Setup and Monitoring- Orbi Mobile App

NETGEAR decided that the options we saw before were not enough, and that the Orbi family of Wi-Fi systems merited a fourth alternative for setup and monitoring. This one needed to be more in line with what the Orbi products were about, which is to be user friendly, clean, and with a minimalist design, and thus, we got the Orbi mobile app. Available, as with NETGEAR genie, for both Android and iOS devices, the Orbi mobile app streamlines things a lot while also only having a select few options. Think of this as the equivalent of the basic settings tab over their web portal, with NETGEAR genie being the advanced version for those wanting more options to tinker with.

The app, at least on Android, is more user-friendly with larger menu sections and a scrolling action to access more settings on the homepage rather than windows to slide through. Indeed, there are a total of six menus in white, separated by distinct lines, a quick status indicator with a visual representation of the system at the top, a notification icon in the top-right corner, and a triple bar (also called Hamburger) menu in the top-left corner with more options similar to a modern x86 program and mobile app designs.


The settings button in the triple bar menu leads you to a set of three settings, one each for the router, Wi-Fi, and guest Wi-Fi options. The former allows you to change the router name and admin password, which will apply across the other dashboards as well, and gives you a look at the current router settings, including the firmware version, MAC address, and IP address. Here is also where you can reboot the router, check for updates, and register the product if you have not done so already. The Wi-Fi settings page allows you to change the SSID credentials, as well as select the encryption protocol, with WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 - Pre-Shared Key) being the default option. The guest Wi-Fi settings page just has the same toggle to start one, which then prompts you to set up its own SSID and gives you an option to share it.


"My Orbi System" under the settings in the triple bar menu takes you to a page that lists the Orbi units connected, with subsequent menus for each. Clicking on the router here just takes you to the router settings page we saw before, whereas the satellite unit just gives you a summary of information relevant to it. The triple bar menu also contains a setup wizard should you either want to add a new satellite or go through the setup process again—this is also where you would start the initial setup if you went with this route rather than the other three we saw before. The support page has links for product support and the relevant NETGEAR community forum, and the penultimate page is specific to information about the app itself.


As with the other dashboards we saw, a lot of information and pages are cross-posted. Indeed, clicking on the visual representation of the kit at the top on the homepage again takes you to "My Orbi System", and some of the six dedicated menus are also accessible elsewhere—WiFi Settings, Guest WiFi, and Support, to be specific. The other three menus are fairly simple too, with a list of connected devices, a speed test, and a traffic meter.

Overall, NETGEAR does need to do a better job on telling the customer what is best as there are some very useful features available in NETGEAR genie that are not available in their web portal or the Orbi mobile app, but there is precious little information on the genie program or app in the user manual that comes with the Orbi kit. Most customers of the kit will be satisfied with the options available over NETGEAR's web portal and/or Orbi app, to be fair, but this still has great potential to confuse or even overwhelm some people who look into it further.