When it comes to blanketing your entire home in superfast WiFi,
there are many options on the market but Netgear Orbi has been my go-to
recommendation for several years now. The latest and greatest version of Orbi, the 860 Series,
builds on the success of the previous 850 Series which I reviewed early last year,
providing what Netgear describe in their press release as “unparalleled WiFi performance”.
Since I did last year’s Orbi review video, I’ve hardly given my WiFi a second thought,
because I never have to. It’s just solid and dependable,
working away in the background ensuring I never have to think about Wifi, internet
speeds, signal strength or dead-spots - which is the way you want it, really.
But then Netgear sent me their brand new RBK863 kit just before Christmas and the improvements
with this new version come in 3 flavours: Netgear say that they’ve made the Orbi faster, more secure
and with better range than ever before - so I’ll look at each of those points in a bit more depth
in this video and assess whether I think it’s worth upgrading if you already have an Orbi
system, and stay tuned for a head-to-head test against the previous 850 Series to see if that 20%
coverage boost holds true. I extensively tested both systems in various locations around my house,
garden and driveway and input all the numbers into a massive spreadsheet so you don’t have to.
You’ll have noticed that it was the Black Edition Netgear sent me, which I think looks really nice
in matte black and would look great in any ultra modern home. Although I actually think
the white ones match the colour scheme in my living room a bit better. And looks do matter,
because to work best routers and satellites need to be on show, not tucked away in a cupboard. But
what do you think? Let me know in the comments below which colour option you would go for.
So, what’s new?
The first big change is one that I can’t test unfortunately, but it’s the inclusion of a new
high speed 10Gb Internet port. My current home connection is only 350Mbps so it won’t make any
difference to me but if anyone from Virgin Media is watching, I’m always open to a brand deal ;)
This 10 gig port is up from 2.5Gbps on the 850 series and just 1Gbps on the older WiFi 5 models,
so it’s a welcome upgrade that will enable you to future-proof your home
setup and remove the bottleneck for future multi-gig Internet connections.
Netgear are also bundling in a year’s free subscription to their enhanced security service,
Armor, with the 860 series. It activates for you automatically when you set up the kit and
it gives you protection beyond what just a simple router firewall would give you.
If I’m honest I have slightly mixed feelings about Armor being an extra add-on service. It sends me
very frequent notifications telling me that it’s blocked hacking attempts on my Hikvision
security camera and occasionally tells me it’s blocked something on my Desktop computer but
I’m not sure if that’s anything more than just a basic router firewall protecting me from the
usual random port scanning and other background nonsense that’s inevitable on the Internet,
but telling me about it every single time to make the Armor service seem more valuable.
Yes, I know I’m being cynical! And to be fair it does do more than that; it scans every device on
your network, and any new ones that connect, for known vulnerabilities and it’s good knowing that
anything really nasty is blocked at router level, so phishing websites and other evil
shouldn’t get anywhere near my computer or any other devices even if you do something really,
really silly like click on a spam email link for... ahem... appendage enlargement therapy.
Plus, with smart home gadgets getting ever-more popular, you don’t want to connect a no-name smart
lightbulb to your WiFi and it end up becoming a gateway into your entire home network for a
hacker, so with Armor active you can feel a bit safer (although you should still remain vigilant).
Probably one of the biggest plus points is that it gives you BitDefender Total
Security which you can install on all your devices like desktop computers, laptops,
tablets and mobile phones. That means those devices get additional protection and will
still be protected to a degree when you’re away from home and not connected to your
Orbi router. For some people that might be worth the subscription all on its own,
and the fact that it’s included free for the first year just makes it even better.
But now it’s time to talk about the change that got me most excited when Netgear sent
me their press release for the 860 Series, and that’s the new and improved antenna design which
means the 860 Series should provide more range and speed compared to the 850. And
spoiler alert - I ended up changing an advanced WiFi setting which made quite
a difference to the results, so much so that I ended up completely re-doing the second test!
I was especially interested to see if the new Orbi would provide a stronger signal
to the Nest camera that I added at the front of my house recently, as that does get quite
a weak signal for some reason. I could of course reposition the satellites in the
house but maybe with the new 860 Series and its increased range I might not have to...?
So I set about putting this claimed range increase to the test in the most accurate and scientific
way that I could. I installed OpenSpeedTest on my Synology NAS, so from any device on my local home
network I can test that device’s connection speed not across the Internet, but directly
to and from my NAS. This will give a FAR more accurate representation of performance than doing
an Internet speed test, firstly because my home Internet connection is limited to 350Mbps download
whereas the internal speeds within my home network can be up to 1Gbps, and secondly because the speed
of the Internet is inherently variable but with much less going on on my home network,
the results shouldn’t be distorted that much. I can just make sure I’m not watching Netflix,
downloading any large files or doing anything else over the network to distort my results.
First off, I tested the speed over a wired connection to the NAS. The maximum possible
speed is 1gigabit, and you can see I’m getting almost that full speed through
the Orbi and over the wired network to and from the NAS which is good to see.
I then put together a spreadsheet to record the data transfer to and
from the NAS and repeated the test 3 times before taking an average of all 6 readings.
I then repeated the test over WiFi from my phone - a 2021 OnePlus Nord - at various
locations around my house and garden. It’s a 3 story house, with the router on the ground
floor and a satellite on both the first floor and on the top floor in the converted loft. I
also tested at different points around the front of the house, driveway and across the street
as well as at multiple points down my garden, inputting all the results into the spreadsheet.
