Netgear Orbi Vs Orbi Pro: Which One You Should Buy?

Good Wi-Fi speed is an utmost necessity in the present time. For a good internet speed if, there is anything that you need is a good Wi-Fi router. NetGear is a brand providing trustable Wi-Fi routers. But the Netgear has two models: No products found. and NetGear Orbi Pro. Now, which of this is suitable for your needs is a tricky thing to think about? Here in this article, we will compare the two and point out their similarities and differences. Our detailed analysis will give you a fair idea about both of the products and further will help you to decide the best one matching your needs.

Our Verdict

Netgear Orbi Vs Orbi Pro: Comparison Chart

Differences

To decide which router is suitable for you, you definitely need to know how they differ from each other. Here are the major points that differentiate these routers from each other.

1. Default Mode

Since No products found. and NetGear Orbi Pro were made for residential and business purposes respectively, they differ in their default mode of working.

In the default set-up, NetGear Orbi works in router mode. However, if you want to use the device in access point mode, you can activate the AP mode of the device manually through the app.

On the other hand, NetGear Orbi Pro works in the access point mode in the default setup. Yet again, you can change the access point mode to the router mode through the advanced setting in the app. But when you first set it up, it will automatically be in the access point mode even if there is no detectable router. Being designed for business uses, this feature of working in access point mode is of great advantage as it easily gets integrated with the existing network. And by using NetGear Orbi Pro as an access point, your existing network gets an excellent increase in its coverage area and connectivity.

When you set up the NetGear Orbi Pro, it will provide you with the option to change to router mode easily if it does not detect an existing router.The NetGear Orbi Pro works in Access point mode as default, but if you will set it to router mode, you will get a list of extra functionalities which are unavailable in the access point mode. Some of such functionalities are:

• Access Control
• Site Blocking
• Traffic Meter
• Service Blocking
• Port Forwarding
• Port Triggering
• IPv6
• UPnP
• Static Route
• Remote Management
• VPN service

2. Satellites

Both Orbi and Orbi Pro depend on satellites for expanding their coverage area. But since they are designed for residential and business use respectively, they differ significantly in the satellites available for use with each of them.

The normal NetGear Orbi has a greater range of satellites available for adding on as compared to the NetGear Orbi Pro.

The options available for the regular NetGear Orbi are:

• Default Orbi satellite – Providing high performance AC3000 Wi-Fi network, this default Orbi satellite expands your existing coverage area by about 2500 sq. ft. It has four ethernet ports through which you can connect more wired devices to your network. This satellite is of great use at homes where the owners want wired connection for their devices that are distant from the main router.
• Orbi Voice Add-on satellite and Smart Speaker – Imagine your access point also acting as your speaker as well through which you can command your smart home assistant to do tasks for you. With this Orbi Voice satellite cum speaker, you no longer need the help of the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot to control your smart home. This satellite acts as a smart speaker as well besides expanding your network coverage area.
• Orbi Outdoor Satellite – Orbi’s outdoor satellite is designed specially for outdoor installation. With this, you can get uninterrupted network outside your house as well. This also expands the coverage area by about 2500 sq. ft. To suit the outdoor environment, this satellite has been made weather resistant and water resistant.
• Orbi Plug in Satellite – This satellite plugs in anywhere where you can manage to get an outlet. This, thus, saves you from arranging for space to rest the device. However, this satellite uses AC2200 Wi-Fi and gives your network an expansion of only 1500 square feet.

On contrary to so many options available for NetGear Orbi, with the Orbi Pro router, you can only use the default Orbi Pro Satellite and Orbi Outdoor Satellite. This covers almost all the requirements of a large building for business purpose. However, the usefulness would surely have been increased if the other options were also available. The regular NetGear Orbi satellites do not work with NetGear Orbi Pro.

3. Expansion And User Connections

Both NetGear Orbi and Orbi Pro differ significantly in the maximum coverage allowed and the number of devices that can connect simultaneously with each of them.

With No products found. router you can connect maximum up to three satellites in addition to one main router and each of them expand your network by 2500 square feet. This is sufficient for any normal household requirements. But with this, the network gets limited to 20 connections at a time. And when it reaches around 20, a fall in speed starts becoming noticeable.

With the NetGear Orbi Pro, you can connect up to 40 devices to the network at one time. Till 40, the devices won’t experience any noticeable decline in speed. You can also increase the number of devices but each extra device will experience slower connection.

4. Traffic Separation

This is yet again a feature which shows that NetGear Orbi and NetGear Orbi Pro are made for residential and business purpose respectively.

