For all their extra aerials, use of super fast protocols and claims of mega-speeds, most broadband routers still struggle to deliver fast performance around a larger home.
Bolting range extenders around the place can help, but in the smart home era, people are generally looking for a solution that’s a little more refined.
Enter the Eero, a pack of three neat white, unobtrusive boxes that work in harmony to bring WiFi to the darkest corner of your home at a pace that would put most of those space-age looking routers to shame.
Eero builds its own mesh network that users can monitor with a smartphone app to see just how powerful it is, a slightly more evolved solution than squinting at the four bars on your Windows PC notification area. Note that single and two-device units are now also available, to lower the cost.
Eero Key Features
The Eero is billed as a complete home WiFi system, that will wipe out dead zones and replace any existing wireless router and those ugly range extenders.
The three tiny boxes, with no ludicrous aerial farms, that come in the kit (For the latest prices and discounts, check here) should cover a 1,000 square feet of property, with a recommendation that the Eero boxes are placed within 40 feet of each other.
If you’ve struggled with WiFi and have spent lots of money on a powerful router, then the Eero solution will come as a bit of a shock, why can’t you use existing WiFi kit? Would be our first question.
Either way, Eero offers Gigabit wired networking and the fastest WiFi speeds, with each box featuring dual-band WiFi radios, simultaneous 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless, and 2×2 multi-input, multi-output (MIMO).
It supports the latest WiFI standards in 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, plus Bluetooth Smart as a bonus to help connect your smart home technology.
That spec you will find in pretty much any high-end router, so what makes the Eero special?
The idea is that you can unpack the boxes, plug them in around the home and have crystal clear WiFi with WPA2 encryption in all rooms within a couple of minutes, no crazed setup, no remembering IP addresses, no shouting at the walls when they won’t “see” each other, an all too common problem among traditional WiFi boxes.
You will need an iOS or Android device to help the setup along, and an existing broadband connection, but we all have one of those right? Inside each box is a 1.0GHz dual-core processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB flash storage, supporting regular firmware updates to improve performance.
Pros of the Eero Box
Remember all the nightmares you had setting up routers in the past? No more, Eero boxes, which are small – about the size of an Apple TV – simply replace or plug into your existing router box and can sit discreetly on a shelf, without looking like an angry porcupine.
Also gone are the banks of flashing lights, who needs them in the modern home!
- Smart Resets: If you have a hardware firewall or enterprise box at home, you can add the Eero in bridge mode and it happily works away. Perhaps the greatest trick of the Eero is that if it senses the network is hanging, or the connection from your broadband provider is struggling, it can reset on the fly, so no more trudging to the box and turning-it-off-and-on-again. That alone could make it worthwhile for people who spend most of their time in a distant corner of the home.
- Flexible Fit for Rooms: The other units can be placed around the home, all they need is mains power, but since they don’t look ugly can sit in any room and not ruin your stylish decor, or will fit right along with the other clutter, depending on your aesthetic. It’s also not hard to add an additional access point (or two). When you plug in the second and third boxes they connect automatically to the first, so installation is a breeze.
- Streamlines your WiFi: The major benefit of spending all this money is that smarthome owners often have dozens of devices that can swamp a traditional router. Eero provides a strong and fast signal around most homes, enabling those WiFi cameras to stream out their HD feed, and for sensors and other gadgets to communicate seamlessly, and Smart Bluetooth devices can come along for the ride.
- Regularly Updated App: The app and firmware get regular updates to help improve performance and compatibility with the odd tricky device that comes along, When it comes to security, Eero comes with an easy to use guest mode, so friends can connect but remain on a separate network and can’t access the routers. The Eero is also designed around enterprise-level security, something that many cheap routers are sorely lacking in.
- Can Reach Beyond Walls: Finally, Eero seems strong enough that it can happily reach outside the home, so you can WiFi from the garden or veranda and still maintain a decent signal.
Cons of the Eero System
- Pricey: This is not an inexpensive solution, many smaller properties can use their existing router happily, while other properties can get a $50 network extender, and while the setup might be a bit more of a pain it will do the job. Be sure to check this listing on Amazon for the latest prices.
