At $600, this was no small investment, but my wife and kids have been complaining a lot, and I decided I would do some serious testing once they arrived, intending to return them if the improvements were only incremental.
After several weeks of usage, I am keeping these
…and, since I had already been contemplating trying to hire someone to run Ethernet from where the Internet comes to the house back to my office, I decided to try the same experiment.
Which led me to create this, which demonstrates the upper limit of my graphical design / Photoshop skills (or, rather, “skills”).
I have the old Eero and they were a massive step up from the Apple AirPort Extreme and Airport Express I had. But then my internet is only 70Mbps down and 20mbps up.
It annoyed me that they had great sales on all the other Eero models during Prime Day but not on the Pro 6. I’m still using the first generation Eero with good success.
It definitely is, and I will certainly return them if it doesn’t work, but I’m supposed to be getting 400 down and I get maybe 100 at the office.
And I figured that hiring someone to do wiring might not cost much less. Plus I’d have to find someone and they’d have to make holes into the house.
This is one of those times that Amazon gets my business because they’ll offer 18-months no-interest to pay it off, which softens the “blow” quite a bit.
I was intrigued by this post too - I was considering upgrading from my 3 eero second gen setup, but it is pricy. I should be getting 400 down and I can close to the units, but my 1880s house is determined to block every signal coming in and out…
I upgraded the first version of the eero that I used as my base station - The rest are beacons. According to the eero bandwidth check, I went from 400 down/250 up, to 999 down and 494 up after upgrading just the base station to the Pro 6. I’m quite happy with it!
Even if considering a mesh setup, I’d recommend getting wires run to key locations and hooking the mesh nodes up with a wired backend wherever possible.
With wired connections, a perhaps cheaper pseudo-mesh setup can be achieved with multiple Access Points configured for the same SSID. This, however, requires administering each node individually. Plus, a proper mesh setup has smarts that can improved performance to some extent.
I don’t see that there’s a mutually exclusive decision between ethernet and mesh either. I agree it’s worth running cable between mesh units. David said he plugged two units into Ethernet. If his house is like mine, the third one isn’t really worth running cable to, compared to the others.
Wifi 6 works on 2.4ghz and 5; it can penetrate multiple walls, too (devices will connect to 2.4ghz if that’s all they can reliably get)—but of course mesh obviates much of that need due to the multiple access points.
Benefits of mesh, setting aside the wireless vs. ethernet backhaul question, are quality access points, unified SSID throughout the house, central management, unified band steering strategy, etc. I guess I could see buying a < $50 access point instead of a $100 mesh access point, but the savings aren’t there right now for Wifi 6-compatible traditional access points vs. Wifi 6 mesh access points.
Also, a decent router should last a long time. Maybe not 20 years, but nearly 10 seems reasonable, or 5 for someone who likes to upgrade often.
When Eero first came out, someone (and it might have been Katie Floyd, but my memory could be wrong) setup Eeros via cable and noticed that it wasn’t using the wire, rather the Mesh. When she spoke to Eero and they looked at it, they told her that the Mesh was faster than the wired connection, so the Eero was using the Mesh. Of course that could be down to Wire quality, network equipment configuration and port speed on the devices.
Wires aren’t always faster, it depends on every link of the chain being right.
I’m not gonna argue with you and @vco1, we’ll have to agree to disagree, especially as you completely missed my final point. “It depends on every link on the chain being right”
You can have the best copper in the world, but a crappy switch or poor configuration can make it slow.
For a basis of comparison, I have a second generation Eero Pro setup in a wireless mesh (no cabled backhaul) and get 250Mbps down, 225Mbps up when wirelessly connected to an AP that’s not the router. With a wired connection to the AP that’s acting as the router, I get 950ish up and down.
I am running an Eero Pro and get 450+ Mbps down and 20+ up. My home office is situated at the limits of my beacon setup, so I ran an ethernet cable to my office and installed a second base model there. It worked great! With the connected bases and two beacons I have great coverage for three levels plus a detached office.
Yep, but it’s not far off from other setups. I bought a Netgear Orbi mesh (base + 1 satellite) last year, paid $286 for it on Amazon. Adding another satellite will cost $200-$250. That puts the whole setup within $100 or so of that Eero 3-unit setup.
A 3-unit Orbi setup with WiFi 6 lists for $470 on Amazon right now, but there are other Orbi packages for sale approaching $1000.
Regardless, with the kids going back to in-person school, my spouse doing less video calls in the coming months, and both of our work computers on GigE, spending lots of money on new WiFi gear is a non-starter for me. Just no need for it now.
The commodity chipsets may be the same, but the real differentiator is the software. Part of the reason the AirPort Extreme (and the Eero) were so beloved is the software wasn’t as horrible as a lot of the mass-market products.
