Amazon eero mesh wifi system – router for whole-home coverage (3-pack) $237/224 at Best Buy

Looks like eero and Orbi are clearing out their WiFi 5 routers. Good time to buy if you don’t need Wi-Fi 6

I love my Eero cupcakes right now, but do know that there are a couple software bugs for some people. For me, it's internal speedtest is really off - reading ~500mbps, where I can actually achieve near gigabit speeds when I'm wired in, and I cannot get Eero to connect to my Amazon account to handle naming devices. Beyond that, all else seems to be working well for me with zero complaints on my Bell Fibe network (set up in the DMZ).

we've had these for 5 months now and has been absolutely rock solid.

Which one is best - Google or Eero ?

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08GG9 ... UTF8&psc=1

Hmm, the 2 pack is also down to $152.

Was leaning towards the Deco M9 for the Tri band, but now I'm second guessing which way to go.

Or now that the TP-Link M5 3 pack has dropped to $230, it seems to have even better speed and features? Any experience comparing these?

I've been running these eero 5 3-pack for about a year now. Absolutely the best thing I did to my home network. Better than all the rest of the "pretend" mesh networks. Why?

1. Eero writes their own custom firmware and networking stack. Allows them to have layer 2 control of traffic. Results in a more reliable mesh network. Allows them to continually optimize things like band selection, transmission strength. It continually monitors and optimizes on several time scales from immediate to weekly. Your speeds can actually get better over time based on environmental factors and can take a week to achieve that.
2. They also have this "dynamic backhaul" tech that basically uses all available radios to send backhaul traffic to while everyone else can only have a single backhaul (but they spin it as a "dedicated" backhaul to make it sound better). It also allows you to place a node further away in areas that other mesh networks will fail (ie. detached garages, sheds, etc...) and it's more resiliant to blockages (can fail over from 5ghz to 2.4ghz). ANd because of their custom FW, they control which radio the traffic travels on, on a packet by packet basis so traffic is minimally impacted.
3. They have homekit router support since last year. Something that even now only 1-2 other companies can tout. Homekit certification is quite strict so it's nice to see a company go the extra mile to deliver it early (this only applies to the wifi 5 products for now)
4. The nodes are all identical so you can use 2 of the 3 nodes and share/sell the 3rd node to another household (or even setup a second wifi network with it)
5. The wifi 5 products are interoperable with their wifi 6 products so you can grow/extend your network in the future without having to replace everything.
6. They were bought out by amazon in fall 2019. So far, amazon has only added an amazon home integration that you can skip. The fact remains, eero was doing something right to get bought outright by amazon.
7. It has a very apple like user experience. Don't expect lots of knobs and parameters to configure. It very much set it and forget it.
8. each node comes with 2 ethernet ports. You can use them like a bridge to enable wireless network access to ethernet devices. Yes, 2 ports is not a lot. Buy a switch if you need to wire up more things.
9. The best wireless latency compared to other mesh products especially when radios are being saturated since it can send data back on other less busy radios.
10. THey're very active on their subreddit. There's a very prolific lead dev that answers a lot of technical questions. One of the main reasons why I went with eero. They don't hide or shy away from controversy.
11. Hand off between nodes works great in my environment. It's only a 2300 sqft home and I never notice any glitches or the need to flip my wifi off/on to fix something.
12. There's QoS to prevent anyone from hogging the bandwidth and Band Steering to "help" devices to connect to 5ghz (though it's ultimately the device's choice what band it connects to).
13. If you have a large area to cover in wifi and have lots of devices, Mesh is Best. You may thing getting a single Beefy Router that advertises 1000+mbps speeds is better but all it takes is 1 badly behaving device to slow down wifi for *everyone*. Spreading out devices across AP's and having it easily managed is the way to go.

Some things to be aware of:

1. You'll see a lot of negative feedback regarding their eero 6 launch. They released a bunch of FWs and most of the complains have died down. It did affect the wifi 5 products for a bit but it's back to normal now as far as I can tell
2. The speeds are not the fastest as the nodes don't have as many antennas configs as other dedicated routers. But as long as you don't have any requirement for 150+ mbps over wifi, you should be fine (otherwise, ethernet up that device!). Also, outright speed is a poor indicator of wifi performance. optimizing coverage and removing deadzones and having seamless handoff are more important IMO.
3. if you can, always opt to have a wired backhaul. I know it's counter intuitive since you're not really using the wireless mesh tech at that point but eero still makes it easy peasy to manage a mixed wired/wireless AP (meaning, there's nothing to configure. it figures it out itself). I've seen the document to setup TP link's M5's in a mixed mode environemnt. NO THANKS
4. THey do have some malware/ad blocking features locked behind a subscription. If you care about that (vs. rolling your own), be aware of that.
5. No way to separate 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands in separate SSIDs. (though you can temporarily turn off 5Ghz band for those trying to connect a badly behaving IoT device)
6. No browser based webUI. everything done via iOS/Android App.

Finally, i used to always say your speeds are a huge YMMV. I figured out iperf and ran tests on my network. 3 eero 5 cupcakes (dual-band), When connected to a wired node expect ~300 mbps over 5ghz through drywall. ~450 when in line of sight. when connected to a wireless node, expect ~150 over 5ghz regardless of obstruction and if you're wirelessly bridging to an ethernet device, expect that device to get ~300 mbps. These tests were all run with single clients on the network in a "best case" scenario in a 2300 sqft house with wired nodes in basement and first floor and a wireless node on the second floor. I didn't bother to measure the 2.4ghz cause i have a tonne of IoT 30+ devices on 2.4 so if I find myself on 2.4ghz, i'll get <100 mbps. Still more than serviceable for streaming video.

