NETGEAR Orbi Pro WiFi 6 Tri-Band Mesh Add-on Satellite (SXS50) for Business or Home, Coverage up to 2,500 sq. ft, 75 Devices, AX5400 802.11AX (up to 5.4Gbps), Requires Orbi Pro WiFi 6 Router

The orbi hardware did exactly what I wanted. The router is in my water well pump house covering the entrance of our property. I then have the ethernet cable routed underground into my house with the first satellite in our living room. All my entertainment equipment is plugged into that first satellite. The second satellite is tucked up under the eves at the far end of the house providing coverage to the yard an master bedroom. It’s a daisy chain configuration and because of the extra ethernet ports on the pro series it allows the flexibility to connect that way. The wifi 6 has excellent penetration thru walls and the last satellite in the chain is just as fast as the router so I couldn’t be more pleased with the hardware. The apps on the other hand are totally useless garbage imo. The insight app wouldn’t let me register the new router and to retry it wanted me to reset the whole system to factory settings and start over! The Netgear Genie app won’t work at all and the nighthawk app is useless for orbi devices. That leaves me with the consumer grade Orbi app, well it won’t work with the (pro) series hardware. I spent hours waisting my time trying to get something to work to no avail. The only RELIABLE way to control the orbi pro devices is directly logging on using the IP address or routerlogin.com which is fine but seriously they need to spend some time making the configuration control apps actually work with their products if they’re going to promote their use. Somebody at Netgear needs to actually try using these apps! I would give 10 stars to the hardware and minus 5 stars for the apps. All that being said I was able to access all the settings necessary to set up my system exactly as I wanted using routerlogin.com and I’m very pleased with my purchase and think it’s an excellent value.

I bought this for home - 3700 sqft on 3 levels including basement. Normal sized residential lot. I have security cameras around the house and property and outdoor patio spaces that were weakly served by my Nighthawk gaming router which was not wifi 6. This is a very solid platform that was pretty easy to setup with just a few bumps. My first speed test was disappointing because I started with the Wireless1 network which apparently is also the backhaul for the satellites. Netgear should have made Wireless3 the backhaul as it is normal to start configuring Wireless1. The doco doesn't address this. Wireless1 cannot split the SSIDs by 2.4 ghz or 5 ghz, it must be both. So my phone kept connecting as 2.4 and I saw lower bandwidth than my old router. Once I realized I could split the SSIDs on Wireless2 and Wireless3, I replicated my old setup with same names and passwords on Wireless2, splitting the 2.4 and the 5 each with a different SSID. Now I can connect to 5 for certain, and wow, the speed is amazing. I have a gigabit fiber connection. Now I am actually taking full advantage of it. My old router would do 135 mbps to my phone sitting in the same room. I now get almost 900 down and 900 up. My wired xbox gets better performance too. The satellites were very easy to setup since they came in a kit and were already synced to the base. I am still tweaking the satellite locations, but I have excellent coverage inside and outside for all the iot stuff and when using all corners of our outdoor space. I would highly recommend this system for home use for those with lots of smart home stuff, streaming, gaming, and working at home. It is on sale at a great price since the wifi 6E stuff is now out. I do not have any 6E devices, and while 6E is faster, it is also less spread out. Better coverage with wifi 6, and the speeds are great. I'm seeing 500 mbps on the far reaches of my patio and 180 mbps in the former dead zone of the patio against the house with lots of stone on an inside fireplace. Simply amazing for $350 and a couple hours of setup. I did have to reconnect a Ring camera and Ring doorbell, even as 4 other Ring cameras connected without issue. The network management site is pretty good. I have 24 devices connected and things that move around like phones, tablets and laptops move to the best connection seamlessly.

Couple of tips here that can prove valuable to higher bandwidth packages. Setup: after you complete the setup process, you'll see that there are about 3 different networks that can be configured. The first is the default "Orbi" network. On testing, I could not obtain nearly the speeds provided from my girlfriend's internet package which should have been about 456 down over 22 up. I was getting around 150 down. After playing around with it I gave up and configured the "wireless 1" network to separate the 2.4 and 5ghz bands. This produced the speeds I was looking for on the 5ghz band. The one annoying thing I found is that I have yet to find a way to turn off the default Orbi network. Since we are using the wireless 1 profile, the orbi profile is unnecessary. Onto the review. Solid design, 4 ethernet ports on all devices (i have the 3 pack ((1 router, 2 satellites))), heavy for a router which I like. Wifi 6 in my testing takes your higher bandwidth further and at a lower loss. The directions were fairly straightforward but I've set up hundreds of routers. Girlfriend's house is about 2500 Sq ft but she's got a bigger backyard and I wanted us to be able to get wifi about 150 feet back by her fire pit. So the router is centrally located on the main floor, both satellites are at opposite ends of the house upstairs about 25 feet from the router. I'm getting about 2 of 5 bars and about 25mbps back by the fire pit which I'm happy with. Longevity I cannot comment on since I just set this up yesterday. I can try to update if something goes wrong but I'm optimistic this will last the industry standard 5 years if not longer. We'll see.

I'm using these in access point mode only so not using the firewall / router functionality. There are 4 SSIDs you can setup on 4 different VLANs. If you don't want to use an SSID on your default VLAN then you are limited to 3 SSIDs. The guest SSID is also setup for a guest type access only. Most situations this will provide the functionality you need. Just be aware of the VLAN to wireless associations. I have 4 VLANs on my home network for home, work, IOT and guest. Since I don't use guest at all I've slimed it down to Home and IOT as my default VLAN is for management purposes only. These devices do not have 2.5GB port which I can live with as well as my main goal as to extend my wireless network with the satellite unit. That does work well and happy enough with the wireless performance. May consider switching back to the business class Netgear APs, but I feel like the antenna placement is better with these stand-up units than a non-ceiling mounted business AP. Netgear Insight is a decent management system, kind of awkward at times if you have a switch and trying to setup VLANs. You can also just manage these from the built-in web interface if you prefer to not use Insight. So good flexibility for management but if you are more network admin and want more control and flexibility between all 4 SSIDs may not be the best product for you.

My previous Orbi (RBK23) that I bought in 2019 decided that it didn't want to stay connected with the satellites in their existing or relocated positions anymore which forced me to replace to this set. Overall the throughput is better but the switching in sporadically inconsistent which is an annoyance. I experience the issue across multiple different mobile platforms. The range is better. The interface is still annoying if you actually know what you want to do. Having cut my teeth on the previous version, I knew what to expect. It took me an hour to get them to finally sync up only being 10' away from each other. I hedge on the value for the money since I expect to get better than 3 years out of the previous unit considering I got 7 out of my previous home cobbled pseudo-mesh network devices