/ Left to right : a looming Netgear Orbi satellite, an upside-down Plume superpod, and an older Eero model.
Beyond that, the switch — which connects all the wired connections together and may be built into the router itself — manages all these connections intelligently. This allows the router to get input from each device in a timely fashion, as well as split its own time fairly to deliver requested data to each of those devices.
Simple streaming — watching Netflix or YouTube — is, oddly enough, one of the least demanding tasks you can give your Wi- Fi. The traffic is almost entirely download, and it’s not latency-sensitive — if Netflix wants to build up a ten-minute buffer, you’ll never know about it; a blip in service will get smoothed out without a single visibly dropped frame.
Unfortunately, while delivering a video stream isn’t all that challenging, living on the same network (with) a video stream can be. If the bandwidth consumed by the stream is close to the bandwidth limit of the Wi-Fi connection (not the internet connection!) There won’t be many “breaks” in the stream for your own device to get a word in edgewise. The key vocabulary word here is airtime. If the majority of the available airtime is already being consumed, a device that has a latency-sensitive communications need — like remote-controlling an office computer — is going to have a bad time.
The spotty airtime availability for your device to upload a request — whether it is a simple HTTPS request to fetch a webpage, or mouse or keyboard inputs delivered to a remote-controlled PC at the office — means things get laggy. You’re not having a throughput problem, you’re having a latency problem — you move your mouse and click on something, and it takes half a second (or more!) Before anything happens.
The market is packed full to bursting with Wi-Fi mesh kits — and most of them are at least somewhat better than a standalone router, in nearly any situation. But in our opinion, there are three major standouts. Eero’s three-piece, a set of four Plume Superpods, and Netgear’s three-piece Orbi RBK – – covered the absolute crap out of our 3, 565 – square-foot test house and did so with a very active multiple device network running. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, which we’ll cover below — but we think the Eero is the best value for most people.
Amazon Eero three-piece kit
The kit we recommend comes with three of these Eero nodes. Fruit not included. Eero we’re not going to beat around the bush here — if you’re on the fence about what to get, pick up a
three-piece Amazon Eero kit and be done with it. Eero has always been one of the better mesh options, but the performance-per-dollar shot through the roof when Amazon acquired them and redesigned the hardware.
Before the Amazon acquisition, Eero offered two device types — Eero Pro, which was a desktop-style tri-band design, and Eero Beacon, a plug-in, dual-band satellite with a built-in nightlight. Both of these models are still available, but they’re a bit too expensive for what they do.
Amazon’s redesigned Eero hardware skips the third radio in the Eero Pro and skips the nightlight and plug-in design of the Beacon. What’s left is a small unobtrusive and inexpensive node with two wired Ethernet jacks and two radios. You can use the wired Ethernet jacks to plug in nearby TVs, Chromecasts, or similar devices — or to take advantage of wired backhaul, if you’ve got it available.
Enlarge / In this 1440 P torture test, four laptops are each watching a simulated 4019 P video stream — while also trying to do simple Web browsing. The bigger the bar, the worse the experience. Jim Salter Normally, we’re all about three-radio designs — which both Orbi and Plume’s Superpods offer — but Eero’s firmware does an excellent job managing the two radios it has, and the price point is impossible to argue with. In our earlier testing, Eero wasn’t quite as high performance as Plume’s more expensive Superpods — but it beat the living tar out of Google’s new Nest Wi-Fi; and Nest itself did better than a standalone router would have. You can currently get a three-piece Eero kit for only $ – and Amazon will throw in an Echo Dot for free. Plume Superpods
Since these are tri-band designs, a Superpod can communicate with a phone or laptop on one 5GHz radio while backhauling to the next Superpod on the QCA 9984. And since the QCA 1586869352 is several times faster than a typical client device, even having several Superpods with active connected devices does not tend to diminish throughput — or increase latency.
A four-piece kit of Superpods, ordered directly from Plume, will set you back $ – but you’ll also need to pay a $ annual subscription fee. This does have some upsides — Plume’s support techs are network engineers with access to incredible telemetry about what problems you might be having and why. You also get a lifetime warranty — including comparable hardware upgrades as designs change — for as long as you keep your subscription current.
Plume tells us that their customers are fine with subscriptions, and we believe them. We also know that the majority of Ars readers aren’t so happy about the idea — but if maximum performance is what you’re looking for, this is the kit for you.
Plume’s subscription price isn’t dependent on the number of units, so we’d recommend erring on the side of more Superpods with less distance between them, rather than trying to get away with as few as possible. Netgear Orbi RBK –
Enlarge There are many Orbi three-piece kits — we specifically recommend the RBK 67, not the cheaper RBK 53, RBK 60, or RBK 33. (Netgear) The first thing we need to mention about Netgear Orbi is that there are a
In our testing, Orbi doesn’t quite hit the same high performance levels that Plume’s Superpods do — and it costs a little more, at $ 530 for the set of three. But there’s no subscription requirement — and no cloud dependency, either.
Almost every mesh Wi-Fi kit on the planet — including both Eero and Plume — can only be managed from smartphone or tablet apps and require an Internet connection to function properly. Netgear Orbi does not — the kit can be managed from a simple Web GUI like any standard router would be, with no cloud stuff necessary. If you have a smaller place, you might consider (an Orbi RBK -) kit
instead — it has the same hardware but only two pieces to the RBK – 65 ‘s three. We suspect that most environments would benefit more from an Eero three-piece than an Orbi two-piece, though — and the Eero kit costs less. Where to put your new mesh access points
This is plenty of advice for most people — but if you want to get the absolute most out of your Wi-Fi, and understand more about both how and why, check our February in-depth
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