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Forum Discussion
Should I come back to Orbi?
Hey all. I used Orbi RBK750's for a couple of years and when the firmware disasters began I dumped them (thanks Costco!) for Asus. I do miss some of the features and now with Costco having the 753's for a lower price I thought about coming back. Then I began reading. Is it still really such a mess? Is it the same firmware problems that began last summer?
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Thalador wrote:
Hey all. I used Orbi RBK750's for a couple of years and when the firmware disasters began I dumped them (thanks Costco!) for Asus. I do miss some of the features and now with Costco having the 753's for a lower price I thought about coming back. Then I began reading. Is it still really such a mess? Is it the same firmware problems that began last summer?
The answer may hinge on which features were present in the Orbi product but missing in the Asus, and how important those features are to you.
There do appear to be some enduring firmware issues with the entire AX series of products. The present explosion of forum posts resulted from Netgear 'pushing' a firmware update to a lot of users (in an attempt to address problems) which resulted in the customers not being able to access their system with either the Orbi 'app' or the web interface unless they performed a factory reset and wiped out their existing configurations. Thus, whether this latest firmware has 'fixed things' has taken a back seat to undoing the damage. (Customers who did the factory reset are 'back in business.')
Purchasing a new system from Costco will avoid this unfortunate situation.
Just personally, I would wait until the dust settles and forum discussions return to whether the newest firmware has addressed outstanding issues. The Costco offering is not likely to disappear any time soon, so there should be no urgency.
I do need to clarify that the new package at Costco is the RBK763's not 753's. Still, seems like they still haven't figured out how to push firmware yet. Here's an idea - don't force it. Let users update when they want.
Go to their website.
Used to be a RBK53 owner for a long time, was frequently frustrated by reboots and other issues. When the WiFi 6 Orbi RBK753 was available at Costco a while ago, I thought that with a new flagship the system had to be better right?
No, it's acceptable enough that I'm not ready to pay nearly $1K for another setup from another vendor with possibility it's a mess there as well. I just plan for the necessary "reboot" weekly to act as a preventative.
I couldn't at this time recommend Orbi for anyone.
I think I might seriously consider purchasing an actual enterprise product line in the long term. Waiting for 6E to become much more commodity in the enterprise before I make that leap. Real firewall, real routing and real APs that are designed to just work at unfortunately a real cost.
