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NETGEAR

NETGEAR Orbi Ultra-Performance Whole Home Mesh WiFi Satellite Extender - works with your Orbi Router to add 2,500 sq. feet at speeds up to 3 Gbps, AC3000 (RBS50)

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Style: Add-on Satellite for RBK43S/50


Features

  • Only works with an Orbi Whole Home Mesh WiFi Router. Get the fastest speeds by adding to your RBK50
  • Eliminates WiFi dead zones and buffering in hard to reach places, adding 2,500 sq. feet of coverage to your existing Orbi Mesh WiFi network with speeds up to 3.0 Gbps
  • Single WiFi network name lets you move around the house without losing connectivity
  • Creates an ultra-performance Mesh WiFi network that blankets every inch of your home in super fast and seamless WiFi connectivity room to room, wall to wall, floor to floor
  • Up to 161% faster than the leading brands, as certified by an independent study, makes Orbi the highest performance Mesh WiFi system on the market
  • Maintains speed even as more devices use your WiFi at the same time, thanks to patented tri-band technology
  • 4 Ethernet ports provide ultimate flexibility and connectivity for your Smart TV, game console, streaming player, and more

Description

FAST WHOLE HOME SYSTEM - ADD-ON SATELLITE Need more range? No more WiFi boosters or extenders necessary. The Orbi Add-On Satellite extend high performance WiFi to your property from the basement to the backyard. The system smartly manages your WiFi so that each device's access is optimized and never interrupted. Requires existing Orbi WiFi System or Orbi Router ADD UP TO 2,500 SQUARE FEET OF COVERAGE From the home office to the basement to the pool, this wireless internet system covers every inch of your home with a strong WiFi signal. Unlike router and repeater combinations, Orbi covers the whole home with a single WiFi network and name, enabling seamless indoor/outdoor and room-to-room connectivity. TRI-BAND TECHNOLOGY Award winning and patented Tri-Band Technology provides Orbi with a dedicated backhaul connection between the router and the satellite, so the system can manage multiple network connections without compromising speed. Watch movies and TV, play video games, download music, books, and more. QUICK & EASY SETUP Selected as Editors’ Choice by PC Magazine, Orbi works with your current internet service provider and sets up in minutes right out of the box. Use the Orbi app or any web browser to create your entire home’s secure WiFi network in minutes. No personal info, account creation, or hands required with the new Amazon Echo Alexa skill and our intuitive and preconfigured system. GUEST CAPABILITY Allow guests the opportunity to access WiFi while protecting your network and password. Easily create a network to service visitors, and Orbi handles everything else. You'll rest easy knowing that your information is safe from security breaches, viruses, malware, and network worms. - NETGEAR Orbi AC3000 WiFi Router - WiFi Add-On Satellite - High-Performance Tri-Band Technology - Add up to 2,500 Square Foot of WiFi coverage - RBS50.Four (4) high-performance antennas with high-powered amplifiers


Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.1 x 8.89 inches


Item Weight: 1.96 pounds


Item model number: RBS50-100NAS


Batteries: 1 Lithium Ion batteries required.


