I feel kinda bad giving these 4 stars, I wanted to give them 4.5 stars, but I can't, so unofficially they're a 4.5 from me. I live in a smallish 3 bed terraced, in the UK, so walls separating rooms are made of bricks. As is typical the Internet comes through the front wall, into the front room and so Wi-Fi range is inadequate for the back bedroom, which is where I work from, during the week. I previously got around this with a pack of 3 BT Wholehome discs, I had those around 5 years and didn't have too many issues, once or twice a year the 3rd disc would disconnect, my laptop just automatically connected to the next closest disc, but the printer, completely refused to find the network. The thing is, I hardly ever use the printer, but as is always the case, when I needed it, it wouldn't connect as the 3rd disc was playing up. My EE broadband contract was coming to an end and about a year ago full fibre became available down my street, so I decided to upgrade the mesh to take advantage of the faster speeds I'd be getting. This is my 4th set of mesh routers, having sent 3 back (sorry, Amazon). Initially I got the ASUS XD4 plus routers, they were fine for Wi-Fi, just 2 nodes served the whole house, flawlessly. The issue was I also wanted parental controls, as I can restrict what my daughter accesses at the hardware layer, but that's all moot when she has friends over, using their devices on my Internet, as they could simply access anything. Not that they were, just I like to be cautious. The routers were advertised as having content restrictions for parental controls, but it turns out they don't have AIProtection Pro, so you could only set time scheduling. In fairness to Amazon, I actually checked the ASUS site which said I could block certain content on that model, so ASUS were to blame for having misleading features advertised. I had to send those back as they didn't do what they said. Then I ordered the XD6 2 pack, which I believe were faulty. They connected fine on initial set up (they need to be close by for initial pairing), but once I unplugged the 2nd node to move to the next room, they wouldn't connect again and I spent 2 hours faffing around, to no avail. So I sent those back. Then, I thought I'd try eero, so I got 2 6E routers. They seemed fine from a hardware perspective, especially as Initially I still only had fibre to the cabinet. They wouldn't work with Alexa, like I couldn't say "Turn on the guest network" I'd installed the skill, but eero confirmed this wouldn't work. Not really a deal breaker, just an annoyance. The thing I found most annoying was the parental controls. My (teen) daughter was off school for a few days, ill, so I wanted to block access to TikTok and SnapChat during school hours, so I created a group, popped her phone and iPad in the group and set the rules. I checked and all seemed good, nothing would load in those apps. At one point I caught her messaging on TikTok, on her iPad, which was surprising. Initially I thought she'd been quite smart and used the neighbour's Wi-Fi, but nope, it turns out that when you block TikTok with eero, it does block all the videos and what not, but the messages can bypass the restrictions, at least on iOS, I didn't check with Android. Now, £100 per year for parental controls that didn't work properly seemed too hard to stomach, so I was regretting my purchase. Yes I did correctly set everything up, I know what I'm doing. Then the fibre got installed, I ordered a 500Mb up and down package. Next to the primary node I was getting full speeds, but we don't use that room. Close to the second node I was getting half speed download and full speed upload, which was a bit odd. In the back bedroom I was only getting 80 ish upload, the second node just needed to transmit through floorboards and 2 always open internal doors, so that seemed a bit poor. But as that 80Mb was faster than what I had previously anywhere in the house, it would have been fine for work. There's an Echo Dot in that room which actually acted as a 3rd node, so it wasn't a huge problem. The parental controls were though, if the parental controls were free or worked properly, I'd have kept the eero units as I had adequate speeds, not close to what I'm paying for in the rooms that need it, but more than adequate. Then I ordered these, Wow, just wow. Set up was easy, like 5 or so minutes. Unplugged the second node to place in the adjacent room, plugged it in and a couple of minutes later it had reestablished its connection. In the room with the primary node I get full speed up and down, in the room with the second node, again, full speed. Quite interestingly no hand off occurs, my phone stays connected to the first node, even though I'm closer to the second and there are obstructions in the way, 2 closed doors and a wall. It's only once I go into the kitchen that my phone moves to the second node and speeds are virtually identical. To the office I go, I check on my phone, I'm connected to the second node and getting around 440 up and down, I check on my laptop and I'm getting similar. I then bind my phone to the primary node, just to see, I actually get 120 up and 80 down, it has 2 brick walls, 2 open doors and floorboards to get through, at a distance of perhaps 12 - 14 metres. It actually smashed the set of eero and the Echo Dot all by itself over a larger distance with several additional obstructions in the way. If my ONT was in the middle room, one of these badboys would be more than adequate. The obstruction penetration seems amazing in comparison to the others, they're overkill for my house, they really are. But betrer to have overkill than flaky Wi-Fi. The parental controls and everything are free, well done ASUS. They don't quite have the granularity of the eero ones, more just pick a level than block specific apps. The app is OK, it's nowhere near as polished as the eero app though, but it's ok. So why just 4.5 stars you may ask? It annoys me that you can't put parental controls on the guest network, it also annoys me you can't auto add new devices to a default group. You couldn't do those things with the eeros either, but I gave them 3 stars. As kids get more tech savvy, they will of course learn about MAC randomisation, figure out they can actually see the network password in their phones etc, I just wish that there was a way to auto dump new devices into a quarantine group, where parental controls were set and I could allocate them manually through the app. I know I could get a Firewalla for that or just do that for the whole network, but I don't want to restrict my own Internet, just hers and her friends. Overall, extremely pleased with these, fantastic bit of kit for those of us where wired backhaul isn't an option. Extremely strong Wi-Fi signal, free security and parental controls for life, easy to set up. Quite expensive though, I paid 400 for 2, which is more than I wanted to spend, but I've now actually managed to get solid Wi-Fi performance throughout the house.
