NETGEAR RBK53S,

I’ve got BT Fibre broadband (home hub 5) which connected about 50 devices...including Philips Hue, Sonos, Sky Q, Xbox, Alexa and a number of Apple devices. I used Powerline plugs to connect the main Sky Q and Xbox devices to the hub.The home hub worked okay but the wifi speeds would often drop out. I found I was turning the Powerline plugs off and on to restore connections and in worst case scenarios rebooting the router itself.The Orbi Wifi router and 2 x Orbi Satellites was a lot of money but well worth the investment. I luckily had an OpenReach broadband fibre modem in the loft from when I first had my broadband connection. I found Orbi struggled to work with the Homehub even in AP mode. However once I overcame that hurdle, the rest of the setup was very straightforward. I plugged the Wifi router into the modem (as per the clear instructions), waited for the Orbi router to shine a solid white and plugged the Ethernet cable from the router into my PC so I could complete the wizard based setup. Don’t worry though, its also possible to do this by connecting to its wifi siid and default password. The setup was very easy and of course if you rename the siid to match what your wifi was before...and use the same password, then all your existing devices at home will just start to work again without having to re-enter any details. All that was left to do was to put my other two satellites in the house. One was on the landing upstairs and the other was in the lounge and you turn these on and they connect automatically which is confirmed when the light on these turns a solid blue (which doesn’t stay on forever).The wifi signal has been really strong, fast and reliable ever since...for all my devices. The only consideration will be if your existing router is a combined modem and wifi router (e.g. BT home Hub). Its possible to turn off the wifi for the home hub...but Orbi still Struggled until I replaced it with just the OpenReach modem which then had an ethernet cable from the modem to the Orbi router. After that, its been brilliant. Maybe other home routers (other than BT) may have better config options to allow it to become a modem only setup, allowing Orbi to focus on being a Wifi router....which with its three channels, it does really well. I recommend!

First, the background. I live in an old property with a mixture of very thick walls and walls that have been dry-lined with foil-faced boarding - both of which can significantly disrupt wifi signals. Before the Orbi, my wifi network had consisted of four separate wireless routers, each set up as wireless access points,, all sharing the same SSID, and all on wired connections back to my central network switch. This provided me with a largely satisfactory wifi signal throughout the property. However, wifi has moved on since that setup evolved, and I wanted to update the infrastructure to keep up with the newer laptops, phones and tablets that have joined the household over the past few years.Installing Orbi was a fairly painless - almost trivial! - process, although it should be noted that the default setup replaces your existing broadband router. If, like me, you simply want to add wifi onto an existing network then it is necessary to go into the Orbi configuration, advanced setup, and select AP (for Access Point), rather than ROUTER, operation. Once you have done that the rest pretty much just happens.Once set up I found the results were, frankly, amazing. The wifi network is very noticeably faster, and all our devices - even the slower ones! - are now more responsive, web-pages snappier, videos stream without stuttering, etc etc., and at last I feel that we are getting value from the 64Mbps fibre internet connection. Moreover, a number of mysterious problems that have plagued the network for years - random pauses (sometimes lengthy), failure to see devices, devices suddenly falling off the network, etc - all magically vanished, and for the first time ever we have reliable and fast wifi throughout the house.Of course, where the Orbi units are positioned will affect coverage, so some thought needs to be applied to best placement. Also, the Orbi is not unique, and there are other similar mesh systems out there that should do a similar job. That said, the Orbi does what it claims, and seems to do it well, so I would have no hesitation in recommending it, at least in the version I purchased ("Ultra Performance wifi", 2-pack), to anyone looking for such a solution.Others have commented negatively on Orbi's durability: I have not had mine long enough to comment, though I have always found other Netgear equipment to be reasonably well-made and long-lasting. Similarly I cannot comment on Netgear's technical support because I've never used it. If I had a criticism of Orbi it would be that the units are quite large - larger than one would expect from the pictures, and so are not always easy to conceal. At least they do not, in normal use, display multiple flashing LEDs as does much network hardware. Once switched on, booted and connected to the network, with everything running properly, all lights are extinguished unless and until some error condition occurs, so large though the units are they do not draw attention to themselves.