Is Discontinued By Manufacturer: No


Date First Available: September 13, 2016


Manufacturer: Netgear Inc


Country of Origin: China


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Was a great device until they released the 1.12.0.18 update which caused major disconnect issues
Style: Orbi RBK50 2 Pack
My last few routers have all been Asus routers, I tend to by the biggest one I can get to get coverage in all areas of my home. My old Asus RT-AC87U router is located in my man cave which is in the basement of my ranch house and all the way at one end of the house. Because of this placement it makes getting a good strong signal upstairs and at the other end of the house a little difficult. I’ve tried various methods to extend the wifi in the past including using power line adapters and wifi repeaters, they’ve always been a little flaky so I always try and just buy a big router instead. I’ve seen the mesh wifi routers becoming more popular, there big selling point is that everything is seamless to install and configure, you don’t have to mess with setting up multiple routers in bridge mode or anything else, you just plug them in and they all work together to form a big wifi mesh network. I started looking at the 2 that had been out for a while, Eero and Luma and they seemed fairly decent but had mixed reviews. Then I saw that NetGear had come out with their own, the Orbi. I had intended to just upgrade to another big honkin router, the Nighthawk X6 AC3200 but the Orbi caught my eye and was getting very good reviews so I thought I would give it a try instead. One thing that stood out with the Orbi is it’s dedicated backhaul, which is the connection between the main router and the satellite routers, other mesh wifi systems use the same radios that is used for user traffic for the connections between devices as well. The Orbi has a dedicated radio for that to separate that traffic and not use up user bandwidth which allows for better performance. So after reading up on everything I could find about the Orbi and seeing good things I ordered the 2 unit model (router + satellite). When it arrived I opened it and it was very nicely packaged, the router and satellite units are the same size and fairly big (also a bit slippery). I followed the quick install instructions, removed my old router, unplugged my cable modem, plugged it back in, turned on the main Orbi router, plugged it into the cable modem, placed the satellite upstairs and plugged in the power and finally plugged my desktop PC into the wired Ethernet port on the main Orbi router. On the Satellite unit, when I plugged it in it was supposed to glow amber and then change to blue once it connected to the main Orbi router, no luck there, it just kept flashing white despite it being only about 15-20 feet away from it. I gave up on that and went back to getting the main router configured. I then went to http://orbilogin.com and that’s when my problems started. The first thing it does is check for an internet connection, it kept timing out saying it couldn’t connect to the internet. I checked the cable between it and the cable modem, I turned the Orbi router on and off and still no luck, finally I had to power cycle the cable modem again and it worked. It went through the setup process, then asked me to register it, I put my serial number and info in, it said it would send me a confirmation email and waited for me to acknowledge that email before it could proceed. I never got the email so I just closed the window and went back to the main Orbi admin page. Both the satellite and main router had pretty old firmware versions so I went to the firmware update page, it detected new firmware for the router but was stuck on “Please wait” while checking for new firmware on the satellite, because of this the update buttons wouldn’t work either. I waited about 10 minutes and it was still stuck, I tried again and the same thing happened, finally I gave up and called Netgear’s support. Trying to navigate to NetGear’s support was another fun challenge, they seem to hide any way to contact phone support on their main website. They also want you to take a picture of your receipt that you bought the unit to get to support. I wasn’t having any of that, I was already getting fed up that this supposedly super easy Orbi was already giving me problems. I finally google’d Netgear support phone number and found the number to call them. The first guy I talked to was your typical, read from a script, I know very little type of support guy, I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere fast with him. He kept making useless suggestions and asking non-relevant questions, he also wanted me to move the satellite closer to the router. I told him I wasn’t going to do that, if those 2 units can’t communicate well enough from 15-20 feet away moving them closer wasn’t going to do anything. Finally I got fed up and asked to talk to a supervisor. The supervisor didn’t seem any more skilled then the first guy, he said he could have someone from advanced support call me back, I finally was about to hang up and told him to forget it I’m just going to return this. This got me an immediate “I’ll transfer you to someone who actually knows what they are talking about” response. In a few minutes I was talking to their advanced support who did a remote session to my desktop. They went through the process of downloading and manually updating the satellite firmware. Apparently there is a bug in the earlier firmware version where you can’t automatically update firmware through the admin console. Once that was manually applied the satellite unit re-started and then it looked like the main router unit updated it’s firmware automatically and re-started as well. From that point they were both at the latest firmware versions and everything was working. You can only make a first impression once and with the issues I experienced while setting Orbi up my initial excitement at getting a new wireless router quickly turned to frustration and aggravation. I checked my signal strength upstairs and at the opposite side of the house (see above) and it was very strong, much stronger then with the single