I'll add more if I remember. and I'm happy to answer any questions. and No, I'm not a shill. Just a very happy customer who paid ~$225 for the 3-pack cupcakes.

And for those people asking Eero vs. Brand XYZ. I can't say but I've read A LOT of stories of people coming from orbi/linksys/asus/google/etc... And very few from people that went from eero to another system.

mesh wifi experience will depend heavily on your internet speed and your expectations.
If you don't have a dedicated ethernet backhaul, a dualband mesh will eat into your overall network speed as it is also using the main wifi to transmit the data between the nodes. With triband mesh networks, they normally reserve one band for a dedicated backhaul which significantly improves your experience.
It also depends on your usage as well, if you are just streaming directly from the internet you will probably get away with just dual band mesh, but if you have a NAS and sharing data between devices within the network as well, I would definitely recommend a triband mesh.

Recently the Eero 6 was on sale.
I wouldn’t have minded combining the two and getting an Eero 6 + extender & an Eero 5 unit (I need Ethernet on one of the other nodes where speed is not an issue) but the Eero 6s are back up to full price. So it’s all Eero 5 or nothing...

I have the same too and my experience is good so far.
HOWEVER, the only time I needed technical support it was really painful as they only work over email and it can take about 2 to 3 days to heard something back.

electric0ant wrote: ↑ mesh wifi experience will depend heavily on your internet speed and your expectations.
If you don't have a dedicated ethernet backhaul, a dualband mesh will eat into your overall network speed as it is also using the main wifi to transmit the data between the nodes. With triband mesh networks, they normally reserve one band for a dedicated backhaul which significantly improves your experience.
It also depends on your usage as well, if you are just streaming directly from the internet you will probably get away with just dual band mesh, but if you have a NAS and sharing data between devices within the network as well, I would definitely recommend a triband mesh.

1) I don't see how internet speed and expectations will affect mesh wifi vs. any other wifi.
2) Yes, triband mesh products are technically superior to dual-band so I never compare the two. They're usually in a completely separate price bracket too because of it. Thats why eero pro exists.
3) If your usage requires heavy duty speeds over wireless, then yeah, go get a triband product like eero pro. but it's not going to night and day. If you were on a triband mesh, your bottleneck is stilla single 5ghz radio which will probably just double your speed from 20MB/s to 40 MB/s. Ethernet where you can!

This may be a dumb question, but how do these compare to the pods that Rogers sends with the Ignite service? I got 3 of them that I've put all over the house, but not sure if they're doing anything.
I don't need a technical answer, but anyone who has had experience with both, would appreciate your thoughts.
Currently in a 3200sf house including basement, with modem on the main floor. Not running wires anywhere else.

Neezy99 wrote: ↑ This may be a dumb question, but how do these compare to the pods that Rogers sends with the Ignite service? I got 3 of them that I've put all over the house, but not sure if they're doing anything.
I don't need a technical answer, but anyone who has had experience with both, would appreciate your thoughts.
Currently in a 3200sf house including basement, with modem on the main floor. Not running wires anywhere else.

Rogers used to actually sell eero routers as their wifi pod program. Not sure what the current ones are though. Rogers basically resold eero 5 pro nodes. I believe they're locked to the ISP so you can't use them separately.

I got a couple Deco M9s a few months ago and they've been rock solid.

The catch is that they like to sell them in pairs. I only needed 3 so bought 2 pairs and sold 1 on FB Marketplace for about what I paid.

mr_yellow wrote: ↑ Rogers used to actually sell eero routers as their wifi pod program. Not sure what the current ones are though. Rogers basically resold eero 5 pro nodes. I believe they're locked to the ISP so you can't use them separately.

Gotcha, yeah I don't know what the current model is. Rogers said it was better than the Eero.
I wasn't sure if it would make sense to just go for the Eero 6 Pro or if that's overkill, and whether I'd notice an incremental difference over Rogers.

Neezy99 wrote: ↑ Gotcha, yeah I don't know what the current model is. Rogers said it was better than the Eero.
I wasn't sure if it would make sense to just go for the Eero 6 Pro or if that's overkill, and whether I'd notice an incremental difference over Rogers.

You really believe everything rogers says? My assumption is that Eero wifi will definitely be better than whatever OEM garbage they're currently shipping. With that said, if you don't have any issues with the current pods, don't expect any miracles with eero. Run some iPerf 3 tests on your network (it takes the ISP out of the equation) and see what 5ghz and 2.4ghz speeds you get when connected on those pods.

Is my understanding correct for a wired backhaul?

Ok:
Modem to Eero 1, Eero 1 to Eero 2, Eero 2 to Eero 3
Or
Modem to Eero 1 to switch, switch to Eero 2, Eero 2 to switch, switch to Eero 3

Not ok:
Modem to Eero 1, modem to Eero 2, modem to Eero 3

ShotgunBobby wrote: ↑ Is my understanding correct for the wired backhaul?

Ok:
Modem to Eero to Eero to Eero
Or
Modem to Eero to switch to Eero to switch to Eero

Not ok:
Modem to Eero 1, modem to Eero 2, modem to Eero 3

Correct. The *only* rule is that you make to make sure one of the eeros is "upstream" of the rest of the eeros in the ethernet topology. Simply put: Modem -> eero -> Switch -> rest of the network/eeros

mr_yellow wrote: ↑ Correct. The *only* rule is that you make to make sure one of the eeros is "upstream" of the rest of the eeros in the ethernet topology. Simply put: Modem -> eero -> Switch -> rest of the network/eeros

Perfect. Thanks.

I already own 3 Eero pods, but never considered a backhaul.