routers offer advanced security technologies for protecting against online threats, and many of them also offer additional features such as VPN support, traffic management, and quality of service (QoS) for optimizing network performance. Netgear's products also offer advanced management and monitoring capabilities, with features such as remote management, alerts, and diagnostics for keeping track of network performance and identifying potential issues.
Overall, Netgear is a trusted brand that offers a wide range of high-quality, reliable, and feature-rich products. The company's modems and routers are designed to deliver fast and reliable internet connectivity, and are known for their versatility, advanced features, and capabilities. Netgear's products are also known for their high-quality build, durability, and commitment to innovation and sustainability.
Belkin Routers
TP-Link Routers
ASUS Routers
Cisco Routers
Arris Routers
Mike Vande Ven Jr. –
Let me start with some quick house topography for you. My house as two floors and a basement.
Basement: Approximately 1300sq ft
First floor: Approximately 1500sq ft
Second floor: Approximately 1700sq ft (there is a bonus bedroom above the garage)
I have 50Mbps DSL that comes into the office, on the first floor. It’s in the corner of the house, very far away from that bonus bedroom.
In our old house, we had a TP Link Archer C9. That covered the house well. But with this new house, there were slow downs and dead spots not only. I believe this is not only because the new house is bigger, but also because the new house has full insulation in EVERY wall (even internal), making the signal harder to push through.
I eventually added some signal boosters, and that helped, but only a little.
So I needed something better. I researched a number of mesh routers, but after I found out about the performance drop for every node (e.g. if you connect direct to the router, you get 100% speed; if you connect to the first mesh node, you get 50% speed; if you connect to the second mesh node, you get 25% speed; etc) I was rethinking my position.
I started to look into high powered devices, but didn’t really trust that those would solve my problem.
Then I found the Orbi. I read a lot of technical details and reviews, and I was sold on the idea of a dedicated wireless backhaul (since I don’t have Ethernet to where I need it if I want a wired backhaul).
Let me tell you, the reviews are right, this technology works great!
After I first opened the router, I upgraded the firmware manually (after that, I have seen automatic firmware updates applied, which is nice!). Then I changed the router to be in Access Point (AP) mode so that it essentially works as an Ethernet switch and wireless access point, without needing to do the heavy lifting of the router duties. I chose this because my DSL modem is also a router (which I have turned off the wifi), and having a router behind a router has caused troubles for me in the past.
This works great! Now I have great coverage all over my house. Even in that spare bedroom, I am pulling down 29-32 Mbps (previously, with the range extender, I would get 6-8 down). I can even mow the lawn on the other side of the garage, and I’m still getting a signal that pulls down 16-20 MBps. I can nearly watch a 4k stream out there!
There are no dead spots at all in the house. I’m getting the full 48Mbps (this is what I generally see as top speed over Ethernet) in over half the house. And the drop off is not dramatic. t will only drop a few Mbps per room (to the low point in that spare bedroom).
The only downside I have encountered so far is the lack of abilities I have when the router is in AP mode. For example I no longer get parental controls. There are many other things disabled (many of which make sense), but some which I would like back (I plan on contacting support, as they seem receptive to adding new abilities via firmware).
2 weeks in, and I couldn’t be happier with this purchase. Netgear has finally won me over.
Marcus A. Gunn –
I have long been a fan of Netgear but I won’t buy the latest and greatest unless it has a proven track record. After doing my research, being comfortable with the brand’s reputation, and on the recommendation of an IT colleague, I decided hey, maybe I’ll give this a try. My colleague had one too and loved it. I CAN TELL YOU, WOW, WHAT A DIFFERENCE IN BANDWIDTH SPEED! The speed increase was phenomenal.. the connectivity more stable with less buffering when streaming. My house is quite big with connectivity needs throughout. I purchased an additional Satellite to ensure I had the max coverage and all I can say is this is by far the best hands-down Wi-Fi system I know of. I looked at it’s competitor but this rose to the top. Very easy to DIY set up, only the instruction leaflet could have been a bit more explanatory. I did do all the required firmware updates on initial install and thing s were fine but about 3 weeks in one Satellite was stuck on the yellow light on the ring. I checked online thinking it was doing another update but 10 hours later I returned from work to realize something is amiss. I called tech support (not the easiest thing to do) and they were polite, asked me to do a few tests and they surmised it needed replacement under warranty. I did get a replacement within a week and up and running ever since. I love the stability of performance and the fact that my speed is like blazing faster than what I had with a Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 beforehand.. This is totally awesome and I’ve recommended it at least 2x and they have bought also. Love this technology.
Jim –
After just two months of use in my new home this router died. It does not work at all. It cannot be factory reset, etc. Netgear’s customer support was awful. I clearly explained the issue and they would repeatedly tell me to go ahead and factory reset. Okay, great. That does not work. “Sure, so please go ahead and rest.” Yeah, thanks folks.