Asus router. Also note that I pretty much get 5Ghz coverage anywhere in the house now both upstairs and downstairs where I only was able to get it downstairs in the man cave and just outside before. So after an hour or so of aggravation everything was finally working. I’m only on my first day with the Orbi, it seems to be working well now but only time will tell. The hardware seems solid, the admin UI seems laggy and is a bit plain and basic but it has a fairly decent amount of advanced networking features. There is also no cloud management connection required like some of the other mesh systems require were if you lose internet connectivity your whole LAN is down as well. The Orbi does have 3 wired Ethernet ports which is a big plus, I do have a NetGear 24-port smart switch that I use for a home lab but it’s nice to not have to use that if needed. One thing I had wanted to know was the status of the backhaul connection between the router and the satellite to see if they were optimally positioned. The Orbi admin UI just simply says “1 Satellite connected” but tell’s you nothing about the status and strength of that connection. The LED ring on top of the satellite only works when you initially plug it in and then goes dark. I’d like to know that the satellite is working and how well it’s working, it would be nice if that LED ring would stay on or could be turned on if desired to tell you how the satellite is doing. I also hate looking at the main router and having no visible indication of what the hell it’s doing, it could be off for all I know. NetGear put that LED to work and make it configurable in the admin UI. How about different colors for certain states and pulsing speed based on how busy it is. It would also be nice if the admin UI could show you more detail on the router-satellite connection. There are really two big components to a wireless router, it’s hardware and it’s software, you need the combination of both of these to be good to have a great product. I won’t dispute NetGear has always had great hardware and that looks to still be the case with the Orbi, but quite frankly there software has always been pretty crappy. My past few routers have been Asus and if it’s one thing that Asus has nailed it’s their software which totally kicks ass, there admin UI is feature rich, very nicely laid out and easy to use and they update it constantly. You can even get the Merlin builds which are based on the stock software which take it to the next level. Coming from Asus, looking at NetGear’s UI is a big let down, it’s plain, basic, lacking and it looks like a 10 year old designed it. You also have to download a separate Windows NetGear Genie app to do certain things, why can’t I do it all in the web based UI? Also how about being able to show a network map and maybe some basic device usage reporting? NetGear if you would just give your admin UI an overhaul you would have a killer product. Now let’s talk Parental Controls which is one area that NetGear has always sucked at which is one of the major reasons I always chose Asus over them in the past. I would of thought by now NetGear would have been able to figure out this important feature to any parent and implement it correctly. Instead they have a half-assed & weak Parental Controls in their admin UI and then they punt and say go use Open DNS if you want more which would work great until your kid figures out how to change their DNS server. On my Asus router, I had full Parental Controls built-in including the most important one to me, time of day access control by MAC address so I can shut my kids internet off at night at a specific time. While NetGear has time controls built-in it impacts every device connected to the router not just specific ones. Is it really that hard NetGear to implement time of day controls by MAC address? All in all if I would say I’m satisfied with the Orbi so far and will likely keep it, what any wireless router has to do really well is perform and that is what counts the most as you are using it day in and day out. Things like the admin UI you do not frequently use so as long as my wifi is fast and gives me good coverage across my entire house I’m all good. It would be nice if they improved the admin UI, parental controls, LED light functionality and other things. The Orbi is still pretty new so hopefully the software improves over time which would make me even happier. UPDATE (12/11/16): After living with Orbi for a few days now, all I can say is: damn this thing kicks ass. I get awesome coverage all throughout the house and I can get 5Ghz anywhere. From one of the farthest points from the main router and satellite my iPad speed test is around 170Mbps, crazy fast. My PC that is wired to one of Orbi’s Ethernet ports does a speed test at 232 Mbps. Also in that same room were I would regularly get the flashing wifi signal in Clash of Clans meaning I’m about to get disconnected (CoC tends to be latency sensitive), I have not been disconnected once with Orbi. I’m very happy with how well Orbi performs and would recommend it to anyone looking for whole home wifi, NetGear please just work on your admin UI and I’ll be even happier! UPDATE 2 (12/13/16): NetGear yesterday released a new Orbi firmware version (1.4.0.18) it was mostly minor but contained support for a new IOS/Android app that was released yesterday for management. My initial thoughts were, great now I have to go through another painful firmware upgrade process, and also cool an app that might make device management easier. The firmware upgrade went OK without issue this time around, I upgraded it through the admin UI and it was pushed out to both the main router and satellite. I downloaded the admin app to my iPad hoping for new management goodness and when I launched it found it to be a bit of a joke, you can do almost nothing in the app and it’s got to be the most basic app I’ve seen looking like someone wrote it less than an hour. When you launch the app you’re greeted to their dashboard which is nothing more than a screen with a giant picture of an Orbi with the only information shown being your Wifi network and password. If you browse the limited menu they have