RicOShea you can do what you want of course, but regarding:

Has a factory reset been performed since last FW update? This should be performed if it hasn't been yet.

Factory resets were done on the Satellites but not on the RBR. Frankly that is an annoyance and one that shouldn't really be necessary ...

You can see on every firmware release notice that Netgear issues (for example, for the 970, it's at:

New - RBE970 / RBE971 Firmware Version 9.13.2.1 Released | NETGEAR Communities

Near the bottom it states:

NOTE: If continued problems are seen after a FW update, it's recommended to try a factory reset and setup from scratch with out loading any saved configurations from backup files. Use the ERASE button on the routers web page to factory reset the router.

I have had to do this in the past, I take a screen shot of each page of the web admin pages (at first; eventually I learned which of my settings were non-default and I could quickly write them down). So after the clean setup it takes about 10 minutes to go thru and mod any settings necessary. It's not that hard, and imho it's a lot less time than researching another router, getting it in, learning about it, setting it up, adjusting to its idioscyncracies (for example, wifi radios are different - where you place its satellites will likely be different locations)

FYI, this is not uncommon for these kinds of networking products. I just did some searching, resets are recommended in 3 different cases, depending on the router, for Asus, TP-Link, Ubiquiti, and Eero. The three cases cited in different places are problems after major firmware jumps, when behavior becomes non-deterministic (random disconnects, clients fail to connect, IPv6 issues, settings that won't 'stick'), and after restoring from backups created with older firmware. They are NOT, by anyone including Netgear, required as part of normal maintenance or after every FW update - only when there are issues not otherwise solved.

Have you tried seeing what the signal strength is at each of your satellites, using one of the Windows/Mac tools on a laptop sitting next to each satellite one at time? I use WiFi Explorer Lite on a Mac, free, and you might see one of two things (1) weaker signal than you thought, which would surely cause disconnects, or (2) similarly strong singles from multiple Orbi devices, which will confuse network connectivity in a mesh enviornment.

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