Page 2: Single SSID Mesh, Range, Speed, Setup and Radios
Single SSID Mesh
Before we get into the differences between the systems, let’s talk about where they’re all the same. Every one of these offers single SSID mesh, which means you choose a single network and enter a single password, and the mesh and devices take it from there. They might move you to the 2.4GHz radio or back to 5GHz. They might move you from the access point in your living room to the one in your bedroom. You don’t have to think about any of these things because the system does it for you. What you get is great coverage everywhere in your home without having to think much about anything at all.
Range
The range on every one of these systems that I tested has been stellar. All have outperformed even the most powerful standalone routers that I’ve (also) tested. Every setup is different, but not only has coverage been stellar indoors in the houses where I’ve tested, in some circumstances I’ve had coverage outdoors up to several hundred feet away from the closest access point. The engineering here is top notch, and will likely be better than anything you’ve ever experienced at home before.
Speed
Again, lots of variables to consider so my results are only one set of data, but speeds across all devices have been fantastic. Because you’re associating with the best access point for your location, it becomes very easy to get this right indoors. Even outdoors several hundred feet away I’ve gotten speeds of 10Mbps. Not great, but hey… I was several hundred feet away!
Setup
The setup of all three of the systems that I tested were quite simple and I was up and running within 10 minutes with each. The only hitch is that eero requires your phone be able to make a quick mobile data connection in order to begin the setup process. This means if your cable modem is in the basement or you have no cell service at your house you’ll need to keep your old router running until you get your eero setup. Both Orbi and AmpliFi employed more traditional setup procedures that involved connecting directly to the devices via the local network.
Radios and Streams
Most single access point/router solutions increase your effective speed and device concurrency by increasing the number of radios available on each device. This technology is called Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) and involves nomenclature like 2×2, 3×3 and 4×4 to describe the number of input and output radios in each device.
The thing is, even though our routers have lots of available radios and streams, most of our client devices do not. And, since none of our Apple devices support Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) yet, those extra radios on our routers aren’t simultaneously made available for other devices to connect. The router waits for one client to finish, then moves on to the next in a round-robin fashion.
Mesh addresses this problem by having multiple access points. This alleviates the need for MU-MIMO in our client devices because different devices can connect to different access points. With the mesh being an intelligent partner in the decision process, that means if you’ve got two devices streaming video at the same time, the mesh and the clients can identify this and move one device to a different access point.
- Orbi: Each unit has three separate radios. Two 2×2 radios for client access, one 2.4GHz and one 5GHz. Then there’s a third, 4×4 5GHz radio that is dedicated only to Orbi-to-Orbi backhaul. This supports MU-MIMO between the Orbis, allowing for unencumbered mesh connectivity that stays out of the way of the client devices.
- AmpliFi: The router base station has two 3×3 radios, one each for 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The regular and LR models’ mesh points each have two 2×2 radios in them whereas the HD mesh points each have two 3×3 radios for longer range and greater throughput.
- eero: Each device has two 2×2 radios, one 2.4GHz and one 5GHz. Both radios are used for mesh backhaul and client devices.
Next up: Ethernet, User Interface, and Form Factor
Bought the eero system based on article review, with special focus on eero offering Qos. My question is how Qos management relates to buffer bloat? I expected my buffer bloat grade to be fairly good using dslreports speed test. Actually it is a gigantic F. I had been using an evenroute router that manages upload buffer bloat and gives me A scores at this site, though drops both upload and download speeds a bit to do so. I am on DSL with 25 down and <2 up and lots of connected devices/game systems, etc.
Mac users beware. I’ve owned 3 EEROs since August 2016. Despite promises the next update will fix the problem, the EEROs do not work with Mac products. In order to maintain a WiFi signal, I must cycle WiFi on my Macbook pro, iPad, and iPhone off then back on again. And I need to do this every 5 minutes or so. EERO knows of this problem, but they don’t have a fix. Here is a quote from EERO customer support “The Mac issues you are having are issues we are aware of but continue to persist. With each update we work to eliminate more and more cases of Apple products having connection issues. For the moment the only solution is cycling the wifi off and back on for the device.” I’m dumping mine on eBay.
