Overall first (and last) impressions from the Orbi RBR750 plus sats mesh system.
Base unit I think is in a 50 USD price range; dubious value for the price point. Compared contrasted with an ASUS RT-AC68U not quite double the cost.
Pack included the 2x RBS350, I think it was, sat APs. For the price point, ~350 USD, maybe you are paying for the tri-band, and a "bargain" on the sat APs. MAYBE. But the router features just seemed a bit under-powered, to be honest; but to be fair, on the other hand, in the base unit price point, maybe apporpriately priced.
Router features, does most what I might want to do in a router, from what I could find, but we had difficulties configuring the Wifi mesh appropriately. One of the APs appeared to come up and sustain a connection; the other one kept dropping. To be fair, I do not know if the technician who did the original configuration performed the necessary steps on the B unit. That said...
Could not Wifi find ranges, coverages, etc, in any of the documentation, but one number jumped out during a ddg search, 3000 sq ft, something like that; so simple reverse engineering square root, estimated at best 50 ft range. We could not even achieve that, but like I said B unit may not have been fully configured properly. AP unit A appeared to come up and stay up however. However, the range, and our home situation, bit of a stretch to expect the AP to do well. 50 ft is pushing it, I think. Not sure N/g could do anything to improve that, to be fair; more a limitation of the wifi, bandwidths, etc. Also please do not interpret as wanting more power, higher bands, absolutely not; for many EMF, health reasons. Only to say, 50 open air at best; considering also structures, etc, reflections, etc.
I did get to network analyzing our wifi to determine could we adjust channels and such, however. And although there are more channels we could connect with, in theory, in either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz, there are very limited choices what we can do from the router config itself. VERY limited. Plus, apparently requires some backdoor putty (or other) telnet tricks to silence the 5 GHz radio; the web interfaces DOES NOT WORK, does not stay disabled. From one blog mention, apparently some sort of baked into the cake watchdog that always enables it, no matter what. Which makes it very difficult indeed, nigh unto impossible, troubleshooting either of the radios, channels, etc, for availability.
For admin access, so many units these days offer "app access", which is fine. I guess it is the nature of things being leashed to a cell phone. I do not personally care about that, and was simple enough to configure via desktop browser. Was easy enough to navigate basic from advanced feature sets; no more or less than competitors, and I actually found the relative simplicity of the features somewhat refreshing.
I did not get far enough into configuration before we decided to throw in the towel and return the unit to store of purchase, evaluating things like port forwarding, things of this nature. I see the features, in theory, were available, to what extent, did not explore them.
Overall impressions; if you just need a decent router, adequate configuration ability, will do fine. If you need to tune things, do more advanced things like (Adaptive) Quality of Service (QoS) config, you are out of luck, go with a more feature enabled brand.
HTH, evaluating this unit, versus maybe others in the same ~50-100 price range, for base units, etc.
Re: Orbi (RBR750) mesh 3-pack value review, feedback
We have the RBR753 system, which is the RBR750 router and two RBS750 satellites. Works perfectly for our needs. Speeds are fast and reliable. The satellites are hardwired to the router with solid copper core CAT-6 cabling (non-CCS/CCA). The coverage in our two-story, 3500 sq. ft. home is fine. The satellites are upstairs, at opposite ends of the house and the router is downstairs. We use WiFi-C (WiFi Calling) on our cell phones and the call quality and reliability is fine no matter where we are in the house. We have two hardwired HTS's and about 15 other WiFi devices connected at any one time without any issues. We're not gamers, nor do we need more advanced features other than tweaked defaults so I can't speak to that. All in all, the RB750/RBS750 system, run in router mode, has been rock solid and reliable.
All of our IoT devices are on the renamed Guest Network with its own password. I like the option of having the Guest Network isolated from the Primary Network. I haven't used the IoT network because I don't really see a need to do so because the Guest Network works just fine for the devices pointed to it.
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems with the system you evaluated is that it's mis-matched. The current RBR750 update apparently is not compatible with the RBS350 satellites so that's an issue for anyone who has that configuration and updates the RBR750.
Re: Orbi (RBR750) mesh 3-pack value review, feedback
Thanks for the reply, and bit of clarification.
Anyway, read: took the opportunity to "eval" the system as it were, as I said.
Turns out the system it was replacing, was probably "just fine", turns out a screw loose from its wifi antena was much of the issue in the first place.
Plus, suggested that if more dependable connection than wifi was desired, (netgear) powerline adapters are a fine alternative. Already running two of those, and it works just fine; (in theory) should be no problem whatsoever to add 2+ more of them as needed. Plus one of the rooms is already LAN wired to begin with, so there's that, also.
Re: Orbi (RBR750) mesh 3-pack value review, feedback
FYI, this system is catagorized and modeled to be a 650 series model system. Please be aware that the current v7 FW that is available for the RBR750 is NOT compatible with the 350 series satellites. To keep this system in working order, do not update the RBR750 to v7 FW as it will render the RBS350s out of sync and no longer connected. Please keep the RBR750 at the v4 version of FW seen here to help keep the 350 series connected and working with the RBR750:
Re: Orbi (RBR750) mesh 3-pack value review, feedback
Today, for us anyway, is a non-sequitur. Unit returned for refund, since we were able to successfully troubleshoot our ASUS router. That said, AFAIK, all three units fw was fully updated. Not positive whether syncing was successful in either of the sat AP units, however; probably sat-2 was not, best guess. Anyway, maybe that helps someone.
