Netgear Orbi Pro WiFi 6 Mini
An affordable mesh that’s ideal for small businesses but overkill for most home users
“For a typical office of ten people or fewer, the SXK30 has enough bandwidth and coverage to easily handle everyday needs”
PRICE Two nodes, £217 (£260 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
The Netgear Orbi line has become the name to beat when it comes to mesh systems, but the various Wi-Fi 6 models are all expensive. The Mini is here to change that, promising reliable, business-grade Wi-Fi at a much lower price than the company’s previous Pro mesh kits.
You can buy it as either a single router or as a multi-part package, with the two-node SXK30 kit costing £260, and additional satellites
(SXS30) available for around £150. To put that in perspective, the full-sized Netgear Orbi Pro WiFi 6 SXK80 ( see
issue 318, p90) dual pack costs £709, making the Mini something of a bargain by comparison.
Measuring just 19cm tall, the Mini router and satellite are much smaller than full-sized Orbi units, although they share the same oddly rhomboid shaping. They come with similar plastic L-shaped wall-mounts, too. I like the fact that the Orbi nodes don’t merely clip onto these, but screw on firmly to ensure they can’t be knocked off.
The router and satellite units look practically identical, except that the four Ethernet sockets on the router include a single WAN connector, while on the satellite all four are for LAN connections. All of these are standard Gigabit ports: the link aggregation and 2.5GbE options found on the SXK80 aren’t offered here.
That’s not the biggest difference between these units and the SXK80: inside, the wireless hardware has been dramatically cut down. The original Pro is a tri-band system, with top speeds of 2.4Gbits/sec on both of its 5GHz radios and 4×4 MIMO. The SXK30 is only dual-band, while the sole 5GHz radio has a 1.2Gbits/sec rating and must be shared between user connections and backhaul traffic.
This means the SXK30 can’t provide the same speeds to the same number of users as the SXK80. For an individual user at close range, connections of over 500Mbits/sec are entirely achievable, but a second connection at that speed would consume ea all t the e ba bandwidth d dt that the 5GHz radio has to offer; as more clients connect, performance inevitably has to drop off. Those connecting via 2.4GHz can expect about 150Mbits/sec at close range, reducing as you move further away.
Moreover, when the 5GHz channel is handling backhaul as well, anyone connecting through the satellite – on either the 5GHz or 2.4GHz band – could see their performance halved. You can improve matters by running an Ethernet cable between the stations for wired backhaul, but this undermines the whole purpose of mesh wireless networking.
Still, it might not be necessary. For a small number of users – up to ten, say – the effective performance of the SXK30 should match that of the much more expensive option. And unless you have an exceptionally fast broadband connection, the SXK30 isn’t likely to be the bottleneck in any complaints about internet speeds.
The SXK30’s quoted range is much smaller than that of the SXK80, but it might not matter. mat Netgear claims that with the maximum six mesh units working toget together, the top-tier system can provide Wi-Fi coverage over an area of 18,000 square feet; a six-piece Mini setup promise promises up to 6,000 square feet, which should be fine for many smaller businesses.
Like its bigger brother brother, the Mini works work with the Netge Netgear Insight nsight mobile app, rather than han the consumeroriented Orbi app. The advantage of the Insight platform is that it allows central cloud-based management of a whole range of Netgear networking devices. However, for a location where the Orbi is the only Netgear equipment, it’s overkill – and if you do want to manage multiple devices, you only get the first month of full service for or free. After that you’ll need ed an annual subscription, starting g at $10 per device per year. Another caveat to Insight is that nothing it does is typically instantaneous. It took me more than 20 minutes to get the Mini router configured through the app as, at each step, it refers to the centralised control of the Insight servers.
Thankfully, you’re not forced to use Insight. A web interface is also available, and managing your mesh from here is easy, with the router and satellites all working together as a single network. One excellent feature that’s carried over from the SXK80 is support for up to four different SSIDs – being able to segment access for administrators, employees, IoT devices and guests is a great boon for security and management.
If you need the fastest wireless connection speeds, then the Orbi Pro WiFi 6 Mini isn’t the best choice. It’s also not the right match for home users who don’t need multiple SSIDs, while businesses with sprawling buildings and a large number of users to serve will be better off with the Orbi Pro SXK80.
For a typical office of ten people or fewer, however, the SXK30 is a strong solution, with enough bandwidth and coverage to easily handle everyday needs, especially with a wired backhaul. It’s particularly compelling if you’re already invested in Netgear hardware and want a unified management solution, but even if you haven’t, it provides professional levels of functionality and control that nothing else at this price can match.
SPECIFICATIONS
Router: Dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi 6 router 2x2 MU-MIMO internal antennas
3 x Gigabit Ethernet Gigabit WAN port
148 x 68 x 189mm (WDH) 480g. Satellite:
2x2 MU-MIMO internal antennas 4 x Gigabit Ethernet 148 x 68 x 189mm (WDH) 480g 1yr warranty part code SXK30-100EUS