What is the best overall wifi mesh router?

Linskys Velop

Netgear Orbi

Google Wifi

Eero

etc.


Any recommendations?

I am no expert, but I have not had any issues with the Orbi I purchased about 6 months ago. It was pretty much plug and play. I did not have to set anything up directly with networked printers. Everything connected flawlessly. All three of my Sonos players connected easily when pointed at the new network. Same with all the Roku's. Speed on all three levels of my home is solid, and I can stream music over wifi on my phone from all points of my lot.

My tech savvy boss has the Google mesh system. It's given him problems and the Google support was terrible.

I have Google WiFi at my house business and parents house. Works extremely well with no problems. I get upto 350 mb download speeds throughout most of my house. Internet is 350mb so might go faster if I had faster internet. I have a large 7000+ sq ft house on about 3/4 acre lot. Slowest speed is about 20mb outside at edge of property. Inside house get over 150mb everywhere and most places are well over 300mb.

It has guest setting and is very easy to setup.

Business is about 8000 sq feet and is covered completely. I get 85mb download speeds everywhere in building. Internet there is only 75mb up and down. I almost always get 85mb on speed test no matter where I am.

App is easy to control internet and can set priority devices if you wish. For parents can put time constraints on turning off kids wifi if you wish.

I have/had the Orbi. As far as coverage, it's great. We did not see any dropped signals and had tons of coverage. The problem I had was that the wired speeds were really bad.

I have gigabit through AT&T so we have 1000 up/down. Over wired with orbi (cat 5 enabled house) I would see 450mb up/down in speed tests. When I used my old netgear r7000 or my new Asus ROG router, I can see up to 850 and normally see more in the 700 ish range.

While that is just speed tests and what not, i did (in file tests and what not) see general lower speeds across the network on the Orbi.

I guess it depends on what is more important in faster speeds or broader coverage.

Or you can mix, I know a few people that run a main router and then run the Orbi mesh in more sat mode and just use it to extend their wireless network.

Tailgate88 said:

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Unifi is awesome, but it requires a bit of tech knowledge to set up. Not as plug-n-play as the other options here.

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Agreed. I have a Unifi system with several APs, security gateway and security cameras. Works great and I have coverage everywhere I need it to be. There is a certain level of tech knowledge required though.

I have netgear mesh extenders. Not bad...I may upgrade my base router to Triband though.

Another vote for googlewifi. It was easy to set up and coverage is great.

No problems, but we have only had it for 5 months

The only thing worse than the Velop System was the customer support. Never could get all three nodes to mesh. I switched to Ubiquiti AC-Lite AP's and have had much better success.

Love my Orbi system. Had a few hiccups after the power went out but otherwise great.

I am relatively comfortable working with apple ipad/MacBook/etc, but I am not comfortable handling network issues.

I bought the Ubiquiti AmpliFi devices and it was really easy to setup. It significantly improved Wi-Fi in some parts of our home and has not caused me any problems. I have owned it about 10 months.

Was initially happy with Google system. Then it started dropping one unit all the time. They have less than zero customer service and could get no help or support.

Rather than fight it, I just bought a the velop system. Happy so far.

I did beta testing on the Velop system before it was released, and have been running them ever since. I had a problem with one node having a connection problem on an early beta firmware. Since then, no problems and I've been running on the production firmware since. They've been rock solid for me.

In my consulting life I did deploy several UniFi systems and have them deployed at my current place of employment. We absolutely love them; a bit to setup but once it is, they just work. We've also deployed the UniFi switches to power and manage them and I have a UniFi phone even, from that brief period they thought they could do that well . Their technical support on a AirFiber system we had here was also incredibly good.

Were I to use my own money to purchase a mesh WiFi system, based on my success with Ubiquiti gear in general the AmpliFi would be on my list.

Google Wifi works flawlessly in 3 houses.

I love Unifi, but I also love administering systems.

For my parents, I got them 3 Google mesh devices. They cost a lot more than Unifi hotspots, but hopefully will require less of my time to manage.

That said, Google WiFi doesn't appear to have any QoS settings. My parents use Uma(sp?) and the only option I can find to make sure it gets bandwidth is to make it the preferred device on the network.

Thought there would be more eero suggestions.

Google Wifi working great for me and huge difference in connectivity vs my dual band router (which was only 2 years old and highly rated).

If you really want to nerd out on it...

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/33125-wi-fi-system-roundup?limitstart=0

Would you ever buy a refurbished router? Is this the kind of product that you should only buy new? Just a curious question as I have always bought them new in the past.

What would you do?