Orbi Smart Devices and Hubs Problems
Problems with smart hubs and devices that require the 2gh only.
Hi I tried past stand alone wifi routers (Asus,Linsky) priced over $300 and now the Orbi.
My home is over 4200 Sq Ft. on the Orbi speed test show great speed up and down no matter where I maybe be in or out of the house (Down Load 238 MHPS Upload 35.33 are the avg)
The house has over 40 wifi devices smart devices lights,, tv, Ring door bell, harmony hubs and others.
The 2 gh devices work intermittently other’s 2gh smart devices cannot access my network, since Orbi selects what the band automatically , this is very frustrating.
Not allowing to select the band ,makes some 2gh devices useless or having them to be reset more then not.
Hubs Harmony, Ring, Obit Sprinkler are just a few that have the issue or will not work at all.
New router’s are coming to market but fail, when it come to smart homes.
Im curious if you have tested for smart devices on the other similar router’s to Orbi,.
Thanks
I would be more then happy to provide further info on request.
In addition to the other issues relied with Eero did you bother to read their terms and conditions? Did you read they DEMAND you tell them who you are and where you are? Did you read they will cancel your service if they find out you lied? Did you read you can’t use your name etc., to set up a parent’s system? Did you read they can and will update without your knowledge or consent while not telling you what’s been changed? That they will collect data of the wireless networks around you and that you have no control over or visibility into what data about you they hold, how it’s managed, or how it’s protected? Apple has NEVER demanded to know who I am as a condition of using an Airport base station nor has it threatened to disable it should I not comply. I think I’ll pass!
Like 30% of the US I don’t get any broadband internet at home. The only way to get any internet at all is a Verizon jet pack cellular hotspot which works fine as long as you don’t get any crazy ideas like streaming movies in 4k or even regular 480p. The jet pack has a USB output which one can theoretically tether to other devices. It covers a radius of about 15 feet ok so a bit weak for a whole home.
Any ideas if the Eero would play nice with this for the 30% without nice broadband?
The Orbi 3-pack is $499 at Costco; it’s been available since at least the beginning of November, but I think I saw it at my local Costco in October too.
If I have my internet router upstairs on the second floor in one corner of the house and my TV in the basement in the other corner of the house, will I need 3 access points to bridge that?
My Airport Extreme from upstairs covers floors 1 and 2 quite well, then I have a flaky power line adapter system running from upstairs to the basement and occasionally breaks down when trying to watch anything via wifi with AirPlay to the TV. Since an Airport Extreme cannot reach the basement, I’m assuming the Eero/Orbi/AmpliFi access points won’t reach the basement either without a third access point on the main floor in between them. That makes Orbi very expensive. But since the whole point of wanting this is to avoid running ethernet through my walls I rather like the idea of Orbi’s third radio for wifi backhaul. I also would prefer to plug the Apple TV directly into an ethernet port, hence putting the access point in the basement and not on the main floor which would otherwise let me cover the house with just two access points.
Just to check my idea, would it even work well to have a basement AP talk to the main floor AP which talks to the upstairs AP+router and get high speeds in the basement?
(BTW, I got the power line system from a TMO recommendation. While it has problems, I didn’t have internet to the Apple TV at all 90% of the time before installing this system, so thanks for the good recommendations.)
Base on this article I purchased 6 eeros ( have 3 floor house). The app has what it calls “Family Profiles”. A very easy way to limit WiFi usage for anyone at anytime. The default name for any new profile is call “Bedtime”
Very easy to use, tells you when you’ve placed a eero too far away from the others, each unit reboots automatically if they detect a problem. One of the best interfaces I’ve ever seen and support QoS so a Netflix’ing/YouTub’ing teenage doesn’t slow down everyone else down.
I have seen other consumer solutions to manage family member usage (only let Sally’s devices on the internet until 8:00 PM). Do any of these mesh systems have usage controls like this?
