No subscription so far. The setup wasn’t super easy but I wouldn’t say it was difficult. And tbh I think I made it harder than it needed to be. I did most the setup on my phone.

Yeah they were pricey, I should have mentioned that. I did not attempt that install. Wanted to just get it up and running first without any of my usual shenanigans.

Just purchased the Orbi setup and the performance improvement over my gen one Google mesh was shocking. I expected an improvement but my Xbox went from ~40 mbs to 240 mbs for straight game download. I did keep my old Google mesh up and running also and only use it for phones/tablets.

NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Tri-Band… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Z3FGSDH?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

True but where I live in CA this would likely be the coating selected by the majority of people.

Most likely uv protective coating.