NetGear Orbi Home Wi-fi System

Take the average household, with anywhere between 6-10 gadgets each connecting to the home Wi-Fi and demanding their share of the network. Now, if you have a big home, possibly one with multiple levels or one that is spread over a big, unevenly shaped area, and your Internet connection forces you to place the router at one end of the house, there is a fair chance your home Wi-Fi signal just doesn't reach all corners of your home. I dropped a decent amount of cash not so long ago on the best quad-antenna router on the market, and even then, I have network deadspots in the garden and elsewhere. This is where a home Wi-Fi system comes in – the system is designed specifically to expand your network without having to set up and switch networks as with range extenders.

The first such system to retail in India is the Netgear Orbi, which uses two units, each of which is a fully-fledged tri-band router capable of covering around 2,000 square feet of area. What this means is that you get a router and a satellite with the regular 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi bands, plus an additional 5GHz band solely dedicated for communication between the router and the satellite –  an approach that frees up the regular bands to offer greater speeds to each connected device.

Unlike the mesh systems I wrote about recently (‘Give Me More’ BW issue dated 22 July 2017), the Orbi satellites don't communicate with each other, instead using a hub-and-spoke model with the satellites establishing a direct connection with the main router.

Setting up Netgear Orbi is exceedingly intuitive, either via the browser or a simple Orbi app for your smartphone, and takes no more than 10 minutes. The browser setup affords you a lot more advanced customisation options, should you be so inclined.

All of this is achieved in a form factor that is not nearly as small or unobtrusive as, say, a Google Wifi or the Linksys Velop (though both aren’t available for sale in India yet). Both the router and the satellite are identical – nearly 9-inch tall, white units – which don’t quite disappear into the background as the others but aren’t ugly by any means either. To be honest, the fact that NetGear has used the space to include six internal antennas and multiple Ethernet and USB ports strikes me as a balanced approach, and I am glad they didn’t drop these to make the Orbi units appear more stylish and scrimp on performance or coverage instead.

In practice, placing the satellite in my home immediately blanketed an impressively large area with a strong signal, with coverage far beyond the garden and parking, and two floors above as well. In the short-range tests, speeds were significantly faster than the quad-band router, but it was when I went further away upstairs and outwards that the Orbi really impressed – the other router had either lost signal or had dropped to half the speed, while the Orbi was chugging away at near full speeds with a rock-solid connection to boot!

The performance comes at a price and, yes, the asking price is steep any way you paint it, but with its easy setup, blazing performance and extensive reach, the NetGear Orbi is a is a solid choice if you are looking to blanket a large home with seamless Wi-Fi. It is a peek into the future of Wi-Fi and may just be the upgrade your home network needs.