What's the best alternative (Now that I'm returning Orbi ...)

gr0uch wrote:

I have been able to return these after the return policy for store credit and am now a happy Eero owner!   So far still supporting the same speeds with ease of setting it up. The one thing that I will say is that there's no web UI for the eero.. but truthfully it's almost unecessary. 

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Thanks for posting your experience for the benefit of other.  Eero is not available in New Zealand, where I am, but it sounds interesting. 

Despite starting this thread, I'm still perservering with Orbi because:

1.  Netgear support have been working with me and we've solved one of the two problems (speed throttling) with only the RBW30 disconnections still to go. 

2.  Apart from the RBW30 disconnections, I'm pleased with Orbi's performance (good video streaming and coverage over the house), 

3.  I'm not convinced that the grass is greener with other mesh products ...  From my research it seems that other consumer mesh products can also have similar disconnection problems.  I was interested in the Ubiquiti Amplifi but it's community forum suggests similar potential for issues (seach for 'disconnects' on https://community.amplifi.com).  The Linsys Velop similarly appears to have disconnection issues reported on it's own community. 

4.   Apart from the Amplifi (using routers as a mesh point), other mesh products don't have as many Ethernet ports in router and sats (Eero included).  

5.  Orbi has the best architecture (dedicated wifi backhaul channel) and good (best?) theoretical speeds.

C'mon Netgear - I imagine its not much fun being under the gun on this, but you've got a killer product and we're all hanging out for the stability break-through.  

My last update here :)

Thanks to swedish consumer rights laws, I managed to get my money back after a full year of Orbi problems.

In search for a better solution I decided to skip these new mesh solutions altogether as most of them seem to have problems (Thanks for the Velop link and other pieces of info Ulairi).

Being burned on the Orbis my conclusion is that you cannot trust the review sites that often only seem to test the equipment briefly in less demanding environments. It is better to study user forums for problems ("disconnects" is a good search term :) ).

Since we have a large old brick house I decided to go with a professional solution instead. I found two vendors that have "professional" wifi solutions at consumer price levels; Mikrotik (from Latvia) and Ubiquity (from USA). Both seem good but in the end I decided to go with mikrotik mainly since they are cheaper yet seem to have quality hardware.

As a router I decided to try out pfsense, an open source software router and firewall. I use an old PC as hardware. There is a ton of very useful functionality, e.g., blocking of ads, malware, ransomware for all your internet clients at home (via pfblockerNG), intrusion detection and prevention (via snort), etc. Highly recommended if you have an old PC and a few hours of time.

So with 4 wifi access points (one outdoor) from mikrotik (wap ac) and an old PC running pfsense I have a rock solid "professional" wifi system nowadays with a truly great router/firewall (totally superior to ORbis and other consumer routers) for less than half the money that my Orbi cost!!! (not counting the old PC cost)

It is not for non-techie people though. It takes a bit of time to wrap your head around and setup this stuff. But I can say it has been a true joy to learn along the way (instead of just hours and hours of tearing your hair in frustration with the Orbis, waiting for new firmware updates that often degraded performance)

My experience is that the grass is not always greener on the other side. I've been testing a lot of various solutions on our house the last few years (I write reviews so I think it is fun to test new solutions but also look for the "best solution"). 

Background: Our house us built 1938 and is built very solid. proper wood. Thick walls. Thick floors. The garage (which is my office now) has stone/cement walls. So not an easy house for WiFi. I also have 1 Gbps/1 Gbps internet (thank god for Swedens very competitive fiber-market - currently 1 Gbps cost me 40$/month and I will get 10 gbps for 60$ in a few months). We have several computers, a bunch of iPad that are used for youtube, fortnite, watching game streams, sefveral consoles, music player etc etc. usually there are 20+ devices connected. 

I used to use expensive consumer routers like the ASUS RT3200 or RT5300 to try to blast the house with WiFI. Didn't work that well in the ground floor and garage. I tried separate AP's on each floor (I got ethernet cables to 1 palce in each floor) but dispised having to switch network went I went between them.

For some time I used a Ubiquiti-solution (Cloud Key, EdgeRouter, 2 AP Lite's - or was one a pro .... not sure). Ubiquiti worked fine but I was not really impressed with the speeds. And I did have some issues with lost connections. Ubiquiti is not immune to firmware issues to. 

For fun I switched to Mesh, mostly just for fun. I might actually go back to Ubiquiti later. I first tested the Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD. Not that impressed. I had issues getting good coverage with the wall-mounted small mesh-nodes. I ended up giving the system to my mother in law. And it works ok there (she has 100/100) but far from impressive. Still might buy another mesh-node just to give her some more coverage. 

I then tested the Velop. This worked fine with minor issues. Then I switched to the Orbi. Worked fine for quite some time until netgear started to release their latest firmwars with all their issues. I did get it to work with 2.1.4.14 after some horrible issues where hooking up the satellites to ethernet backbone brought down the network. I posted about this before and how I got it working. It kept running fine for a few weeks and then, after a power outage, the satellites crashed the network again when the power came back. Pissed I decided to test some other solutions.

I bought 2 packs of Dlink Covr to see how a 5 mesh-network can work with "slower" nodes. At first the Covr has some serious issues which meant i put it aside but when I now tested it last week it was actually nice. Dlink has updated it and it works well although there is no ethernet backhaul which meant that getting Internet down to the garage meant many hops and slow-downs. For a 1 Gbps connection I felt I lost to much performance.

I tested a Jensen Omni-pack  this is a rebranding of another mesh-product in the US) and it was horrible. While the US-version supporsts ethernet backhaul this version did not. And it had horrible stability issues. My Mac Book pro never could connect. 
 

Last last week I got hold of a Asus Lyra AC2200 3-pack cheap). Installed. Was impressed with the speed. Was impressed with the Webb-GUI which has all the settings I expect from a stand-alone expensive router. And then the connection kept dropping randomly.  My wife noticed. My kids notice. I noticed. I could work with my Mac and then for just 10-20 seconds loose the connection while my kids seemed to have no issues. So it seems the devices connecting to the LYRA's randomly lost connection for a few seconds. It tooks me  3 days before I had to remove it. My Wife complained. Everyone in the family complained.

I went back to my 3 ORBI's  (1 RBR50 and 2 RBS50's) and decided to update first the satellites to 2.1.4.16 and then the router. First I had them in WIFI-connection and then I hooked up each satellite to wired ethernet .... and it all worked. 

And or the last 3-4 days I'm back to around 600 Mbps when connecting via WiFi from my Mac Book Pro and no-one has complained about crappy WiFi or issues (and trust me - they do).

I'm still curious about testing the Google WiFi but when the Orbi does work they really are a good product. Not making light of the issues people having (I've had some too) but my experience is that no product seems to be perfect, even Ubiquiti. 

Still, I'm a bit curious about the UAP-nanoHD so I might switch back to those later.