stuck in the corner all you can do is show device info (nothing more than the model, MAC address and the firmware version only for the router) and connected devices and that’s about it. My excitement of having an iPad management app quickly went to this royally sucks, app deleted. Again NetGear looks to not have a clue at designing a useful and nice management UI/app, they are lucky their hardware is keeping me a customer because their administration interfaces are trying real hard to push me away. Pluses: 3 wired Ethernet ports Fast and strong wifi signal Nice looking hardware Dedicated backhaul channel between router & satellite Router is pre-paired with satellite unit No cloud management required Has a decent amount of advanced networking features Cons: LED light rings on top are fairly useless Crappy admin UI is fairly bland and a bit laggy No way to see details of router-satellite connection No time scheduling parental controls by MAC Firmware upgrade is buggy IOS app is terrible Support isn’t great unless you tell them you are returning it UPDATE 7/13/17: Despite an initial rough start with the NetGear Orbi Home Wifi System I’ve been a big fan of it up until today. The reason I bought the Orbi was because I kept having wifi drops in some areas of my house with my Asus RT-AC87U router. I play a lot of online games like Clash of Clans and if you know CoC the dreaded wifi symbol while you are playing is not something you want to see. That symbol means your connection sucks and you are about to get dropped, I would get that frequently with my Asus router. Once I had Orbi up and running my wifi problems were completely gone for 7 months, until today. Netgear pushed out a 1.12.0.18 update to my router and satellite last night and today I awoke to constant and frequent disconnects on both my iPad Air 2 and Galaxy S7 Edge. I could literally not go a minute without a disconnect. I called their support who was basically useless, they said to enable Implicit Beamforming which has been disabled by default many updates ago because of issues it caused with some devices. I tried that anyway and it seemed to help a little with the iPad but not the Galaxy S7. Ironically Netgear had a big focus on fixing wifi disconnects with this update which has apparently plagued them from the beginning, read the Netgear forums and there are lots of threads on this issue like this one and this one. They also have problems with the Orbi losing connection to your internet device (i.e. cable modem), I also experience this frequently as well, the only fix is to reboot the cable modem. Most of the updates up until now have not really done all that much, this one had a lot of big fixes as seen below: Fixes the iOS disconnection issue. Fixes the Dropcam disconnection issue. Fixes the convergence issue when an Ethernet connected device moves from one Orbi to another. Fixes the issue where the Orbi app can’t find the Orbi router if the router is using IPv6 and is in AP mode. Fixes the issue where the Orbi app can’t display more than 20 connected devices. Fixes the issue where the installation assistant might not display if the device is connected to the Orbi network wirelessly. Fixes the issue where the 2.4 GHz backhaul setting is disabled if the fronthaul MU-MIMO and TxBF is disabled. Fixes the issue where IPv6 devices on the guest network can access the Orbi router’s web GUI. Includes security fixes for the following security vulnerabilities:PSV-2016-0133, PSV-2017-0607, PSV-2017-0615, PSV-2017-0736, PSV-2017-2190 So an update that supposedly fixes disconnect issues (which I never experienced) does the opposite and starts causing them instead. Thank you Netgear for breaking my perfectly wonderful wifi system. Apparently their engineering team has been spending most of their time introducing new Orbi devices and not spending much time refining their current firmware. I ended up downgrading both my router and satellite to the prior version which is 1.11.0.20 which has been working perfectly. In fact I have never had an issue with an Orbi update until now, I’m beginning to suspect the reason why is that they haven’t really done much with any of their 11 updates up until this one. Look at their typical release notes for the last 3 updates: 1.10.1.2 – Fixed few bugs 1.9.1.2 – Fixes bugs and security issues. – Improves the firmware upgrade process. – Continuous improvement in wireless connection stability 1.8.0.6 – Fixes bugs and security issues. – Supports Korea wireless region Now that they have finally starting to pay attention to some of the serious issues that Orbi has had they have apparently tried to fix some things and broke other things. At this stage with this new update I’m not going to update past 1.11.0.20 until Netgear gets their act together which is a shame as I will be missing out on potentially other fixes and enhancements. I loved my Orbi up until today and just yesterday was recommending it to people. However after this update dropped I will not recommend it anymore and may just end up migrating to one of the competing systems from Ubiquiti, Google and Eero which is a shame as Netgear had a good thing going with Orbi. Ultimately it comes down to what works best for me and if Orbi can no longer deliver that anymore than it’s adios amigo. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 13, 2017 by Erock
    • Outstanding Performance
Style: Orbi RBK50 2 Pack
