Netgear Orbi Voice
A triumph of convergence, but this combo smart speaker and mesh Wi-Fi system costs serious cash
SCORE PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/298net
Netgear’s Orbi platform is one of the best mesh Wi-Fi systems out there, but this update adds something novel. Alexa transforms the secondary node from a dull piece of networking infrastructure into an interactive hub for music, information and home automation.
The Orbi Voice pack contains two units: a regular RBR50 router and an RBS40V satellite, which serves as both a Wi-Fi extender and an Alexa smart speaker. The latter comes wrapped in a tasteful grey fabric, behind which there’s a 35W Harman Kardonbranded speaker.
If you want to extend the mesh network, you can buy more Orbi nodes and pair them with the router. Can’t get enough of Alexa? Then buy additional voice satellites.
Fuss-free setup?
The Orbi units are chunky. The router stands 22.6cm tall, with an oval footprint of 17 x 7.9cm; the voice satellite is shorter and wider.
The two nodes come pre-paired, so getting started should be as simple as plugging both nodes into the power, hooking up an internet connection to the router and stepping through the setup procedure – which you can do using a web browser, or via the Orbi app for Android and iOS. In practice, though, it took a frustrating half-hour to make the two units talk to each other, involving repeatedly resetting the satellite. Happily, once detected, the connection remained solid.
With everything up and running, I plugged in my various wired clients. The router has three Gigabit Ethernet ports, while the satellite has two – enough for most homes. There’s also a USB 2 port, but this only supports printer sharing.
All-round speed
The Orbi router and satellite both use tri-band Wi-Fi, with 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands for user traffic, plus a second dedicated 5GHz radio for passing backhaul traffic between the two stations. If you want to, you can extend the system using cheaper dualband Orbi satellites, but for the best performance, tri-band is where it’s at. The 2.4GHz radio connection is rated at 400Mbits/sec, while the 5GHz bands quote a maximum speed of 866Mbits/sec. (The router can handle 1,733Mbits/sec over the backhaul radio, so if you buy a second satellite, there’s plenty of bandwidth for multiple clients to connect at once.)
I set up the router in my living room, with the voice satellite in the adjacent kitchen. I then took a Surface Laptop to various rooms and measured file-transfer speeds to and from a local NAS drive connected to the router unit by Ethernet cable.
As you can see from the results below, replacing my standalone (and excellent) Linksys EA9500 MaxStream router with the Orbi system was transformational. All through the bedroom, utility room and outer terrace, I enjoyed superb download speeds of over 20MB/sec (equivalent to 160Mbits/sec). Even in the bathroom, which the Linksys couldn’t reach at all, the Orbi system delivered a strong 17.3MB/sec. If you want a mesh system to clear up “not spots”, the Orbi is hard to fault.
Alexa, let’s talk
A few taps within the Orbi app was all it took to connect the unit to my Amazon account; after that it showed up in the Alexa app as a regular Echo unit. The Orbi Voice only has four top-mounted microphones (versus the Echo’s seven), but it had no problems hearing me from across the room, even with a modicum of background noise. An illuminated blue ring around the top lights up on hearing the wake word, just like on a real Amazon Echo, and strobes while a command is being processed.
Audio quality is impressive. The speaker and comprises a 3.5in woofer with a separate 1in tweeter. While not up to audiophile standards, despite its Harman Kardon branding, it’s more articulate than a regular Echo and produces far more substantial bass. In fact, it proved too substantial for my kitchen worktop, where an unpleasant rumble initially spoilt the musical experience; thankfully, you can adjust the EQ settings in either the Alexa app or Orbi’s own app, and this was enough to tame the low end and get a nicely balanced sound.
The only physical controls are two small touch buttons at the top, which mute the speaker and microphone respectively – the ring around the top follows the standard Echo behaviour of glowing red when the microphone is switched off – and a nifty volume control strip, which you slide a finger along to set your desired loudness. Tap anywhere on the top and it illuminates to indicate where the volume is set.
In all, the Orbi Voice makes a great Alexa device. My only caveat is that you’ll want to put it somewhere such as a kitchen or study – and that won’t necessarily be the place where it can do the best job of distributing Wi-Fi to the further reaches of your home.
In-depth settings
The Orbi app puts a selection of everyday administrative tools and settings in your pocket. You can check the status of your network, test your internet speed, browse and block connected devices, enable the guest network and configure parental
“All through the bedroom, utility room and outer terrace, I now found myself enjoying superb download speeds of over 20MB/sec”
controls under the “Circle by Disney” brand. Here the free service includes age-based web blocking and safe searching, but if you want to set time limits and monitor what your kids are up to, you’ll need a premium subscription costing $50 a year.
You may also choose to activate the paid-for Netgear Armor service, powered by Bitdefender, which delivers protection against malicious websites, dodgy connections and suspicious devices on your network. The router-level approach isn’t a bad idea, as it ensures every device comes under the protection umbrella, but it’s not cheap: after a 90-day free trial it costs $70 a year. Still, it means you can install Bitdefender software on all compatible devices on your network.
For more advanced networking options you can turn to the web portal, which exposes the same interface as a regular Netgear router. From here, you can configure DHCP, assign IP addresses to particular clients, set up port forwarding, adjust your Wi-Fi settings and so forth. If you’re not paying for Circle, you can also take advantage of a good set of built-in website filtering options. For instance, you can use OpenDNS to blacklist dodgy sites and create your own list of sites and keywords to block, while optionally authorising a specific client to bypass those blocks.
There’s even a VPN service, enabling you to securely connect to your home network from anywhere in the world. To give it a memorable address, you can use dynamic DNS services from Netgear, no-ip.com and
dyn.com. If you want to (or have to) keep using your existing router, you can switch the system into AP mode, so the Orbi won’t try to manage your network itself. Functions such as Circle and Armor won’t work in this mode, but Alexa still does.
My only grumble is that there’s no wireless band-splitting option; if (like me) you prefer to connect only to the 5GHz network, you’ll have to search the web to find the unofficial hack that lets you give it a different name to the 2.4GHz one.
Right for you?
I like the Orbi Voice very much – but two things factor into that. First, in my own home, the room that’s most in need of Alexa also conveniently happens to be a good central location for a Wi-Fi mesh satellite. In another house, siting the Voice unit where you want it could mean compromising on wireless performance. Second, I didn’t have to pay £400 to try it out. Truthfully, if I were in the market for a mesh kit like this, I’d buy a three-node BT Whole Home Wi-Fi system, along with an Echo Plus,and pocket the £90 difference. If you’ve got the cash to spare, however – and a house with a suitable layout – then the Orbi Voice is a superb domestic upgrade. It will give you a fast internet connection all over your home, and at the same time it’s one of the slickest and best-sounding smart speakers around. ABOVE The Alexa-enabled satellite speaker fits in well, but it’s a sizeable unit SPECIFICATIONS
RBR50: Tri-band 802.11ac 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi router 400Mbits/sec on 2.4GHz 866Mbits/sec on 5GHz 6 x antennae 4 x Gigabit Ethernet USB-A 2 170 x 78.9 x 226mm (WDH) 891g
RBS40V: 35W smart speaker 3.5in woofer 1in tweeter 400Mbits/sec on 2.4GHz 866Mbits/sec on 5GHz 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports 164 x 124 x 218mm (WDH) 1.77kg