NETGEAR RBK752, RBK762S New Model

Product Information

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. This seemed better, but then at completely random times the Orbi wifi connections would drop. The base station was always okay, but the satellites kept dropping connections, so our zoom calls were interrupted, connections to online systems had to be restarted. There was no obvious reason, no change in traffic or movement of wireless devices, nothing we could see that was causing these drop outs.

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. 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 RBK763 is a definite upgrade on the previous-generation Orbi. It’s undeniably faster, and the physical units are smaller and neater. The standard firmware meanwhile ensures you don’t miss out on features.

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 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: Verdict As you'll note on the table below, the RBK752 is slightly smaller, lighter, and doesn't come with a 2.5Gbps WAN port. It also has one LAN port fewer in both the router and satellite unit. Supporting Wi-Fi 6 and 5G, this mesh system pulls in two of the latest networking technologies, making it an excellent all-round system for those times you need reliability and speed. Design and Build Quality It's worth noting that the app is exceptionally well designed. It also comes with a visual network map and handy tools, including a speedtest.net-based internet speed test, and a real-time WiFi Analytics section. Standard feature set, zero Wi-Fi settings

With 50-feet separating the test machine from the router, the RBR750’s bandwidth dropped to 100.3Mbps. This is more than enough for most uses but was well behind the Eero Pro 6 (239.9Mbps), the Linksys Velop AX4200 (201.3Mbps) and the Netgear Orbi RBK852 (124.4Mbps). The first impression of the Orbi network was a different league than with Nighthawk. It worked smoothly from the start, and has done since. I have now used it for over four months, and even though I have three floors, there are no problems with the coverage in the house with two boxes. The Internet is of course at its fastest in the immediate vicinity of the node or router (they are equal in terms of speed and coverage), but the speed never drops below 200 Mbps, so in practice it is twice as fast as the cheaper Nighthawk system – and also much more stable. I have not had to reboot the system once. 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. 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.By contrast, the RBS750 satellite has a pair of networking ports. Neither have a USB connection for adding a hard drive as networked storage.

Here are the results I saw, along with the speeds achieved by some other mesh systems in the same tests: 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. Both share the same WAN Link Aggregation feature, where you can combine the WAN and LAN1 ports into a single 2Gbps WAN connection. This Link Aggregation feature is excellent when you use a supported modem and a faster-than-Gigabit Internet connection. This means that it has greater coverage, and I who live on three floors actually manage fine with the two-box-unit (the router and a node), where Nighthawk needed the three boxes (MK63) to provide good enough coverage throughout the house. Just make sure that both the router and the node are not covered. Not inside a closet, for example. The satellites in an Orbi AX4200 mesh network have two Ethernet connectors, for connection to gadgets that need cable. Photo: Netgear EthernetThe 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. 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. 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. However, note that while the RBR750 can work with any broadband service, the CBR750, which doesn't have a WAN port, is suitable only for cable Internet users. So, it's more rigid. Netgear Orbi AX4200's hardware looks quite sleek from the top. Pre-sync hardware, the familiar setup process