Orbi Quad-Band WiFi 6E Mesh System (Open Box)

I bought this to replace a Google mesh system that I bought to replace Ubiquity mesh system. The Ubiquity system wasn't bad but in a 2 level double brick house, we needed 7 satellites to get an average signal across the house. The Google Nest mesh system had the same result except its interface is so dumbed down that you can't do anything like port forwarding or VPN. The biggest difference with the Orbi system is that it is about the only domestic grade mesh system available that has wired backhaul. This means that you can plug each satellite into your hard wired network so it isn't trying to contact the router via wireless. In our new house which is 3 levels with a concrete floor between 2 of the levels having wired backhaul means that there is 100% signal strength across the whole house. Wired backhaul also means that data going back through the router isn't using any wireless bandwidth. It also means on a large property you could run a network cable underground out to a shed or outbuilding and plug in a satellite and then you have full wireless strength even though you may be well away from your main router. In mesh systems without backhaul I found that for far away areas the satellite would have to daisy chain back to the main router which created a massive drop off in speed and reliability. Setup was a breeze and the speed is amazing, I'm easily getting 520mbps wirelessly across the house. It has a great feature where you can have all your smart home devices on a separate wireless network which is good security-wise. I bought an additional satellite to go outside in a weatherproof box so now with 1 router and 3 satellites I have 100% signal strength across our 10,000ft2 block and 3 level house. It's what wireless was always promised to be but never delivered until now. The phone app is very good and it has a great feature where you can see and control your network even when you are out of the house. The web interface to the router is good and allows a lot of control over permissions and data usage by device and user on the network so you can say prioritize your apple TV device so no matter what others are doing on your network you don't get caching when you are trying to watch a 4k movie. My only gripe is Netgear only offers 90 days of technical support unless you pay monthly for support. I would agree if it is novice support on network setup but when it is due to a firmware update that has dozens of reports on their chat pages of having issues I don't think you should have to pay to get a simple answer as to whether the firmware upgrade should be rolled back to solve a particular problem. Especially when you have paid thousands to buy the mesh system. The backhaul is 2.5gbe which is unbelievably fast so if you plug your PC into one of the 4 data points provided on each satellite and you are using backhaul you can have file transfer rates of 250Mbps across your network (as long as if you are using a switch the switch must be at least 2.5gbe). I put in a 10GBe switch and now our home network and wireless is comparable to enterprise-level fast. Netgear do offer an Armor subscription that you can then install on your computer and then the router and the software offer a very high level of malware and intrusion protection. However, I found that it was so intrusive that it blocked a lot of legitimate programs and operations so I uninstalled it. It is crazy expensive for a home wireless setup but in all fairness, it is so much better than everything else I've tried, the wired backhaul alone is worth the price of entry.