I just got off chat with the Amplifi support folks, and the rep said you can buy multiple Amplifi routers, connect them via Ethernet, and use the satellites as Ethernet mesh points as you can with Eeros. At $150/router for the HD version, a “3-pack” costs more than the $350 Amplifi HD kit but arguably gives more flexibility and expansion (each can also double as a 4-port switch for wired devices).
Can anyone corroborate this info? As noted in the article it would be nice to make use of existing ethernet runs through the walls of a house when possible to forward the traffic of wifi devices.
Great article! Another WiFi meshing product – an outdoor system for farms and rural households – was covered briefly on the Mac Geek Gab back in 2013 (MGG 436) – Ayrstone, which is still around. Not for use in the house like these products, Ayrstone makes WiFi available outside in the countryside – in the garden, on the lake, or across the farm.
I went w/AmpliFi LR and it was on sale on Amazon…and I couldn’t be more pleased after the first four days of use. Speeds great, no dead spots, easy to use and most important…the fastest tech support I’ve ever seen w/national product. You start a chat and you’re with someone in a few seconds. I also think the plug-in mesh antenna’s are a smart design choice. No wires to plug in and the magnetic heads really help when you walk by and accidentally dislodge them…no way to break these unless you deliberately try. All the units are solidly built. I do hope they can squeeze in a few Ethernet ports on the mesh antenna’s in some future builds.
Really great article!
All things being equal, I love the way the Orbi sounds. However, the price just seems a good $100 too high. Since my internet connection comes in at the center of the house, to extend the network to all rooms (and particularly to my hammock outside!) I need at least 3 units. So a 3 pack of Orbi would run $650. For $50 less than 2 Orbi, I can get a 3 pack of AmpliFi. I don’t have anything that NEEDs ethernet instead of 802.11 n or AC, so I think I should be fine without ethernet ports. I actually rather like the form factor – seems like it will save space to have it self contained on an outlet. Not sure if anyone else is in my boat, but a big part of the reason I’m buying a mesh system is that it is cheaper than stringing Cat7 from the room with my router and modem. For the $650 I’d be paying Orbi, I could get a wired solution – I think they may have trouble keeping up that price point with so many other options out there.
(having justified my purchase to myself, now onto the question)
One thing I am curious about – I have a pseudo mesh network set up now using a few airports and the paltry 40 Mb I’m getting over power line – could one of those further extend the network created by the Orbi or AmpliFi?
How do any of these mesh systems coexist or replace the current router I might have! I have Uverse TV and Internet. I could plug one if these units unto a switch connected to my router. As you may know, the Uverse gateway has wireless transmitters to connect to the receivers if the different TVs I have, so I don’t want to interfere with that part of the network. If I can then use the mesh units to extend my existing network, that would be great.
Thanks for the article. Very helpful.
It should be noted that Orbi and AmpliFi (this is exclusive to Amazon for now) are also available as stand alone routers. Also of interest, a second AmpliFi stand alone router can be configured as a mesh point. I’ve had the stand alone AmpliFi router up and running since 11/23 and I’m very impressed with its consistency both with testing and real world streaming. The Orbi might be a better performer and might have been my choice if I needed a mesh system but IMO the esthetics of the AmpliFi is much better and I couldn’t be happier its performance. BTW, I do have it on top of my dresser and indeed if you didn’t look too closely you would think it was a fancy alarm clock.
Great article! I have been considering mesh networking for our home and you really gave me great options and points to consider for each.
Hey, all. Thanks for the comments. I usually let it go a few days before answering, so here I am… answering!
@Maverick: Wifi calling works great with all of these that I’ve tested. No issues at all.
@Westfoto: the benefits of mesh over your existing multi-router setup are many. First, mesh gives you a single interface to manage the whole thing (as opposed to having to manage each access point separately). Because of this you (easily) get a single SSID for all your wifi. The biggest benefit to mesh, though, is that the access points talk to both the clients *and* each other. With this everything is involved in the decision process when a client decides which access point to associate with.
@BrianMonroe: Amped’s Ally isn’t available for review yet, but they tell me it’ll be shipping to me soon (probably next week).
@mtaht: Indeed. Each vendor’s implementation is currently unique, which means you must stick with that vendor when extending/expanding your mesh.
