Testing Nest Wi-Fi Pro on a Multi-Story House with Gigabit and Wi-Band Backhaul Ports
I’ve been testing Nest Wi-Fi Pro for a few weeks now, and it’s clear to me that it’s one of the better Wi-Fi 6E systems on the market, but not quite the best.
Those are theoretical maximums. In practice, you can only connect to one band at a time, you won’t see anywhere close to the maximum speed on any single device (especially not on 2.4GHz or 5GHz), and the Pro’s ethernet ports are capped at 1 Gigabit anyway. You will be wasting money if you have multi-gig internet.
My living room had a single unit that I put next to the modem and saw speeds of as little as 12 Mbps down and 7 Mbps up, and my upstairs rooms had a single unit with the same speeds. When I added my office and upstairs bedrooms to the system, I was able to deliver more reliable speeds.
With those ports, the Pro system now supports wired backhaul, which might be necessary if you have a multi-story house since the only other backhaul option is the 6GHz band, which has shorter range and more trouble penetrating solid objects than 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
Each Eero Pro 6E has a 2.5Gbps ethernet port as well as a Gigabit port, but you have to pony up $10 a month for many features that Google offers for free. But that price does include ad-blocking, a new internet backup service, and more robust parental controls that Google doesn’t have. You get annual subscriptions to a password manager and other features.
Eero and Nest Pro: An Efficient App for Managing Family Wi-Fi in Smart Home Google Assistant Devices and Other Home-Based Devices
The app managed to correctly identify about 70 percent of my 100-plus devices, which isn’t bad, though I still can’t figure out which one is my Oculus Quest 2. Device identification is helpful for setting up a Family Wifi feature that lets you assign specific devices to family members and schedule Wi-Fi access, which is useful for managing screen time for younger children.
I love being able to pause Wi-Fi on my daughter’s tablet with a voice command to a Google Assistant speaker. While you can turn on Google’s SafeSearch to block adult sites, you can’t block specific sites or even categories (such as social media or shopping), a capability Eero offers — for a fee.
Another minor but useful feature is the option to display a QR code and / or SSID and password for a guest network on a Google Nest display. It is easy for friends and family to get online, since you are not paying attention to them.
New with the Nest Pro is a Preferred Activities option that lets you prioritize video conferencing and / or gaming for “improved wifi performance.” Again, I didn’t see any noticeable change during my testing. These settings are very broad. It would be nice to have more control over it.
My son was able to continue playing online games efficiently and my 100 plus smart home devices stayed connected and responsive when I moved to my furthest flung bedroom.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23473181/google-nest-wifi-pro-review
Testing a Mesh Network with the Eero Pro 6 Pro, Pro 6E, Wifi, and Pro 6 Eeros Networks
An average of three tests is run on the network outputting an average of 497Mbps down and 30Mbps up, with download speeds reported in megabits per second.
When I test a mesh network I usually put a point upstairs in the bedroom so I can hardwire a PC, but also in the back bedroom. A straight line from there to the main router goes through a bedroom wall, a closet, another wall, a floor, and a couple of bathroom walls.
This is a lot to ask of the 6Ghz band, which already has a hard time with solid objects. But that’s where I needed the router, and the Eero Pro 6 and Pro 6E nodes I’ve tested performed well there (but the Nest Wifi point from the first gen system really struggled).
The signal from the living room is too tenuous for a reliable backhaul and it was measured by a wi-fi analyzer app. My laptop is having good speeds on the wireless network. However, a software update Google pushed during testing to address complaints from some users that their speeds were being capped at 50Mbps, significantly improved the performance of my test setup. The upstairs speeds were consistent with the rest of the house, thanks to the fact that they almost doubled.
The wired PC averaged more than three times the speed on the Eeros when connected via ethernet. The Nest also had higher latency, likely due to that 6GHz backhaul. The Eero systems can be adjusted by signal strength, but the Nest systems can’t be adjusted by a wired network.
How Do Smart Home Products Keep Their Data Secure? A Survey of Google’s Home App and Smart Home Network Pro-Review for End-to-End Users
Bringing connected devices into the home raises concern about how the data they collect is protected. The Verge looks at how each company whose smart home products we review handles your data.
There are three main data points that a Wi-Fi Router collects. This is important for the performance of your wi-fi. Google says it does not track the websites you visit or collect the content of any traffic on your network, and MAC addresses are stored locally within your device and retrieved by the Google Home App only as needed.
In the Home app, you can turn on or off cloud services and Wi-Fi point stats in the Privacy Settings section. Features like Guest Network, Family Internet, and data usage figures won’t work with cloud services turned off.
Remember that single-device throughput measurements are just a proxy for range and signal strength. Unless you’re downloading large files or transferring them between devices in your network, most devices won’t need that much bandwidth. When streaming 4K video on a single device, you need around 25 megabits per second.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23473181/google-nest-wifi-pro-review
What Is in My Home Wi-Fi Network? What I’ve Learned About Getting There and Not Losing It with My Smart Home
If you purchase any Matter smart home device, you don’t have to worry about having a separate hub or whether it’s compatible with your Google Home app. If it’s Matter and / or Thread, it will work in your home.
Other options I haven’t tested include TP-Link’s $300 two-pack Wi-Fi 6E mesh system. That does not have Thread or Matter on board. Netgear’s Orbi Wi-Fi 6E system has plenty of bells and whistles but no Thread or Matter, and it starts at $400. If you are into that sort of thing, you will get more access to networking with either those or Eero.
Every smart device requires you to agree to terms and conditions before it can be used. We can not read and analyze every single one of these agreements. Most people don’t read agreements that say how many times you have to agree to use devices, so we started counting how many times you have to agree.
Pick a room name for the room your wireless network is installed in, and you are done. The Home app will ask you if you are ready to setup the rest of the access points that came in the box.
Once the network is up and running you can use family tools to control internet access on your kids devices, as well as enabling a guest network.
I live in a 3,300-square-foot ranch-style home with a basement, and work in a detached building that’s roughly 70 feet away from the house. Depending on the day or week I have anywhere between 55 and 80 devices connected to my home wi-fi network.
All of the Eero systems and the Nest system are the only ones where I have not heard from my kids about their gaming experience. In fact, I didn’t even tell them that I changed our mesh system, just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of placebo effect at play.
My personal experience has been the same. I can roam throughout the house, streaming a video or playing a game on my Steam Deck, and as the access points hand off my device, I don’t see any lag or sluggish performance.
Perhaps my favorite part about Nest Wi-Fi Pro is that the access points don’t look anything like a Wi-Fi access point. They look more like a smart speaker, or maybe even a smart clock. There’s a glossy finish to the plastic exterior, which comes in four different colors.
Each access point weighs 1.31 pounds and measures 5.12 by 4.51 by 3.30 inches. There are two Ethernet ports on the rear of the device, near the bottom, with a USB-C cable in the middle of the ports that provides power using the included wall adapter.
These access points will look great on any TV stand. And that’s not a bad thing — hiding your Wi-Fi access points in a cabinet or on the bottom shelf of your TV stand does nothing but hurt your network’s performance.
Is it possible to get faster than 1 Gbps Ethernet? A Review of the Pro System Performance and Speed Tests in Xenon
The first issue I came across was that speed tests inside the app show a slower speed than what the system actually is getting. I have a 35 Mbps up connection and have a 1.2 Gbps down connection. The results from third-party speed test sites and the app were around 100 MB down, even though I set up the pro system first.
My complaints about speed and 1 Gbps Ethernet are valid, but also probably something that most people won’t need or even notice, at least in the near term. While there is no software update available to address the problems with the ports, the company has promised to address any bugs related to the speed.