My concern here is that Netgear markets this (and other) systems as a premium product
Agreed. My concern here is that Netgear markets this (and other) systems as a premium product for the average user, complete with an app and subscription-based services that are intended to remove the pain from having a quality home-WiFi network for those that are willing to pay the price.
If this was the 1st time the Orbi series had issues that took forever to resolve and/or required extended workarounds and hacks to get it working properly that would be one thing (anyone else remember the DNS caching/time-out issue that seemed to go on forever?), but it isn't. Now they have basically killed my ability to access my system, even though it is more than 10 days past their "resolution"; and once again the best that Netgear and their support forums can recommend is "well, if you really want to fix Netgear's ^%$#-up, you need to wipe it and set up from scratch again and/or restore from backup".
It isn't that I personally don't have the skills or the ability to do a factory-reset. Actually, I do, and when I get the time I will, with great reluctance and consternation, do just that. But let's be clear... for a system that cost nearly $1,000 I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO.
Honestly, I was a big fan of Netgear and with rare exceptions, I've used their products both at home and in a number of businesses. And for now I'm keeping my Orbi because I have too much sunk cost into it to just toss it out and buy another mesh system. But sadly it is a safe bet that this will be my last product from them.
