Lifehacker:
You know how when you sit on your couch, the Wi-Fi on your laptop cuts out? Or when you’re in the bathroom your phone refuses to connect? From Google to Netgear, everyone’s rolling out expensive “Mesh Network” kits that promise to fix Wi-Fi dead zones. But only some people should shell out the $300-$500 for one.
Mesh networks have become the “new cool thing” for tech blogs to talk about and the article does a good job explaining what they are. But it also points out they are really only useful in very specific situations. It’s why I don’t think, hope and rumor to the contrary, Apple is intending to replace their wireless products with mesh networking ones.
I have an Airport Extreme attached to my modem and an Airport Express on the main floor of the house.
I get wifi everywhere, even in the garage, full bars good speed. Took 5 minutes to set up through Apple utility.
I don’t get the excitement over new tech routers. Mesh isn’t
enough make the jump unless you have peers wanting to extend the mesh.
I recently installed the Ubiquti Amplifi HD in my house. Two story, five-room, 2,700 square feet. Wifi is vastly better now. I had an Almond Plus, that broke. I had a Cisco 802.11 AC router. That broke. So I was using an old Airport Extreme, and it was quite reliable. But slow.
From recent tests I’ve read (Ars Technica and Wirecutter) it seems Google Wifi might have a better system technically with strong radios. I’m not giving the world’s largest aggregator of spying on users access to my network. I would have loved to see Apple make a WIFI base station capable of doing mesh if needed. The Amplifi HD can function as a standard router as well. But for me, it’s the Airport Apple could have created. Ubiquti has always made IT-level gear until now. That experience shows.
I bought eero when it was on Kickstarter. I didn’t prior to eero or after eero have problems except for rare exception that is usually Comcasts fault. I was using a Time Capsule previously and that worked great. Coverage in my house is fine. When problems do arise it doesn’t help as they are most likely ISP related. I still wouldn’t know why speed dropped or even if it did because of eero. Benefits are mostly minor.
The article’s basic thrust is “WiFi extenders work fine and are cheaper.”
This argument (mostly) falls down when you use Apple’s routing equipment, as it’s roughly the same price… unless, perhaps, you use the Airport Express, but that is not a particularly modern router, so you do get a substantial performance hit.