With NetGear Orbi you get the feature of guest network. With the help of this, your guests will get secure internet access through your network without getting complete access to your home network.

The Orbi Pro is ahead of the regular Orbi in this regard as is offers you traffic separation. With this you can generate three separate Wi-Fi networks and you can easily manage their security and access control.

The three types of networks have their own individual feature which makes them very useful in any business organisation.

The Guest/ customer network –This allows you to get access to your company’s network for a limited period of time. This network also helps you protect your company’s data and maintain the integrity of your company’s network by the necessary terms and conditions agreements. This also ensures the protection of your technology from outside influences by forbidding access to any critical infrastructure.

The Employee Network –With this feature, a bandwidth gets separated specifically for your company’s workers. This also restricts the access to critical network functions ensuring that a normal employee of the company does not get significant control over the network. It requires an SSID password to connect to the network and access the internet.

The Admin Network –This network is protected by a separate password. The handlers of this network have full control over the company’s network. The owners can adjust the network and manage it to get it to work at its maximum efficiency. With this feature only a small group of people get full access of your network and your network remains protected from the untrusted hands.

5. Captive Portal

Due to this feature, any guest user or any other user for that matter will need to agree to a set of terms and conditions before they get to access the network. Captive Portal display these sets of terms and conditions to the new users. Besides this, they do not allow the guests to get to see the other devices that are connected to the network. They also prevent the guests from accessing the LAN (Local Area Network). NetGear Orbi Pro supports this feature of Captive Portal while this is unavailable in the regular NetGear Orbi router.

6. Wired Connectivity

Both the regular No products found. and Orbi Pro come with different kinds of ports that enable them to hook up with various devices. Both have a power input, an on/off button and four separate Gigabit Ethernet ports on their backside. One of these four Ethernet ports connects to the modem. The rest three ports are used to connect to various devices like printers, PCs, etc. The device also has button that can be used to reset the device or connect the device with additional satellites if the need maybe.

The Orbi device also has a USB 2.0 port in it. Though it is not activated yet, it can be used to connect to printers and all but cannot give you features like Readyshare storage. Having a 2.0 port instead of a 3.0 port makes it even less usable.

The Orbi router and satellites are identical in structure but they are still not interchangeable. One base will act as the router that will create the network while the rest will only help you to expand the coverage area of your network.

The NetGear Orbi Pro is very much similar to the regular NetGear Orbi router in wired connectivity. However, it does not have the USB 2.0 port. But since that port is not completely usable in the regular router, it is not much of a disadvantage with the Pro router.

7. Parental Control

The parental control feature enables you to look at the internet usage of all the devices connected to your router. You can even limit the usage or cut the connection of any device if required. You can even schedule the connection of a device or set time restrictions. This way, you can limit your children from internet access and thus protect them from the unsuitable content present on the internet.

NetGear Orbi uses a third-party App Circle for this feature. Also, you will need to have the premium subscription to use majority of the controls provided by this feature. However, you get many features for free as well with which you can control and manage the internet access by your kids.

On the other hand, the NetGear Orbi Pro which is designed for business purpose need not take care of the access by children. Therefore, the Pro version does not offer parental control of any sort.

8. Size

In case of the regular No products found. router, both the satellites and the base unit are identical in appearance. Orbi router and satellites measures 8.9 x 6.7 x 3.1 inches. This are large in size and difficult to hide. Therefore, you are left with no other option except for arranging for space to keep these devices.

On the other hand, is much more sleek and good to look at. This can be kept horizontally as well as vertically to suit the needs of the building. The size of the Pro device is 6.8 inches x 9.7 inches x 3.3 inches.

9. Subscription

The regular NetGear Orbi router is connected to the circle app. This app provides you with many features free of cost, however, if you get a premium subscription on the circle app, it will open way to a lot many useful features that will increase the utility of the router many folds. One such feature is parental control. You can get effective parental control from the circle app completely free of cost. Like you can block the access of adult content and inappropriate sites and much more. But with the premium membership, some extra useful features will be added. Some of them are:

Time Limit – This feature allows you to set time restriction on various apps and devices individually. You can cut the connection once the time limit gets exceeded. With this, you can restrict the time that your kids give to electronic devices, social media and all.

Bedtime – This is similar to time limit. With this, you can set the time on individual devices and app and their internet connection will automatically cut off at that time. With this, you can ensure that your children go to bed on time without wasting their sleep hours on gadgets.

Offtime – This feature again allows you to set time restrictions on various devices and apps. In the set time, the network connection of the devices will go off and if the children will try to access the net, they will get a reminder to focus on other jobs.