I'm going to keep this short, because otherwise I'll end up deleting this after several revisions and give up. For this I product line (Orbi RK50), this will be my third attempt, because I feel rather strongly about it. Also, you may find this review somewhat strange, because I will spend most of the time not talking about it. If you have the time and patience, please bear with me - I promise there's a point to it. Finally, I apologize in advance if this review contributes toward you deciding to buy this wifi distribution system and it turns out not to meet your needs. There are always edge cases where even the best products will underperform. Wireless data transmission, unlike wired, is strongly affected by a number of external factors, such as obstacles (e.g. material type and thickness), competing signals (vicinity and number) that cause interference and result in diminished performance. In my case, there are only a small number of other signals in the neighborhood; but due to the position of the cable modem providing internet service - which is situated on the second floor, in a far corner - there were many dead zones throughout the house. The built in wifi transceiver of the modem (a typical FIOS unit) provided relatively adequate service on that floor; but on the first floor, the signal was significantly diminished and entirely inadequate for reliably streaming video to the television that sits at the opposite end of the house. In addition, there is an adjunct structure that was added later and connects on the opposite end first floor via a thick door. Beyond this point, the signal was very faint and could only be picked up sporadically, near the door. Suffice it to say, the entire basement was a dead zone and areas in between varied from acceptable (first floor, closest to the modem) to mostly inadequate. (note: if you are unfamiliar with some of the terminology in this section, don't let it confuse you. I'm providing the additional information mainly to clarify the effort I put into solving the problem.) My first attempt was to simply reuse existing hardware: a 3 year old 1900AC router with dual frequency antennas and a Tinkerboard with an AC-56 dual radio USB dongle attached. I tried using both devices mentioned (the former running various releases of OpenWRT and the latter running a flavor of Debian Linux with hostapd etc. configured). I used the 'iw phy <name> info' command in both cases to find device specific info for tunable parameters, to ensure that both configurations were optimally supporting underlying device capabilities (set via hostapd.conf in Linux and wireless config file in OpenWRT). For the AC-56 I also compiled a third party variant of the RT8812AU kernel driver, which reduces some hardware restrictions (mainly usability of side channel transmission in a competitive environment, iirc). I originally set up the 1900AC device as a retransmitter on the first floor near the other end of the house, which would pick up the modem's 2.4GHz Wifi signal and then retransmit it via both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. I tried to minimize the number of clients connecting via 2.4GHz because the router only has one radio for each band and already uses the lower band to communicate with the modem. This configuration provided coverage to the adjunct using both bands, but the transmission rate was odd: while speed tests claimed 20-24 down / 40-50 up (subscription is for a 75/? connection), the stability and transmission rate of the connection seemed to vary greatly, resulting e.g. in frequent drops in quality in some cases or freezes in others while streaming video. I haven't tested this yet with the Orbi setup, but I also saw frequent disconnects when using a VPN). I was now able to stream to the TV, but the quality of the stream was sub-par. Since the same happened with clients connected on either band, i assume the bottleneck was caused by the communication between the modem and the router. In case I forget to mention this later: I should note that when I placed the Orbi master and slave units, I used the same locations where the other devices were set up. To improve the quality of the transmission between the modem and the router, I then placed the additional device near the ceiling at the opposite end of the room so that it was connected by wire to the modem in that room and effectively acted as an intermediary between the modem and the router. This brought the signal about 12' closer (horizontally) to the center of the house. I tried using both devices as intermediaries, but the result was the same: there was no significant improvement. I also tried moving the intermediary closer to the floor, moving the router from the first floor to the second, etc. In all cases the end result was the same: diminished signal strength and significant reduction of transmission speed and quality. I also tried varying the channels used on both bands. This lengthy description is meant primarily to illustrate that I went to some length to try to set up a distributed wifi network on my own. Was the ultimate result caused by the devices, or was it because I ultimately failed to find the optimal configuration? I will admit that I could have tried a few more things to optimize utilization of device capabilities. I could have also formalized testing procedures to obtain more consistent and useful results. Is it likely that someone more experienced/knowledgeable could have gotten it to work, in less time? Probably. If you were reading this and kept thinking "but why didn't you try XYZ," you are probably that person. I should also point out that there send to be something strange going on with the hardware of the 1900AC device - which I could never identify, in spite of sending all syslog information to a dedicated syslog server, spending lots of time reviewing system and ring buffer logs, etc. Either the problem has worsened in the last six months (which could also be temperature-related, especially since it involves radio transmissions), or some component is operating at reduced efficiency without failing completely or crashing the device. Other possibilities are that I've spent too much time looking at all this and am starting to see things. Finally - and this is the most likely reason - different versions of OpenWRT seem to perform differently on any given platform. Notably, if you have an older device, the optimal version of OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Gargoyle/etc. Isn't necessarily the most recent one. For example, one popular variant of OpenWRT started providing a version for my specific device with an older kernel revision, because the more recent kernel caused consistent system crashes, for unknown reasons. Great, you've made it this far? You have my respect. This review is disastrous and spends far too much time talking about anything but the product supposedly being reviewed. I did want to elaborate on the amount of work