- Not Technicaly More Powerful (Just Smarter): Also, if you paid $120+ for one of those space age routers with more aerials than CIA headquarters, then this is technically no more powerful. It is only the mesh network that gives Eero an advantage. Generalizations aside, the first issue with Eero is that there’s no Windows Mobile app. Sure that’s a declining market, but there are still millions of Windows 10 Mobile devices sold each quarter and many more millions in use, so this could be a painful oversight.
- Still Needs an Ethernet Box for Game Consoles: From a practical point, each Eero box only comes with a pair of Ethernet ports, so if you want to wire up devices like a stack of games consoles in the hobby room or a bunch of PCs in a home office, then you will need an Ethernet box, but at least those are cheap.
- Some Walls Still Cause Difficulty: Finally, if you have an older property with lots of thick walls, or plenty of metal work or piping around the place, then the Eero won’t magically punch through those and boost your wireless signal. You will need to think carefully about how you arrange the boxes, and may still not get quite the miracle you were hoping for its price.
Final Recommendation on the Eero
The Eero solution in its ultimate form is a costly one, but in many places, it can work the wireless network miracle you are hoping for, trumping former class leading solutions like Apple’s AirPort Extreme and the latest D-Link models in terms of both range and speed. The mesh network really performs as advertised and ease of use is brilliant for non-tech types.
If you like the idea of the Eero but live in a smaller home, a single unit is available here, and a dual-box package is also available (For the latest prices and discounts, check here). If you have a super-large property, then you can add as many Eero boxes as you need to have a single network all across your mansion.
Long ago I left the spotty WLAN (WiFi) setup and just went the enterprise route. Now I have 4×4 MIMO but most devices max at three spatial streams.
One thing that I would worry about with a setup like this, in the 2.4GHz band is the lack of channels. In all reality, there are only three non-overlapping channels in the US; 1, 6 and 11. So if you have three three of these devices, you just used all available spectrum. That is fine in you live in the middle of nowhere but when there are other houses nearby, you get a lot of contention. Another big issue is that some vendors allow bonding in 2.4GHz so when that occurs you are using 2 of the 3 non-overlapping channels and most of the time it just causes issues. Have them 40 feet apart is quite close especially for the 2.4GHz band. I would expect issues unless they drop their transmitting power down which would then reduce range.
Jump to the 5GHz band and there are many non-overlapping channels at least until you get to 802.11ac and then it starts to dry up when you are bonding to 80Mhz or even 160MHz.
It depends on the age of the gear as the FCC has allowed a few more channels for devices produced after June or so of this year.
20MHz = 24 to 25 channels but can be less because of weather radar and other uses
40MHz = 11 to 12 channels but can be less because of weather radar and other uses
80MHz = 5 to 6 channels but can be less because of weather radar and other uses
160MHz = 2 channels
When you start looking at mesh (which is not new at all) you either need to dedicate say 5GHz for the backhaul, have a second 5GHz radio to handle the mesh or have it listen and transmit using the same radio. If the same radio is used, the same channel must also be used as it cannot listen and transmit on different channels at the same time. From the spec sheet, it just says dual band but didn’t say how many radios it has. It did say 5 antennas but that doesn’t mean much. My AP’s only have four antennas but they operate in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz. 2×2 MIMO requires two antennas so that leaves three left. They don’t say what the 2.4GHz speeds are but if it is 2×2 as well then that leaves one antenna left unless the antennas support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. So their step might have a third radio for the backhaul. If so, they are probably using 40MHz or 80MHz channel bonding which would max out at 400Mbps, if they did 80MHz channels it would be 866Mbps. Of course the mesh slows things down a bit as you have the main unit that sends everything out to handle clients near it as well as all of the clients off of the other two or more units. Oh, the 400Mbps and 866Mbps is PHY speeds, not real world speeds that the client(s) will actually see. The rule of thumb, cut it in half or more.
One thing that people think is that wireless is the future and it will replace wires. The fact is, wireless needs wires. Spectrum isn’t free and it is finite, so the larger the area you want to cover and thus more devices, the more spectrum is required. Make the area smaller and then you need wires for the backhaul portion to get the speeds up. Make the areas too small though and then you get a lot of roaming between the AP’s. That can be troublesome when the device needs to renegotiate/authenticate as it moves between the AP’s. This is solved with enterprise gear as the AP’s are dumb and the brains and the authentication is to a controller and even then if there are more than one controller they are sharing client data when roaming transpires.