Tenda MW6 Gigabit Dual Band Mesh WiFi System for Whole Home

Bought this based on other reviewers and I'm certainly not disappointed. I chose tenda because it's half the price of equivalent mesh systems and gets loads of positive reviews. We have a challenging house for WiFi that's long, with brick walls all over it. I really wasn't winning with the router and range extenders solution. Firstly Set up: as promised by other reviewers, it really is a 20 minute job. Plug the first node into the router with the included Ethernet cable and download the app. Set up is self explanatory and easy. Then, simply plug in the other 2 nodes wherever is convenient in the house and they sort themselves out, appearing green on the diagram on the app within a few minutes. The outcome: amazing seamless WiFi through the whole house and even garden. I can't believe we didn't do this sooner. If you have any doubts about the price of this mesh compared to others, don't. Just buy it. Works really well, Simple set up. What more is there to want. Final point: there is the facility for wired "backhaul" with these units. It took me ages on the net to work out what this is. Basically, you set the nodes up wirelessly as above, but then you plug each one on to your router or switch via a single cable going from the tenda "wan port" to the router or switch. Ie 3 cables going though the house. This will speed up the WiFi to blistering rates by carrying back the way traffic from your device to the internet by the Ethernet cable, leaving the wireless channels to carry only outgoing traffic from the internet to your device. You certainly don't need to do this. I haven't, and I'm really happy with the speed. However I now have a project, and am going to run some Ethernet when I get a chance, to improve the system. It's nice to have the option, not all mesh systems have this. Very happy customer, recommend tenda!

I watched a couple of YouTbe videos about setting this up before I bought it. Having seen them I thought it looked straightforward. I wanted my desk computer still Ethernet connect so the biggest restriction was about location of the box that had a wired connection to the modem which also needed to feed a cable back to myiMac. That was a piece of cake thought. Once connected working through the setup was easy with the app downloaded on my iPad. The satellite boxes just needed plugging in. My chosen locations were fine and they pretty much did It themselves. I guess if you have a more complicated layout moving a box slightly closer to the wired box might prove awkward if there is not an appropriately located plug in point but I guess that would be a rare occurrence. It is pretty easy to set up but if you are not confident do check out setup clips on YouTube and you should be reassured that it is quite simple. It is not cheap but it is one of the cheapest mesh systems I have seen and the performance is very good, reviews I have seen say that it performs as well as more expensive rivals. I can now watch stuff on my iPad (iPlayer etc,) with my cup of tea in the morning without outages, reboots, the frustration of the programme restarting quite a bit before it stopped and being a ious about trying to skip it forward in case it stops again. The cubes look good and the signal indicator light is just a muted blue. My previous attempt at a wi fi extender had almost constantly flashing blue light. It was like having Christmas light on all night in the bedroom. This is nothing like that, very discreet.

