Packaging and Accessories

NETGEAR operates a web shop of its own which is also where this product came from. As such, I wanted to briefly show the shipping packaging in case you happen to also purchase the Orbi RBK863 directly from the company. It ships in a large, thick corrugated cardboard box with plenty of branding all around to where you might want to stay home to collect the parcel lest it get unwanted attention outside. There is more cardboard inside for further protection of the product box itself which comes with a plastic seal over it. Removing it reveals a design that is clearly from the NETGEAR Orbi family, but this black color version forgoes the white box in favor of a black one! The front also gets a semi-glossy finish to make it hard to photograph although we can see that the black edition is called out explicitly here to go with a render of the product and the salient features listed below. Contact information for NETGEAR is found on the back in multiple different languages and the sides are sparse with just NETGEAR and Orbi logos in a departure from the specifications and marketing features-filled sides on the product box of the previous generation Orbi 850 series. The box opens up to reveal paperwork in the form of a quick install guide (online copy here) and some regulatory materials, and you may be interested in the full user manual available online in 161 pages of great detail!


Inside the outer box is a smaller box also made of cardboard and in black. The Orbi logo is embossed on the front and this too opens up from the side courtesy a double-flap as seen above. Now we see the three units inside alongside a plain white cardboard accessory box which comes with the power adapters neatly packed for each of the three units. I have the EU version, meaning I got separate power adapters for the router and satellite, but also different wall plugs for the UK and most of mainland Europe. These are black to match the router and satellite units, and can output a whopping 42 W each.


Last and certainly not least in the accessory section is a flat Ethernet cable of two meters in length, which allows for a decent amount of room for cable management along a wall if needed. It feeds the internet signal from your modem or gateway to the Orbi router and is terminated in a standard RJ45 connector on either end. The cable is compatible with the 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports on the three units. The AWM style, 30 AWG 2854 hook-up wire in this CAT 6 cable has reliably been used by other industries for harsher applications, so I am confident this cable will work just fine. What I would have liked, however, are more of these cables for all the available LAN ports on the router and satellite units, given that this single cable is meant to be used from the modem to the router unit's WAN port only.


The router and the two satellite units come placed sideways inside their own individual compartments. These are individually wrapped in plastic as well although the Orbi 860 series seems to do away with the helpful identification tags from previous series that easily differentiated the satellite units and the router itself.