Orbi vs. Linksys EA9500

I have both, went from a EA9500 with one RE7000 and one EA7500 as extenders, changing to the Orbi with satellite. The Orbi dedicated backhaul connection between router and satellite is a much stronger signal or better put, works better, has better penetration in my house, which is hostile to wifi signals. As far as I remember the seamless roaming worked okay with both setups, but I don't do a lot of roaming around when I am actively using a device. Also I believe the Orbi will work better if you have multiple satellites, as they can hop back through each other to the router if I am recalling the benefits correctly. I thought the RE7000 worked basically like any extender, just with special features, but it didn't have a dedicated wireless connection to router, but was MU-MIMO. So far for me, the ORBI's secret sauce is the dedicated backhaul connection. It is great, allowing me to place the satellite in the middle of the house (couldn't do that with RE7000 or EA7500 from EA9500) and have decent wifi coverage in a house that really weakens wifi signals. I will probably add one more satellite when that becomes an option.

If you are not dealing with a lot of things that mess up wifi (house materials, interference from a bunch of overlapping wireless signals, etc) I'm not sure how much better throughput you could expect if any. The EA9500 performed just a bit better than the Nighthawk R8000 it replaced (maybe due to newer features), both were good at handling many devices at once, as is the Orbi.