NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System (RBK753) – Router with 2 Satellite Extenders | Coverage up to 7,500 sq. ft. and 40+ Devices | AX4200 (Up to 4.2Gbps)

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Thanks to the third satellite, I could even get reception in my kitchen, which usually suffers. Here, I got throughputs of 174.25Mbit/s. For the price, the new Orbi RBK853 is a decent performer. Netgear Orbi WiFi 6 Dual-band Mesh System (RBK353) Conclusion Overall, the performance of the SXK30 isn't wonderful when compared with other WiFi 6 hardware we've tested, but it's reliable and that might be more important to some. Final verdict

Seamless roaming between satellites – The Orbi RBK763S units work together to form a unified network with a single network name. Walk through your home and stay connected.With less than a third of the potential bandwidth to share around, the SXK30 can’t effectively handle the same number of users as the SXK80 or provide the same coverage. As the baby of the Wi-Fi 6 range, the system runs a dual-band AX1800 network, which means that there’s no dedicated wireless network for communicating between satellites. Instead, clients and network communication needs to share the two networks.

There are different constellations of the Orbi AX4200, where I received the RBK752 for review. It consists of a main router and a node. There is also a larger system with two nodes, under the name RBK753, and you can also buy additional nodes. This mesh system is more powerful than the Nighthawk AX1800 system, and has six antennas inside each box – compared to four in the Nighthawk.Another caveat to Insight is that nothing it does is typically instantaneous. It easily took more than 20 minutes to get our Mini router configured, as at each step, it refers to the centralised control of the Insight servers.

Today I had about 4 dropouts within the space of an hour (none before and none since) but it's simply not acceptable. From the outside, the two parts look practically identical. The only significant difference between the router and satellite is that the four Ethernet ports on the router include a single WAN port to connect to the Internet broadband modem. On the satellite, all four are for distributing a wired network. Therefore, at close range, connections of over 500mbits per second are entirely plausible. But that’s a single connection at close range, and a second connection at that speed would consume all the bandwidth that 5GHz has to offer (1200Mbit). Rather than the RBK852’s array of eight antennas, the RBK752 units have six, reflecting the use of Qualcomm’s Networking Pro 800 Wi-Fi chip instead of the RBK852’s Networking Pro 1200, which offers more data streams. With MU-MIMO and beamforming, the router customizes the signal to match the needs of the connected devices, but it can’t run ultra-wide 160MHz data channels.The main differences, when it comes to the content included inside each new box, are the routers and satellites. For example, it is not always an advantage to send at full power, if the nodes are too close to each other and create interference. But relax, it usually works just fine if you never touch these settings. Measured from the adjacent room to the node, the Orbi AX4200 gave a wireless speed of around 600 Mbit/s. Orbi in use The competition has become a lot tougher, too. If you don’t want the hassle of a mesh system and don’t have any particular dead spots to deal with, then the Netgear Nighthawk RAX200 is faster, has a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 network for devices and all the ports that you could want. Slightly offsetting the pedantic nature of these mechanisms, adding satellites to a router is merely a matter of connecting them within wireless connection range or on the same wired network, and they’ll automatically be found and added. Insight sees the Orbi Pro router and its satellites as a single entity, making that part of controlling them remarkably straightforward. A close-up view of the router unit from the front and side. The units look incredibly good with the white and silver colour scheme. The separation gap lights up below the Orbi logo highlighting booting up and errors and then turns off when it’s in normal operation.

The new Netgear Insight application is used to configure the router and satellites (Image credit: NETGEAR) So when I wanted to upgrade our office wireless I went straight to the Orbi RBK750s. A base station and 3 satellites should do it. Regardless of whether you pay for support, Netgear has a wide array of do-it-yourself options online. They range from how-to videos and FAQs to optimization and troubleshooting tips. Netgear Orbi RBK752 review: VerdictThe Orbi app is stupidly simple to use and I completed the configuration, including manually entering my ISP’s FTTP connection, WiFi configuration, connecting the two satellites, and a firmware update in about 15 minutes flat. Those that want the fastest possible connection to the servers or internet should consider 10GbE wired connections, as the performance is potentially greater than all the bandwidth in the SXK30, or the SXK80 for that matter. For that small number, maybe up to 10 users, the performance they will experience will match that of the much more expensive option, as each will only be taking a modest amount of the 1800Mbps available. And, on the SXK80, additional bandwidth can’t be easily allocated to each user even if the overall pool is greater. You lose some features from the top-end system, but the lower price and decent performance makes this a more reasonable system for many. Design and build quality – Gives you most of what you need but there are fewer Ethernet ports