@murtuzza: Thanks! I’ll add Edimax to the list.
@briandigital: I hear you! Add to that the fact that it’s all changing rapidly and it’s tough to make a choice. As for performance, here’s what I can say: access point-to-client performance is all quite similar with these. All AC1200 (or AC1300) radios with similar range. However, wifi backhaul is NOT equal amongst these. Luma and Amplifi are the weakest in terms of range between access points. Eero’s actually pretty good: it got ~50Mbps across my driveway from my house to my office. Orbi, however, is amazing. It got 100Mbps+ from the *far* end of my house to my office (across both the house *and* the driveway).
@tek: indeed. Eero and Luma require access to their cloud services in order to manage the devices. Orbi and AmpliFi are both locally-managed with no cloud element. The nice part about the cloud integration is that you get the benefits of what the data shows for other users, too. That’s what helped eero create things like TrueMesh. They learned what worked in some homes vs. others and applied that to everyone.
I wanted to point out one of the biggest problems for me with these systems and that is that they need to have connection with the central server in order to work AT ALL. I had Eero that I tested and in the middle of test we lost power due to high winds. I got everything going on my generator but Eero network would not work at all without connection to the Eero central servers. This means that whole internal network in my house was down. This also means that if for whatever reason, Eero servers down, Eero goes out of business etc. your devices are dead and you cannot use them. I confirmed with Eero that devices need to connect to central server otherwise they would not work.
This was unacceptable to me. I returned whole thing.
Additional problem I had is that Eero system was simply not nearly as fast as the Airport Extreme. I run Tivo streaming video over the WiFi and the only router that I have found which would work without interruptions and crashes was Airport Extreme. Eero could not handle this either and video streamed internally over WiFi was unwatchable. It would also crash Eero and force them to reboot. Support was of no help.
There were also VPN connection problems to the outside servers with Eero and support also was of no help. No problems with Airport in exact same configuration.
So for me these system are simply not nearly as good as Airport Extreme. I don’t understand why Apple would stop making and selling them.
Thanks for the article, I look forward to seeing this field grow. I definitely got more from this article than other similar articles.
If I were picking one up over the holidays, it sounds like all their wireless performance are similar? I should decide based just on features? How’s the usability of the configuration interfaces?
I was interested in eero but the price was high and I’m not sure I want cloud-access into my home’s network, especially considering the insecurity of the IoT. (The network I manage at work does have a cloud based backend to its network hardware and to been fabulous, but it’s not my home…)
I was interested in the Ubiquiti, based on their rep, but was less impressed with the fact their extenders can only be placed where you have an outlet. That’s mostly at shin-level in my house.
I hadn’t heard anything about the Netgear offering, but the ports , VPN and multi-radio features sound great, but their rep with me has been “good hardware for hardcore geeks who don’t care about usability or design.”
So it’s hard to choose a team to invest in! (Hence my question on performance)
Dave – there is a also Edimax which has also recently released the new AC1200 kit for Wifi Home mesh – you should also include that in your review and tell us how it goes
Maverick – go to reader view and print to pdf, save.
Although I am very happy to see multi-channel mesh wifi finally getting its day in the sun, I am concerned that there is a lack of understanding about how it actually works, and what the underlying protocols and metrics are. Eero, for example, is based on batman-adv, so far as I know. Google is leveraging 802.11s (I think). In the long run, I hope that interoperable implementations exist.
Without USB ports to connect an external drive to Time Capsule use with any of the three would be limited to some external drive with an Ethernet connection. Is that right?
I always used multiple units in my wifi. I now am using 4 airports. I don’t have a large house, I have an old house (plaster walls stop wifi) So how would mesh help here?
The real issue here is Apple updates – the only one the is on time is the iPhone everything else is by the wayside. Very sad for such a great company.
Thank you for a great article. I have been seriously looking at adding Mesh networking to our home.
One question that is Critical. We have lousy cell coverage from all major carriers.
So, we have ATT and can only receive calls by using their wifi calling feature.
Are there any problems doing wifi calling over any of these mesh system?
Also, Is there any way to download this article as a PDF?
thanks