I will caveat my review by saying I've tried no other mesh system, so don't know if this is worse than others such as the vastly more expensive Orbi. But having seen some good reviews and tests with this (showing performance similar to Google Wifi) I decided to take the plunge. I live in a 4 bed detached house and run BT Home Hub. (the new one called Smart Hub) The Home Hub covered the house but at the extremities it could be a bit patchy and I couldn't get wifi outside on my decking. This comes nicely packaged for a 'budget' Chinese brand. Installation was ridiculously easy. You plug one of the boxes (all identical so any) into the router LAN socket on the back of the current router (you should have a few) and the LED on the white Tenda box eventually goes blue. Then you open the App and it detects the broadband settings and gets you online (you also change network name and password). Then you just plug the others in around the house and they auto connect to the first one. All worked seamlessly. In fact from what I have read they've beaten all the competition in ease of set up- fabulous for a budget brand. Initially I was very impressed. Each box has two lan ports on it. On the box that connects into your modem (they are all identical as I say) one of the lans is taken up with the connection to the modem, so it has one left over. You can still use the lans on the modem you already have also. So I have a vpn router, and have this plugged into my home hub (which has 4 lan ports) nothing changed there- works as normal. I also have other items plugged directly int the Home Hub still. The other boxes which are now 'satellites' to the main box have two lans. So I have one in my office with my Arlo home security system and my iMac plugged directly into it. I had one upstairs under the bed with my Sonos Bridge plugged into it, again worked seamlessly. However, after a few days I noticed sometimes the wireless signal would drop off a cliff. I was getting wife and kid complaints- not good. I put in Bridge Mode, you lose some functionality such as guest network option, but I read a review above that suggested doing this. I am not convinced it solved the problem. I then thought about wireless network congestion, with this running, my BT Home Hub and my VPN router. So I went into the Home Hub and turned off the wireless for that. I think (think) this has resolved the problem as it doesn't seem to have happened again in a few days, I will report back if it does. I also note that sometimes the signal fluctuates. I believe this is because it sends the signal in the direction of the device and so it can start out slow, then drastically speed up as it channels the signal towards the device. Despite us having a full strength connections on the Xbox my son was complaining of high pings. I observed this myself- the ping would fluctuate on Fortnite from say 30 to 800 then back down again- not good - he was complaining of lag. I am no networking expert and not sure why, particularly when this wasn't happening when the Xbox was connected directly to the Home Hub with a much weaker signal on the Xbox wifi strength , but suspect it may be something to do with The Tenda not having a separate backhaul (separate channel to send the data between the units) and it slowing data transfer when other items are connected to the satellite- A guess though. Orbi has a separate backhaul channel, albeit I have seen people reporting higher pings on that also. So who knows. It may also be that the unit isn't great at prioritising traffic and there is no manual setting you can do, again unlike some of the more expensive units. We have resolved this by moving one of the satellites next to the Xbox from upstairs- and connecting in via Lan. The ping is now under 40 and often in the 20s so is fine. Fortunately the satellite positioning where the Xbox is seems to work well anyway for good wifi coverage throughout the house, so nothing lost. One to bear in mind though. Now I can get two or three bars of wifi signal all over the house including decking and it often seems to max out my connection at 40 meg. Also turn off the overnight reset. For some reason it is set up to reboot every night at 4am, you can adjust this or turn it off. I was finding all my devices disconnected overnight and logged onto my VPN router instead, so turned this function off. I also didn't want it turning off every night, and rebooting as I am running an Arlo security system. Edit, even with the Xbox connected to the Lan, Pings again went high. Thus I cannot recommend this for gaming. We had to put the Xbox on a homeplug. In other respects though it's good. Tends need to sort out the ping issue when gaming.

Bought these to replace a bt whole home mesh system that never worked. The bt discs would constantly drop connection while reporting to be working fine. The tenda cubes, not only have been rock solid, but even the single cube gives better reception than the bt system. I now have WiFi in the entire house with virtually the same speed as a wired connection, and every device can access the internet via a stable connection without wires trailing all over the house. Very impressed with this one. It's about 50 quid cheaper than the bt equivalent, and is much more reliable. The app is also very easy to use, and makes it simple to see what's connected, which cube they're all connected to and their usage. It even lets you rename the cubes and devices, and to group devices so that you can pause access, e.g. to pause internet access for kids, or (as I use it) to switch off internet for a certain room or person if you want to prioritize bandwidth for the rest. Over all, this seems like a great solution for anyone wanting to go wireless if their normal router either won't reach every room, or doesn't give good signal/speed.

The Tenda MW6 Nova AC1200 set is easy to set up and works well enough, my only gripe initially being the lack of a web portal to configure the devices as you are required to use the Tenda mobile app. That said, the app has enough basis features to blacklist devices and set parental controls and the units have a good signal range, with devices seamlessly moving between access points as expected. HOWEVER, I am currently awaiting my 3rd set as 1 unit failed within 2 months (no power, burning smell when plugged in) and another unit from the replacement set failed after 2 weeks (blue light but no connectivity, hard reset switch button does nothing). I have a fairly wide range of experience with routers, switches and access points and have used many brands over the years, but this is the first time using Tenda kit and have certainly been the least reliable.