Usage – This feature lets you keep an eye on the time your kids are spending online. With this feature, you can check the internet usage of the various devices connected to your network and also check the time period for which each device has used the network.

Circle app offers many more useful features besides these in its premium subscription. This is without doubt one of the most attractive part of the NetGear Orbi router.

The NetGear Orbi Pro router does not have access to the circle app. Therefore, it does not offer many such features provided by Circle.

Besides the Circle Premium membership, both the Regular NetGear Orbi router and NetGear Orbi Pro router get free technical support for 90 days. After the period of 90 days get over, you will have to pay every time you ask for technical support.

Similarities

1. FastLane3 Technology

This technology is perfect for 4K streaming and gaming. This refers to a Wi-Fi backhaul which ensures a fast, reliable connection between the router and the satellites. Thus, they beam out fast network throughout your property without any notable decline in speed with addition of devices.Both, the regular NetGear Orbi router and the NetGear Orbi Pro router support this FastLane3 Technology.

2. Tri-Band Technology

Both these routers are tri-band routers having bands corresponding to 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 5 GHz. The 2.4 GHz and one 5 GHz band provides highspeed connection with a theoretical throughput of 1.2 Gbps. The third band is dedicated completely for backhaul and also takes away some load from the main network. Therefore, this ensures a strong connection between the router and the devices connected to it. Due to this tri-band technology, NetGear Orbi and Orbi Pro are capable of offering excellent network speeds.

3. Voice Control

With the voice control ability of the Orbi router and the Orbi Pro router, you can use your smart home assistant to change the settings of your router or get parental control over it. Orbi and Orbi Pro are compatible with both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.

4. Range

With both the regular NetGear Orbi or the NetGear Orbi Pro, you will get the same range. Both of these will have a coverage area of 5000 square feet if you use one router and one satellite. However, you can add on additional satellites if you need to expand the coverage are. Each additional satellite will add 2500 square feet of expansion to the coverage area. Both of these routers will create beams of network and therefore, the performance of both will be more or less the same.

5. Top-notch Speed

The speed offered by the Wi-Fi router is of utmost importance in any house. Both the No products found. and Orbi Pro offer almost the same speed.

The average value of the NetGear Orbi router throughput is around 508.7 Mbps at a close range while at about 100 feet distance, the average throughput value is 369.6 Mbps.

On the other hand, the NetGear Orbi Pro router gives an average throughput of 509 Mbps at close distances and about 248 Mbps within a range of 2,000 square feet. It has been noted that the Orbi Pro’s speed tends to drop with increasing distance but the minimum speed noted is about 193 Mbps.

6. Units

The overall range depends significantly on the number of router and satellite. You can get the idea from the fact that one router and one satellite can give a range of up to 5000 sq. feet.And additional units in each of the two cases expand the network by 2500 square feet.

7. MU-MIMO

Multi-user Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) is a feature that makes the network capable of transmitting data among multiple devices. Even without MU-MIMO it is possible to stream data to multiple devices but MU-MIMO gives a better connection to the devices as it permits sharing of the network. MU-MIMO routers provide a better network with a stable and consistent network. With this technology, the various devices do not compete for the network. Instead, they share the same frequency without any drop of speed with addition of more devices.Both the NetGear Orbi and the Orbi Pro routers support MU-MIMO technology.

 8. Wireless Connectivity

The wireless connectivity of any router is a foremost feature to consider as this significantly affects the speed and connections of the network.Both Netgear Orbi and NetGear Orbi Pro have Tri-Band Wi-Fi radios. The first two radio bands are the primary radios which provide the maximum throughput of 1.2Gbps of data flow while the third radio is designed to transmit frequencies which help in transmitting data from the device to the Orbi satellite and vice versa. Orbi’s first band has 2.4 GHZ connection which transmits IEEE 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz-256QAM frequencies. The remaining two bands have 5 GHz connections transmitting IEEE 802.11 za/n/ac 5GHz-256QAM frequencies.

9. Smart Home Support

Both the Netgear Orbi and the Orbi Pro router allow smart home support thus giving your smart home and all the devices there a reliable consistent and speedy connection. All you require is a smart Wi-Fi router and a ZigBee or Z-Wave Hub. They are compatible with both Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home.

10.  Reduce Dead Zones

Both these Wi-Fi routers will give good and reliable network connection in every corner of your home and thus eliminate any network dead zone that previously existed.