I put into resolving the problem and adequately describing the obstacles encountered. In the end, I feel that I can only adequately illustrate the performance of this product by properly describing the 'theater of war' in which it was dropped to carry out its mission. Before I get to that next, I also wanted to point out that this isn't intended to, nor should it be taken as a "negative" review of the other devices - which I've deliberately kept vague in one case, because it's a device with a similar purpose from a competing vendor; comparing the two isn't fair due to the differences in specific purpose, significant difference in age, and because the other device was running a third party OS that doesn't come with an optimal service specific configuration by default and may have been running a suboptimal configuration. As for the Tinker board - i used it because it's an SoC with a gigabit network port that happens to come with the dongle - specific driver. Needless to say, it was never intended to be used for these purposes, although - considering the very low transmission speed maximum - even it is fast enough to not become the bottleneck. When I tried to set up the Orbi units, I was initially frustrated by the quick start documentation. Now to the manufacturer: if your documentation instructs the user to modify other devices (in this case, remove the backup batteries from the cable modem), you owe it to the user to provide at least a short justification. I couldn't find any batteries and didn't feel like disassembling the device to look for any, so I only followed the first step: unplug, wait, plug back in. Also, the documentation doesn't specifically mention whether the up link cable should also be plugged in at the same time. Fortunately, none of this affected the final outcome. In the end, the master unit was placed in the same location, near the ceiling and connected to the modem via the same ethernet cable. Meanwhile, the slave unit took over the location where the other router was previously located. I don't really recall doing much else, because the default configuration seemed to already work well. I did enable beam forming and the option below it, but i can't say whether they had any effect on the outcome. The most immediately notable difference was that the entire house - including the basement - receives a strong signal (minimum 4/5 bars in the most distant corner of the basement and the adjunct, which is behind an exterior wall/ thick door; but typically 5/5 everywhere else). Using a wifi scanner app confirms this: both master/slave units are now visible in the plot, even at 5GHz (when checked near the slave). Wifi signal strength decreases faster at higher frequencies (most wireless devices compensate for this by increasing the power output from eg 20 to 30mW when using higher channels in a given band. Still, considering the low quality of the 2.4GHz signal from the prior setup, I am amazed that Netgear manages the entire backhaul via the dedicated third 5GHz signal. The output of these radios is limited by FCC regulation to a low level and, in any case, pumping up the power increases the noise produced without adequate cooling. So my only conclusion is, considering that all radios in all devices (except the modem) are compatible with the fastest standards for each band, that the people who created the configuration of these devices know way more than I do. Which isn't to say that I'm any kind of guru. In fact, the details above should hopefully give you an idea of the results produced by a layman trying to solve the same problem. Bandwidth tests on DSL Reports show 5X down / 6X up and A ratings excerpt for buffer bloat, which receives a B rating. But these numbers are in the end just figures that are as meaningless as they were when I conducted the same tests using the previous setup. What matters in the end (and why I never bothered to find out if those options I enabled made a difference) is that I no longer feel the need to nickel and dime the effect each parameter change has on the result. It simply works - pacman updates (MinGW/MSYS - I'm stating these specifically because pacman shows throughput for each downloaded package and the recent update modified 30-40, or 612MiB total) have gone from average 2-300KiB/s to 4-5MiB/s (on a laptop located in the adjunct) - a far cry from the 2-3x difference that the speed tests presume to indicate. Streams work without interruption. Everything works - i don't even think about it anymore. And, I other than the Orbi system adjusting its local subnet due to collision with the modem shortly after setup, there has not been a single interruption. In fact, since you've read this far (you have, haven't you?), I'll do you a solid and kick off a test right now: a 16.2GiB update on Steam. It appears to be peaking at 7.3MiB/s, with a very solid (nearly a line) average of 7.1MiB. Previously I saw a maximum of 2.2 (more generally 1.5-1.8), but throttled to 1MiB because otherwise streaming became impossible and even visiting web pages ended in frequent errors. While this is happening, I'm now going to try streaming Crunchyroll on an Android phone...one minute in, no freezes. I can't sty how much the download dipped in that time, because the steam client only shows current speed (7.2) and the graph isn't really indicative. This is my first, posted review. I spectacularly failed on my initial promise to keep it short (now you see why I don't write reviews?), but I hope this gives you some measure of confidence, in case you're on the fence (like was actually, for a long time). It's an amazing device - in the two weeks I've used it so far. I would describe myself as a technical person who's slowly turning into a luddite because of endless frustrations with electronics. I don't recall the last time when I was this overwhelmed in terms of expectations vs results. If in two years I'm still seeing even 80% of these results and similar consistency, it might even give my Nokia N900 a run for the money in terms of best in its class I've owned. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2018 by Zsolt Szabo

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