OK, there may be quicker, more robust & controllable solutions out there... but I've used this mesh system to replace a mish mash of wifi from router, and range extender, supported by powerline ethernet. the previous solution was great when it worked but Netflix was particularly susceptible to powerline drop out. I'd been looking at mesh solutions for sometime but was put off by the price. In the end the 5GHz radio in my router packed in and rather than buy a new router I just bought the mesh system. I really wish I had done this sooner. The three unit MW6 provides robust coverage with no drop outs. Previously used to get 35Mbit/s in back room over powerline now 72ish. No Netflix drop outs due to flakey powerline. Absolutely excellent solution for a house with real brick walls. Limited control over the devices as they are only accessible via a phone app but it's a cheap mesh solution that works. Recommended.

I was torn between a few different products, but went for this one based on screenshots of the app, the price, and the aesthetics. I've been using it for a couple of months now and have had zero issues. It worked straight out of the box, with very little setup required. It was simple to install, and even easier to use. My devices all connect and I've had massive wifi speed boosts since using it. No drop outs on my mobile when on wi-fi - previously facebook and youtube buffered, even though I have fibre broadband! No problems with Netflix via the Fire Stick either. Previously I had a minute or two of low quality video until it buffered, but with this setup, it's HD/4K straight from the off! Would not hesitate in recommending this mesh product to anyone.

I bought these as our home wifi coverage was dismal, much more than 20 foot from the router was unusable. We have a bog standard 60's era brick and block semi, so it's not like we live in a castle with solid stone walls. We have a strange setup in that half the equipment in the house is physically wired to the router with ethernet connections, while any mobile or portable relies on wifi. Installing the Tenda wifi mesh units was very simple, I turned off the wifi on our EE brightbox router, downloaded the Tenda app on my phone, plugged the first unit into the ethernet switch we use and that was it. The light went blue in seconds, far quicker than it took to plug the next Tenda unit in in the next room, then the third by the back door. Once all three were in place, we now have in excess of 35mb wifi from the front of the house to the back garden, even the garage has 24mb. The only issue I had was with our Sonos speakers, they went off the original EE brightbox ethernet port, the way round it was to plug all ethernet devices (our ethernet switch) into the ethernet Out port on the first Tenda unit so now the whole house is on either the Tenda wifi or the Tenda ethernet port. Everything works very well, and I am more than happy with this purchase.

Installation - As there was no web interface it was a bit difficult to figure out the problem. The ISP technical team then found it was not able to authenticate credentials to their server with the username and password. They then reset the MAC. Then installation went very fast and only took a few mins. Usage - Once this was done the system works flawlessly. No problems faced so far. Good video streaming speeds over the complete mesh. Great for "simple" users who want a fuss free system - assuming install is done properly. Advanced users will probably have to wait for their mobile app to be upgraded with advanced features.