Finally, Netgear agreed to an RMA. They charged my credit card on October 8 for a replacement router. It is November 3 and I have received no further updates from Netgear, nor have I received a replacement router. Further calls to customer support have resulted in more frustration. Now the router is beyond the return period with Amazon.
At this point I feel Netgear has taken my money and run. Netgear has forever lost this customer of almost fifteen years as a result. Edit: Netgear is now refunding the RMA charge and indicating they are shipping a replacement.
Guillermo J. –
Previous router was a Nighthawk R7000 running the latest Kong DD-WRT…
Since we moved to our new house (giant 2 story house) the complains about WiFi being slow on the phones started to roll. However, I mostly ignored those b/c my workstations run on a end-to-end 2 Gbps LAG backbone at home, the entertainment center and main TV also run on the same blazing fast wired LAN as well, and… pretty much anything that required speed was ran on LAN cables (the house is wired for Ethernet Cat5e) So, I never bothered to get the wifi working better… well, until I decided to setup a bunch of wireless cameras… and after that it became apparent that the R7000 wasn’t cutting it anymore. It was painful, constant slow downs, poor connection, etc ,etc… in short: terrible. Couldn’t kick the can down the road anymore… so after doing some preliminary research I came across Netgear Orbi, then the Orbi Ultra-Performance, and oh boy… that had my name stamped on it… Netgear + Ultra + Performance… didn’t get any better than that!! (been Netgear user since the WTG624 days) LOL… Then a few independent tests convinced me that the Ultra + Performance was the name of the game for Orbi RBK50… and I pulled the trigger.
Enter the Orbi RBK50… and behold, ludicrous speeds… from ~5 Mbps on my Galaxy phone to 560 Mbps anywhere on the 2nd floor of my house. All my Wifi cameras now rock, no more blackouts, slow connections, dead zones…
Even the wired Ethernet computers showed an improvement, my educated guess is on the DNS lookups… perhaps the R7000 couldn’t deal with the large count of concurrent clients requesting DNS queries from the WiFi and LAN… again, an educated guess b/c I really don’t know… but the thing is that the Orbi RBK50 demolished the R7000 on pretty much everything I could throw at it.
My Orbi router autoupdated to V2.3.1.60 shortly after I had it up and running and haven’t had a single disconnect or problem with neither wifi nor ethernet.
Coming from the DD-WRT was a bit of a shocker, I was expecting a myriad of things to tweak, etc… but all in all it was dead simple to setup. I wish there was some more customization without requiring telnet and tinkering with configuration files, etc.. but TBH, after running DD-WRT on every router I’ve owned for the past 10+ years I think having something that works out of the box and offers this kind of performance is certainly welcome. Time will tell, but for now, ludicrous speed it is.
R. McDaniel –
Had very spotty reception in the modem/router rented from Xfinity. When I increased the incoming speed to 1Gbps I needed something with range and speed—3 house levels with several dead spots. We also have up to 15 devices including wireless printers, laptops, phones and tablets that can be operating at any given time. We hooked the main router to a netgear nighthawk cable modem and put the satellite in the middle of the second store. Simple install. Download speeds For my phone went from 15-26 Mbps to 200 to 280 depending on location and 350 to 450 for my iPad. Spectacular! No dead spots either, with great speed in two disparate rooms that lacked coverage before. I also appreciated that I didn’t have to rename the wireless network and change passwords, etc. all devices switched over seamlessly. Could be better!
Consoomer –
If you have 1 to 2 GBPs (aka 1000Mbps) this is a phenomenal home mesh network.
Unless you are soon to have a 1 gig network, it’s quite expensive.
I have an older home with plenty of brick and plaster walls with many wireless neighbors fighting for radio apace, and these things simply destroy all the ones I’ve installed.
I build networks, wired and wireless for a living and I can attest to the power of these things and the ease of setup.
I actually just put these into a small business and they love it. They can transfer files at 6Gbps internally since we also updated a few of their workstations to 802.11ax
Two of these cover a three story home all with every device in the 5ghz range. A total of 52 devices!
The app will help you set up your devices.
The browser interface will give you much more capability.
I had these the day I moved to an additional fiber provider 1gb. For a few days I had two 1gb connections, so of course I aggregated the two connections just to see if and how how it would work.
Wow, 1.7 GBPs was quite impressive for a a day 😉
Cons:
1) they are ugly. (Moped theory though)
2) The browser interface is clunky and takes some time to get through.
3) for best results I would still use a cabled backhaul. Not necessary, but slightly better.
4) it will not play with any other routers currently out on the market. I’m sure this will change in time.
5) they are a bit pricey