With the satellite a floor above the router and the test system 50-feet away, the throughput it received was 209.4Mbps, or about half the 405.5Mbps that the Orbi RBK852 was capable of. That said, the Linksys Velop AX4200 (329.2Mbps) was impressive, nonetheless. If you do have a problem with Wi-Fi punching through walls or interference, then a mesh system makes sense. The Asus ZenWifi AX is the closest rival. This system has parental controls built-in, making it more flexible for now. However, the Orbi will (eventually) get its own parental controls, and Netgear’s range of satellites and app are better. Indeed, the RBR750 router had sustained speeds ranging from 710Mbps to 875Mbps a 1.2Gbps-connected 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 client up to 40 feet (12 m) away. The Orbi RBR750 mesh router's Wi-Fi performance It’s a real shame that Circle, the parental control system, still hasn’t been enabled on any of the Orbi Wi-Fi 6 products, as it means that Netgear is losing some ground to its rivals. Without this option, you can only toggle the individual device’s internet access. Connecting devices have a two-stream 2.4GHz network running at 600Mbps, and a two-stream 5GHz network running at 1200Mbps per satellite or router: that’s half the bandwidth of the higher-end RBK853 system.

Without a multi-gig port, the RBK752 doesn't have any chance to wow anyone in its sustained Wi-Fi 6 throughput. As it turned out, though, the mesh very well in my testing, even edging out the beefier cousin in specific tests. My original plan was to return them after i got something better. I have 9000 sq ft home. These worked so good out of the box, i just got another set to complete the coverage! I set up the second router as a wired access point in one corner of the house with the main router connected to four satellites. The fourth satellite is quite a distance away from the main router, but it is doing a great job of daisychaining from a satellite in between. By contrast, the RBS750 satellite has a pair of networking ports. Neither have a USB connection for adding a hard drive as networked storage. Looking deeper, it's a different story. There's a lot more to love in this new and well-balanced mesh Wi-Fi system. The fact it's significantly more affordable alone means many can experience it. Most importantly, chances are it delivers the same experience you'd get from the RBK852 anyway.As a mesh system, the RBS750 did well, too. One thing to note right away is that there was a minor signal loss. (I always test mesh systems in a wireless setup.) Testing with a 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 card in a Windows computer, the Orbi RBK752 should technically give similar performance to the RBK852, maximising the full bandwidth available on the 5GHz channel. Max available ISP service is 450 Mbps, which I have. Two years ago, the max was 100, so upgrades in the near future are unlikely. I plan to keep the ISP’s modem as I have TV, 3 phone lines and Internet bundled. I may keep their separate router in service (with their wireless turned off) as it eliminates their ability to blame customer equipment for the frequent service problems. The Orbi RBK852 uses Qualcomm’s newest Networking Pro 1200 Wi-Fi chip with 1GB of RAM and 512MB of capacity for storing firmware and settings. It’s all powered by a quad-core processor that runs at a maximum of 2GHz. It has an AX6000 rating.

The satellite is the same as on the regular RBK752 system. This has two Gigabit Ethernet ports for wired devices. Features 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 base station included the router, so we tried to connect this directly to the NBN with iiNet, and it worked, sort of. Every day the internet connection would be dropping - the wifi seemed to be working fine, but the router connection to the internet continued to drop out. I myself have a lightning-fast fiber network with 1 Gbps, which feels redundant since I only get a tenth of that speed on the wireless connection. Therefore, I was reely looking forward to testing my first Wi-Fi 6 (AX) mesh network. This communicates in a more advanced way than older systems, in that several commands are sent and received simultaneously between routes and satellites (nodes). In addition to increasing the network speed of Wi-Fi 6 compatible gadgets, the home network will be more stable with older gadgets as well. Peace of mind guaranteed! In theory, at least. Nighthawk – with potential for improvement With a satellite connected 50-feet from the router on the same floor and the test system another 40-feet away, the RBK752 mesh network came up short with 87.7Mbps of data delivered to the test system. That’s roughly half the Linksys Velop AX4200 (161.1Mbps), although it’s a lot better than the Netgear Orbi RBK852 (39.1Mbps). The Eero Pro 6 kit was in between with 142.3Mbps of bandwidth.I recently ditched my Google Nest. It was driving me up the wall with inconsistent performance and wifi signal was reduced to a miserable 2%, which made it impossible for all my devices to connect. I rely on my wifi at home a lot because I make my living on it. So a stable and high performing wifi is crucial for me. You get slightly fewer ports on this system than with its bigger brother. On the router, you get a single Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, rather than the 2.5Gb port on the bigger system. This router can still cope with the fastest internet connections available in the UK today, and you can use port aggregation with the first Gigabit Ethernet port to support internet speeds of up to 2Gbps. It had trouble competing with other Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers when it came to sending a signal through 25 feet and a wall with 326.6Mbps available on the other side. Under the same conditions, the Netgear Orbi RBR852 moved 782.9Mbps, while the Linksys Velop AX4200 was able to deliver 525.7Mbp and the Eero Pro 6 coming in at 375.6Mbps. We test router speed by setting up each router in an office and connecting it to a local test server. Then, we transmit test data between our wireless devices and the server, taking numerous measurements to account for fluctuations in Wi-Fi speeds. 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.

Here are the results I saw, along with the speeds achieved by some other mesh systems in the same tests: However, the router didn't do well with Wi-Fi 5 clients due to the lower Wi-Fi specs. I used a 4x4 one at the close range (10 feet) test, and it had a sustained speed of some 660Mbps. At 40 feet away, my 3x3 client averaged some 600Mbps. Still, these are impressive numbers. I then bought Linksys Velop MX10. It was good, but it was expensive. It seemed to perform well (flawless connectivity), but not quite as strong in performance as my initial Orbi RBK753 – namely, with Orbi speeds remain close to full (per the ISP), in between nodes (Satellites), and throughout more of the house, but Velop seemed to diminish by about ~30%. Even with the benefit of an additional satellite, the dual-band Orbi RBK352 couldn’t keep up with the tri-band Orbi systems. It isn’t as fast as the Asus ZenWiFi AX either; while the Netgear system was faster in the rooms closest to the primary router, the Asus’ performance held up better as we moved further away, which is of course the whole point of a mesh. That’s a little behind the pace of the RBK852 system, which does better at range, and the RBKE963, which is faster still. However, these results are still very good, and the most important thing is that this Orbi system is super-reliable; it delivered a strong signal all around my home.It keeps management simple, as you don’t have to worry about which network to connect to, but those that want more configuration choices are better off with a standalone router. For many years I have had a very fast wireless home network, at the expense of convenience. With a lightning-fast router set up as an access point on each floor, I have gotten stable speeds, but with the disadvantage that I had to manually switch from one network to the other when moving from one floor to the next. Also, consider the fact that a well-functioning smart home is out of the question, with several smart products spread across different wireless networks. Netgear Orbi AX4200 has a large router and ditto node, but they have nice curves that are not annoying. Photo: Netgear You need mesh