Facile à installer

Davvero un ottimo sistema. Si basa sul principio delle reti mesh, superiori concettualmente e tecnicamente ai semplici ripetitori di segnale wifi domestici. Permette di avere un'unica rete wifi con un unico SSID (identificativo di rete) e i vs device passano automaticamente e rapidamente dall'uno all'altro "cubo" mentre vi muovete per casa. Inoltre questi gestiscono anche intelligentemente il traffico, ripartendo sulla rete i dispositivi collegati. Si tratta di singoli Access Point che lavorano come uno solo, collegandosi fra loro e tutti, tramite il nodo primario, al Vostro modem/router. Il collegamento del nodo primario con il modem avviene via cavo, mentre gli altri si collegano fra loro via radio. La prima installazione è semplicissima e avviene sotto la guida dell'app Tenda WiFi, che vi segue sia per il collegamento del nodo primario, sia per collegare gli altri nodi secondari. Dopo aver configurato tutto potete anche spegnere il wifi del modem, se lo ha, perché il sistema Nova creerà la propria rete e il primo nodo sarà vicino (data la presenza del cavo che non sarà lunghissimo) al modem stesso. Ad ogni modo funziona tutto molto bene e i singoli nodi sono molto potenti. L’ho installato in un'abitazione grande a tre piani, ed ho acquistato il sistema di tre pezzi, ma alla resa dei conti ho visto che anche con 2 sarebbe stato sufficiente, forse anche con uno solo se fosse stato possibile porlo al centro della casa. Tenete conto che fra loro adesso distano più o meno 6/7 metri in linea retta e con almeno 2 pareti portanti di 30cm o almeno due solai in cemento armato fra loro, e nonostante tutto il led segnala "verde" cioè collegamento eccellente. Li ho disposti, un po anche per necessità, a triangolo rovesciato con 2 nodi al secondo piano ed un al piano terra. Adesso si riceve benissimo a piena potenza in ogni locale, ed anche in giardino a diversi metri dalla casa. Segnalo che è un sistema wifi a 2 bande (2,4 e 5GHz), dotato di MU-MIMO e QOS, con due porte Gigabit disponibili su ogni modulo, ma non è un WiFi6 (per quello vi occorre il sistema Nova MW12 (se non erro) che è un tri-band e con 3 porte LAN Gigabit cadauno. Altra cosa carina, anche se sicuramente se ne può fare a meno, è che ogni nodo può essere rinominato inserendo un nome del locale dove si trova, così da sapere a colpo d'occhio a quale siete collegati. Si può installare appoggiato su un piano, o fissare a parete con i fori predisposti nella parte inferiore. L'alimentatore è separato con spinotto (non USB) ed il cavo non è molto lungo ma sufficiente per arrivare da una presa bassa al piano di una scrivania. Unico neo potrebbe essere che il Nova non è gestibile da PC ma solo dalla sua app, scelta del produttore forse un po' criticabile dato che da PC si opera sicuramente meglio. Fate attenzione perché di default si configura in modalità "Router" (DHCP) che crea quindi una propria rete e gli indirizzi vengono pertanto assegnati dal Nova. Ho preferito riconfigurarlo in modalità "bridge" perché così ho mantenuto la rete già configurata e gestita dalle impostazioni del modem (quindi sarà questo ad avere il DHCP ed assegnare gli indirizzi) oltre ad altre funzioni. In questa modalità il sistema Nova perde alcune funzioni come appunto il DHCP, ma anche il Parental Control e qualcos'altro, tutte funzioni che però dovreste avere nel modem e gestirle da lì. Ho preferito questa soluzione perché al modem era collegato uno switch per una sezione cablata della rete con altri dispositivi fissi fra cui la stampante. Dato che in modalità bridge il tutto fa capo al modem/router, i dispositivi cablati risultano visibili da tutti i device sulla rete, anche in wireless, altrimenti avrei avuto la parte cablata su una rete diversa e separata (non raggiungibile). Potete fare la stessa cosa anche utilizzando una delle porte RJ45 che trovate sotto ogni "cubo", ma il DHCP statico, misto con il dinamico, non è gestito dal Nova, se non parzialmente, cosa non funzionale se si deve per forza utilizzare un IP statico per la stampante. Oltretutto con la modalità bridge, si può anche lasciare in funzione il wifi del modem perché sarà la stessa rete che viene irradiata, ma non sarà gestibile dal Nova (e ammesso che il nodo primario con un cavo lungo lo collochiate lontano, altrimenti non serve a nulla avere due AP vicini) e potrebbe interferire con il corretto funzionamento. E’ altresì dotato di un sistema beamforming che indirizza il segnale verso dove si trovano gli utilizzatori, motivo in più per spegnere il wifi del modem. Consiglio vivamente l'acquisto di questo sistema, davvero funzionale, specie se come me avete già un router Tenda, che sarà a sua volta gestito dalla stessa app.

The mesh is super easy to setup. Unfortunately it keeps losing connection and app itself ask for far too many permissions.

I'm using both mw3 and mw6 , here mw6 range mention 6000sq but in reality both range are same there no different in my opinion if you looking for best range please go for TP-LINK