11. Bridge Mode

Both Netgear Orbi and NetGear Orbi Pro feature bridge mode with the help of which you can use your router as a simple Mesh WLAN. To convert the Orbi router into a WLAN, you require to manually change the settings to AP mode while the NetGear Orbi Pro routrer works in AP mode as default.

12. Easy To Install

Both these routers are easy to install and it is quite simple to get them ready for use. They are prepared for use and once you get them out of the box, all you need to do is to refer to the user guide and to follow a set of simple steps. And your WiFi router is ready for use.

13. Beam Forming Technology

Beam formation allows any signal to be beamed in a focussed manner towards the connected device instead of getting spread in a large are, thus reducing its effectiveness.Both these routers are equipped with this beam forming technology.

Features Of NetGear Orbi

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• Tri-band AC3000
• 6 Antennas
• 5 Ethernet ports
• bands of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
• MU-MIMO technology
• Beamforming technology
• Maximum speed of 3 Gbps
• Coverage area of 5000 sq. ft.
• Dedicated 5 GHz band for backhaul
• Wi-Fi security – WPA/WPA2-PSK
• Default router mode
• Bridge mode technology
• 90 days free technical support
• Compatible with Google Home
• Compatible with Amazon’s Alexa
• Dimensions – 8.9 inches x 6.7 inches x 3.1 inches
• Colour – White
• Supports Circle App

Overview Of NetGear Orbi

No products found.

Being a tri-band router is one of NetGear Orbi’s best advantages as it allows negligible drop in speed with distance. Moreover, with the help of No products found. satellites, it is much easy to expand the Wi-Fi network without additional effort. The satellites are available in different forms to suit different purposes. And each satellite expands the range by 2500 square feet.

Moreover, there is no loss of speed on adding additional satellites but it supports only three satellites at a time. Along with this, the advanced features the NetGear Orbi offers like bridge mode, MU-MIMO, Parental control, etc. add on to its utility. NetGear Orbi offers a wide range of ways by which you can manage and control your networks like the ability to assign devices to your network, setting restrictions on various devices, applying limits to the usage by various devices, time scheduling the network as a whole or the network available to various devices, and much more.

The router also has a simple installation process for the ease of the users. When you buy the router, you get one base unit and one satellite and an installation guide that makes the set-up process even easier.

However, NetGear Orbi may be a pain to the pocket. Through the Circle App, you can enjoy a wide range of parental control features free of cost. However, in order to get access to all the available features, you need to get the premium subscription.

This at times appears as a negative point that you will have to pay a monthly charge to completely utilize your system even after paying the charge while buying it. But the features that premium membership offer makes it worth the money and NetGear Orbi has appeared as one of the best routers available in the market at the present date.

Features Of Orbi Pro

• Tri-band AC3000
• 6 Antennas
• 5 Ethernet ports
• bands of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
• MU-MIMO technology
• Beamforming technology
• Maximum speed of 3 Gbps
• Coverage area of 5000 sq. ft.
• Dedicated 5 GHz band for backhaul
• Wi-Fi security – WPA/WPA2-PSK
• Default AP mode
• Bridge mode technology
• 90 days free technical support
• Compatible with Google Home
• Compatible with Amazon’s Alexa
• Dimensions – 6.8 inches x 9.7 inches x 3.3 inches
• Colour – White

Overview Of Orbi Pro

NetGear Orbi Pro is another product of the same brand i.e. NetGear. This router is designed specifically for business purposes and thus, its features are more suitable for that. NetGear Orbi Pro offers a wide range of user-friendly features as well like MU-MIMO technology, web filtering, time scheduling of the network, limiting access of individual devices and all.

This router offers you a range of abilities to get control over your network and the traffic separation feature offered by Orbi Pro enables you to decide the level of access you want to giver to each kind of user. Plus, you can use Orbi Pro satellites to expand your network. Each satellite adds 2500 square feet to the existing coverage area. Being designed for business works, NetGear Orbi Pro works in Access point mode as default. However, you can change the mode to router mode if it is required.

A negative point about the Orbi Pro router is that it lacks all sorts of parental control. It is not compatible with the Circle App and therefore, lacks the features offered by the app. Orbi Pro router is undoubtedly a bit expensive but it lacks the requirement of any extra subscription charges. Therefore, you can use your router to the fullest without paying any additional monthly charge.

FAQs

Bottom Line

Both No products found. and Orbi Pro are excellent Wi-Fi network providers. But, Orbi Pro stands ahead of the NetGear Orbi in some features which gives it an upper hand in our test.

So, basically opting for the latest technology that is NetGear Orbi Pro is always a wise choice. If you want to know more about orbi, you should definitely check out Orbi vs Eero.