Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6 System AX6000 (RBK852)

amazon Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6 System AX6000 (RBK852) reviews

Mesh wifi systems for the whole family based on wifi 6 (802.11ax) technology are finally hitting the shelves. We think the Linksys Velop AX MX10’s $599.99 price tag for a two-piece system is pretty steep, but at $699.99, the Netgear Orbi wifi 6 System AX6000 (RBK852) is easily the expensive kit The best we’ve tested so far. Like the Velop AX, the Orbi RBK852 is a two-part system designed for larger homes, has a mobile app that makes it easy to set up and manage, and delivers impressive scores on tests our performance. That said, we’d expect more features from such an expensive wifi system, including things like USB connectivity, parental controls, device priority, and protection against malware and viruses.

Colorful lights

Like previous Orbi models like the RBK50 and the RBK50V smart speaker, the RBK852 comes with two large buttons that use mesh technology to communicate with each other over the dedicated 5GHz radio band. Offering up to 5,000 square feet of wireless coverage, each button measures 10 x 7.5 x 2.8 inches (HWD) and is white with silver trim and status LEDs near the base.

The Router button LED will light solid green when powered on, solid amber on startup, flashing red when there is a problem with the firmware, and solid magenta when an internet connection is lost. The satellite button LED will glow blue for three minutes when it has a solid connection to the Router and amber when the connection is only reasonable. The bright red LED indicates that the button failed to sync with the Router.

The Router node has one multi-gig WAN port (2.5GBbps) and four gigabit LAN ports, and the satellite node also has four gigabit LAN ports. None of the components is equipped with a USB port for connecting a printer or other peripheral device. Inside are eight antennas, a 2.2GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 512MB of flash memory.

The Orbi Kit is a 12-stream, tri-band AX6000 system that supports the latest wifi six technology, including WPA3, 1024 QAM encryption, and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) data transmission. It also supports 4×4 MU-MIMO simultaneous data transmission and beamforming and can achieve maximum data rates of up to 1,200Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and up to 2,400Mbps per band in the dual-band 5GHz number.

The RBK852 uses the same mobile app as the Orbi RBK13’s wifi five system, but with a few significant differences. The RBK13 comes with basic parental controls provided by Disney Circle. It uses Netgear’s Armor (powered by Bitdefender) to protect your network and clients from malware and viruses, but the RBK852 doesn’t offer either of these features. However, a company representative told me both are on track to add in early 2020.

Currently, you can use the Netgear web control panel to create a visit schedule and manually enter the URL of the website you want to block. The RBK852 lacks the basic personal device priority settings you get with the Linksys Velop MX10 system, although it supports WMM QoS prioritizing voice and video traffic.

The mobile app opens to the main screen showing the Orbi status (online or offline) and the number of connected satellites. Below are tabs for Device Manager, Internet Speed, Network Map, wifi Settings, Guest wifi, and Flow Meter. To see a list of all connected clients, their security status, and which nodes they are connected to, tap the Device Manager tab. Here you can also suspend network access for any client.

If you want to measure upload and download traffic on the Internet, tap the Internet Speed ​​tab and run the Speedtest utility powered by Ookla. Tapping the Network Map tab displays the Router and node components and allows you to see which clients are connected to each node and details such as firmware version, serial number, MAC address, and IP address.

Tap the wifi Settings tab to change your wifi security settings, share credentials, and edit your network name. Finally, the Traffic Meter tab lets you see how much data has been uploaded and downloaded each day. The Orbi RBK852 supports Alexa and Google voice commands that let you do things like turn on guest networks or check your wifi settings or Internet speed.

A trap to set up

Installation is quick, easy, and similar to the Orbi RBK13 system setup process. I downloaded the mobile app, created an account, and pressed Yes when asked if I wanted to install a new Netgear product. Using the phone’s camera, I scanned the QR code on the Router, restarted the modem, and connected the Orbi Router to the modem using the included LAN cable. I put the satellite button in another room about 30 feet from the Router, plugged it in, and hit Next.

Within 90 seconds, the nodes were connected to the Orbi network. I created the network name and password. The administrator’s name and password answered some of the security questions. I forgot my password and waited two additional minutes for the system to save my settings. After a quick firmware update, the mesh system worked.

We test the wifi 6 router using a Dell XPS 13 ultraportable with the Killer wifi 6 AX1650s (802.11ax) network adapter as a client. Since the Orbi RBK852 is only the second mesh system we’ve tested using wifi 6 technology, we compared it to the Velop AX MX10 kit (also wifi 6 based) and the Asus RT-AX88U, a standalone wifi 6 Router. To illustrate the speed gains you can expect from Wi-Fi 6, we compared its transfer speeds with the Wi-Fi 5 Editor’s Choice mesh system, TP-Link Deco M9 Plus.

The Orbi RBK852 scored well in our performance tests. The Router node’s result is 862 Mbps in the short distance test (same room), only slower than the Linksys Velop MX10 Router and 80 Mbps faster than the Asus RT-AX88U. Orbi shows a 36% increase in performance compared to the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus Router. At a distance of 30 feet, the Orbi Router delivered 324 Mbps, again coming right behind the Linksys Router. It surpasses the Asus Router 6 Mbps and is faster than the TP-Link Router 94 Mbps.

As for the Orbi RBK852, the satellite node achieved 639Mbps in the proximity test compared to the 667Mbps of the Linksys Velop MX10 satellite. It is 39% faster than the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus satellite. In the 30-foot test, the Orbi satellite’s transmission speed of 550Mbps surpassed the Linksys 61Mbps but showed a 46% increase over the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus satellite.

Fast but quite expensive

If your Router is having a hard time delivering wireless to the most remote areas of your home, a Mesh wifi system like the Netgear Orbi RBK852 can help. It uses the latest wifi 6 (802.11ax) technology to provide faster transfer speeds than its wifi 5 brothers (802.11ac) and offers WPA3 encryption and the latest OFDMA architecture. It is also equipped with a versatile WAN port and multiple LAN ports, and its user-friendly mobile app makes it easy to set up and manage.

On the other hand, while the performance of the RBK852 is quite in line with other wifi 6 routers, it lacks some key features for such an expensive system, including application-specific QoS settings use, age-appropriate parental controls, and anti-malware protection. If you don’t own any wifi 6 devices and don’t plan on getting started anytime soon, you can save on a bundle with a Mesh wifi 5 system such as TP-Link M9 Plus Decoration. It delivers solid 802.11ac performance in our testing, comes with anti-malware protection and parental controls, and serves as a home automation hub.

where can you get a Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6 System AX6000 (RBK852) online

NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Tri-band Mesh WiFi 6 System (RBK852) Router with 1 Satellite Extender | Coverage up to 5,000 sq. ft. and 100+ Devices | AX6000 (Up to 6Gbps) (Renewed): Buy it now