NETGEAR Orbi 970 Series Quad-Band WiFi 7 Mesh Router (RBE971S), Covers Up to 3,300 sq. ft., 200 Devices, 10 Gig Internet Port, Expandable to Create A Mesh System, BE27000 802.11be (Up to 27Gbps)

Netgear Orbi 970: Premium Price, Disappointing Performance So, I paid top dollar for the Netgear Orbi 970 and Satellite, drawn in by claims of "leading-edge technology" and "unmatched range." My old router was on its last legs, so I took the plunge. What a mistake. House single story ranch 2,600 sq feet with basment. 55 clients and a handful of IoT-type devices that don't like or support anything over 2.4. From the start, the experience has been a nightmare: • Connectivity Issues Galore: Constant dropouts and poor performance. Despite living in a single-story, 2,600 sq ft home, I had to buy a satellite just to get basic coverage. Still sucks for a few devices. • Terrible Range: Even with the satellite, my Ring doorbell and Lenovo notebook—both only about 15 feet from the satellite—struggle with two bars of signal. And they’re even closer to the main Orbi, which is just one floor down in the basement. Much worse than my old now dead Synology. • Unreliable Interface: The HTML admin panel is flaky at best. Sometimes it works, sometimes it randomly disconnects mid-session and refuses to reconnect. I want to see which device is connected to what? Not in the web interface—you’re forced to use the app. • Inconsistent App Behavior: The Android app doesn’t reliably update device names. Some appear correctly; others don’t. It’s hit or miss. • Armor = System Chaos: Turning on Netgear Armor completely destabilized my setup. A recalcitrant managed switch might have played a role in that fiasco, but now I'm gun-shy to try again. • Their 3rd SSID, which Netgear call IoT, is okay, but doesn’t go far enough, and you’re stuck with it accessing your primary network (same subnet as primary), so you have no choice but to let old IoT devices have access to your home's primary network, unlike using the Guest SSID. Some granularities on radio management by SSID would be uber useful. • My Echo devices (eight) constantly lose proper connectivity - new behavior just started with the Orbi 970. Even though the Alexa app says they’re online, voice commands and skills stop working after a reboot and don’t function normally until hours later, sometimes overnight. • Useless Support: Tech support is clearly outsourced, undertrained, and working in a noisy environment. It was hard to hear anything over the background chatter. No real help was offered. • Clients that have less than good connectivity are remaining connected to the router base, opposed to the satellite, which is much closer than the router base. No way to manage. Disappointing that you don't allow admins to adjust the power on base. • Not clear: If I keep this poor tech or return it to Amazon, I have a few weeks before the return window closes, but I am trying to balance the fight of a new rollout versus just dealing with the Netgear nonesense.

I switched to this router after my old legacy Asus router was getting saturated by all the devices connected to my network (64). I've had this Orbi 970 for about 3 months now and it appears to be handling all of my devices with no sweat. Additionally, All my devices communicate with no hicups and my network is a bit snappier(faster). So overall, I am happy with it. Wish it wasn't so expensive, but it was worth it IMO.

Can’t give a thorough and honest review besides for the quality of their refurbished items. The previous owner was logged in, so I spent hours with their service until I was able to get it running. Other than that, it wasn’t exactly what I needed and didn’t benefit enough for the price point so I refunded. The router seemed to function well though

I purchased this single router thinking it would be enough to cover my 1300 sq/ft duplex. Unfortunately there were still several zones where the Wifi would just drop out entirely, leaving my devices looking for a connection every 10-15mins or so for 30-60sec. I was encouraged to purchase a satellite to cover the most problematic area of my home and this seemed to work. When we continued to be bothered by our living room continuing to cut out, I called to see if it was possible to get some sort of discount considering I was now at a point of having to spent an additional $600 over the three pack. The rep took little to no time to understand my issue and immediately told me I needed to subscribe to their firewall service and started pushing an entirely new sale on me. The issue had nothing to do with the internet and was entirely with the WLAN. All my hardwired devices had 0 issues accessing the internet, but their rep was way too interested in trying to push this firewall service. I'm now at a point where the router is past its return window, so I am stuck within this system and need to shell out close to another $1000 to get it to work. Bringing the total cost of the system to $3000 whereas the same hardware is bundled for $2000.

I am very disappointed. This is my 4th or 5th Orbi mesh system, I like the Orbis - enough to pay the premium price to have their highest end system. After 2 months of use, I have had more issues with this system than any other Orbi I have owned. Frequent drops, to the point where streaming is nearly unbearable (Forget about watching a movie without a drop). Opened a case with Netgear, provided logs, moved the satellite (even though it was in the same location as my previous system), replaced my entire backhaul wiring at significant time and $ cost - and still having issues. I gave up on support because it was becoming my second job after working all day. Bottom line, these units are not stable, and way too expensive to be this problematic. I don't have time to become a beta tester for Netgear, especially when paying over $2k for the privilege. Maybe updates will provide stability in the future, but stay away from this one for now.