How come ORBI still getting raving reviews? is Netgear paying them for good reviews and ignoring a l

Question

How come ORBI still getting raving reviews? is Netgear paying them for good reviews and ignoring the phenominal number of users in this forum having issues. Those issues are real and sooner or later everyone is going to have them based on their needs (as it seems like with many users running fine for 6 months or so). ORBI is is a premium system and unless you have a box full of $$ sitting somewhere to buy gadgets, you bought ORBI for multi-streaming-devices (10+) and corner to corner stable WIFI. Both of which had failed by Netgear firmware. Don't take me wrong, ORBI hardware is still top notch and just need a good dedicated serious team of software devs and QA to do the right thing. I am a solutions architect myself and knows that the best solution is the one that fits your client needs and that may not always be the latest and greatest.

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mesh-router,review-5191.html

snellc001 · Answer

Probably because there are lots of people out there like me who have never had a problem with the Orbi. I have updated every time a new firmware version has been released. Never experienced any problems at all. I typically have severeal iPhones, iPads, Android phones (on Android 8.1), LG Smart TV's, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV sticks, a printer, 2 LG BluRay players, MacBook Pro's, and an Asus Windows laptop. Never have any of the devices had a problem connecting to the internet. Never has my system experienced any re-boots. My Orbi has been completely reliable and fast as hell since I got it.

BTW, no one paid me for this post.

t_k · Answer

I'd like to tackle the subject line. I believe I know why they are getting rave reviews. There are three reasons;

(1) They pay for the profession ones and work like crazy to SEO optimize them. The most recent example is this absurd review by SF girl, what basically says "they're pretty". The product bugs are unlikely to be noticed under short reviewer tests (See my post about how to reliably reproduce the backhaul issue). And, you can kind of sweep the more minor stuff under the rug (e.g. the lack of ability to separate 2.4 and 5Ghz SSIDs, the fact that their new "wired backhaul" feature just doens't work).

Also, with most reviewer forums, they moderate the posts. In the case of the SF girl review I mentioned earlier, negative posts about the Orbi where removed. Notice what happened when that wasn't the case on the Netgear Forum.

(2) Most end users don't remember to change their reviews on whatever site they bought it on once it stops working. As you mentioned, most people will realize that their network problems are caused by their Orbi in about 6 months. They tend to review products within 2-10 days. They don't go back later.

That said, an astonishing 20%+ of users did provide 1 star reviews for the RBK53 system on Amazon. However, due to Amazon's ranking system, it still retains a 4 star rating.

(3) Intentisional confusion added by Netgear (and all too often, Netgear fanboys) whenever problems are posted in some public forum. When Orbi problems are pointed out, they are often brought up by users with varying degrees of comfortibility with networking and wifi specifically. This leaves the situation wide open for people to post illogical responses to the problems or claim that the problem (as the poster described it) doesn't exist (the famed "works for me!" post). This adds doubt to the issues when they are brought up. Stopping them from gaining traction.

Anyway, my 2c.

Roamabout · Answer

Every mesh wifi product sold on Amazon has pretty much the same percentage of people that love it (80 to 90 percent) and people that hate it and will never buy another product from that company again (10 to 20 percent). As stated by others, this forum attracts mostly the people having a problem while the silent majority are blissfully unaware of this discussion.

If the problem was just down to a flaky backhaul implementation we would be able to describe a usage scenario that would always work but there are people that cant maintain a connection with their ISP, cant maintain a reliable device connection to an Orbi. It frustrates me that we cant figure out why some people with large complex and diverse Orbi deployments have a problem-free experience and others want to tar and feather the Orbi product people.

budy · Answer

On the other hand, I am all on for keeping up the pressure on Netgear. They really need to step up on these issues. Even if&nbsp; my system doesen't experience any issue with ethernet backhaul, I have taken a look at the "receipe" to force this ethernet backhaul issue, but my setup is centralized around a 24-port Zyxel switch in the basement, with a couple of small Cisco 5-Port switches scattered around my house. On my satellite I only&nbsp; use the ethernet port for the backhaul, while I am using one additinal ethernet port on my router (in AP mode) to connect a RPi3 running Kodi.&nbsp;I do also have a VMWare server down in the basement, which runs 9 guests in bridge mode, but I can't just get myself to rip everything apart to meet the test's requirements. However, if it would a reproducible issue, I'd immediately suspect the bridge in the Orbis to be the root cause, but I couldn't see any erratic behaviour on any of those as of yet.&nbsp;Nevertheless… Netgear needs to properly analyze these issues and solve them.

t_k · Answer

budy&nbsp;The fact that the system does not have issues that you've detected is a good. However, one thing I really want to push against is the "works for me" response.&nbsp;It's muddies the waters as I pointed out in (3)&nbsp;and I've produced a way to know, within a few hours, if your system is impacted by the backhaul issues or not. That changes the scene from "I don't notice any issues" to "I know there are no issues".&nbsp;It's possible, though extremely unlikely, that the Orbi's sold in the UK somehow have different behavior. I corresponded with a user from Germany that was having the same issue.&nbsp;Roamabout&nbsp;I actually wrote up the steps to reproduce the Orbi backhaul issues at your request. I would appreciate it if you ran through the steps. I believe, if you were able to see the issue yourself, you would change your opinion.&nbsp; Right now, there is a bit of tone that "welp, every system has people that like it, and people that don't" - which really blurs things. It tries to make it seem that the Orbi's issues are on-par with other systems.&nbsp;While it is true that every wifi system has champions and detractors, what is happening here - and not occuring with any other product I've observed - is that there are significant issues with stability (disconnects and the backhaul), and feature reliability (forced upgrades with poorly tested firmware). That's not a theme you see anywhere else. I don't frequently reference Reddit, but they have a long history of pointing this out,&nbsp;about only this product (1, 2, 3)&nbsp;The tar and feature folks on this forum largely complain of a single theme: Intermitted disconnects - you aren't seeing a smattering of issues. If you were seeing irate uses with issues all over the map (e.g. somebody can't get a&nbsp;the device configured, or general wifi confusion), then you'd have a strong case that this is just consumer confusion. That's not what you're seeing.

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How come ORBI still getting raving reviews? is Netgear paying them for good reviews and ignoring a l

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