I then swapped over to the brand new 860 Series Orbi, positioning the router and both satellites
in exactly the same locations and without changing anything else at all on my home network,
and repeated all the tests again with the same phone, my 2 year old OnePlus Nord.
To summarise the test with the 850 Series, when all 6 results in
each location were averaged out and then all those averages were themselves averaged out,
I got an average WiFi speed of 279.49Mbps and a maximum achieved speed of 651.7Mbps.
Results with the 860 Series were a bit of a mixed bag actually, and certainly less clear
cut than I’d been expecting. In some areas it actually performed worse IN MY TESTS than the
850 - but do take that with a big pinch of salt because although I did my best to keep the tests
consistent, I can’t be completely sure that there was nothing else at play. In other tests, the 860
performed much better, so much so that averaging swung the overall result in the newer 860’s favour
when you look at the percentage speed difference in each location and then average those out -
giving you a 28.21% speed increase and a maximum speed achieved across all the tests of 674.4Mbps.
However, when you average them all out like I did with the 850 Series, that average speed is
brought down to a tiny bit slower than the 850 at 276.73Mbps which just goes to show you can
sometimes interpret data in whichever way you like to prove whatever point you want to make!
The results did confuse me somewhat and I wanted to make sure I was interpreting them
fairly and correctly, so I sent them to someone who has a First Class engineering
degree from Oxford University... and he wasn’t quite sure either! But he suggested looking at
the Median and Max values for each test which is certainly helpful for additional context.
Either way though, if you take an average of the percentage changes with either method,
you get a result of between 23% and 28% faster - overall - with the newer 860 series. Some of
the results I got when a medium distance from an access point were significantly faster with
the 860 than with the 850, but in the interests of keeping this review unbiased and impartial I
can’t ignore the fact that I achieved nearly 50Mbps at the very bottom of my long garden
with the 850 series but struggled to achieve half that - and usually got far, far less,
with the 860 series the following day. But again, take that with a pinch of salt because that might
just say more about the variability of WiFi in general rather than any issue with the new
antenna design, and maybe my home network wasn’t as much of a constant as I thought it would be.
I then noticed the 20/40MHz coexistence setting in the Advanced WiFi settings and
after reading up on it a bit, I decided to try disabling it to see if it made a difference.
Bear in mind that these tests were all done on a different day, but this did make a noticeable
difference. Whilst the maximum WiFi speed I achieved on that day was a bit slower,
the average of all the maximum speeds in the various locations was a bit higher - 350
vs 310 and the average of the average speeds was now 314Mbps versus 276Mbps!
Where the 860 Series was previously 28% faster on average it was now nearly 109% faster,
and the average of the averages was now 12.41% faster rather than nearly 1% slower. So,
if you decide to buy an 860 Series kit then you might want to disable
20/40MHz coexistence if your speeds are slower than expected,
but comment below if you’re thinking of that and we can discuss the pros and cons.
By the way, remember the security camera I mentioned with a weak wifi signal?
Well, after I first switched over to the newer 860 Series I actually experienced MORE problems
with it disconnecting and stuttering than I did with the 850 Series but since disabling
20/40MHz coexistence, anecdotally at least, it seems to be working much better. Having
said that, it’s still showing as a fairly weak connection in the Orbi app and it’s
still insisting on connecting to the router all the way down in the living room rather
than the Satellite that’s much closer and on the same side of the house. Surely, surely,
it would get a better signal connecting to the nearby Satellite?! Anyway...
So although testing the two Orbi systems against each other wasn’t quite as plain sailing as I’d
expected, it’s clear to me that Netgear Orbi is still the best consumer wireless mesh networking
option and it’s great that Netgear are continuing to innovate and improve the Orbi line up.
There are still a couple of things I’d change about the Orbi 860 series; first,
there’s still no outdoor satellite option to buy as an add-on - I loved
the outdoor satellite that came as part of the WiFi 5 generation so it would be great
to see Netgear produce an updated WiFi 6 outdoor satellite in the 800 range. You
can watch my dedicated video on the older Outdoor Satellite with the link in the video description.
Secondly, I think it’s a real shame there’s still no way to prioritise
a particular satellite for a device via some sort of advanced setting. I know it
does this automatically and usually does a good job, but as an advanced
user (and a bit of a control freak) I’d love to be able to override it sometimes.
I’m slightly clutching at straws to find negatives
but there you go - two small gripes on an otherwise excellent system.
So, should you upgrade?
If you’ve got the previous-gen 850 series then unless your incoming Internet connection is
more than 2.5Gbps or you’re having range issues that can’t be solved by adding an
extra satellite I’d probably stick with the 850 Series which is still an excellent option,
and you can still subscribe to the Armor security service if you want that as an add-on.
If however you’re still only using the WiFi router that your ISP gives you for free and you want to
upgrade to the best of the best... I’d definitely recommend the Orbi without hesitation and there
are purchasing links in the video description. If you don’t have a Netgear Orbi system at home,
then you really are missing out - and they’re not paying me to say that!
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences,
whether that’s with Orbi or any other WiFi system so have a jolly on down to the comments section,
which you’ll find just past the Like and Subscribe buttons, and if you want to watch
my older videos on the 850 Series or the Outdoor Satellites then they’re on screen for you now.