UKH

Amazon had a lightning deal for Prime day on Netgear Orbi RK53 for £285 yesterday. I decided to wait until this morning for some reason, and it's gone back to full price...doh.

But today they have lightning deals on TP link decco M5 and Linksys WHW0303 velop.

Does anyone have any opinion on which of these to go for?

It's for a largish house built 400 years ago, so no concrete walls. I pay for (but don't get close to wifi) 300mps internet. I am currently using old BT wifi extenders which are the main culprit. It's just for home use (smart TVs , phones and tablets) no heavy lifting. 

This review of the options is very thorough: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-mesh-networking-kits/
The bad news is, they strongly recommend the model you missed the deal on! (Though the main downside of the Linksys kits seems to be price so if the deal on them is good enough then great.)

When you're thinking of upgrading to mesh WiFi it's also worth considering whether your needs would be better served by a single, modern, high-quality WiFi router (unless you've already got one of those and are still needing the extenders).

"it's also worth considering whether your needs would be better served by a single, modern, high-quality WiFi router "

Would one modern, high quality wifi router cover my whole house with a good fast signal? If so, what would you recommend to look at?

After looking at mesh systems (we only live in a two-up two-down but the walls must have lead and magnets in them), we ended up going for a single router to blast through the house and it reaches out into the back garden from the very front of the front room. It replaced an ASUS one that I'd paid a bit more for about five years back but the performance of the new one leaves it in the dust. It's this:

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing-accessories/networking/network-rout...

Got some really good reviews across T3, CNET, TechRadar and the other usual suspects. If you've got the budget for a mesh system it'd be worth seeing what the money would get you in a standalone.

have  you considered hard wiring a wireless access point (or two) back to your router ? something like this :

https://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-unifi-ac-lite-p-6643.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChM...

running a length of cat 5e or cat 6  network cable may or may not be easy but if its easy you get the same result  for a lot less money.

I've got 3x M5 Decos and they work well spread across a two-story + basement house which is pretty large. Its A-frame though so solid walls aren't as much as a problem.

They work pretty well - a bit niggly to set up but as soon as they work they mesh seamlessly when moving around. We're pretty remote and don't have fast broadband so can't comment on throughput but they're plugged into a satellite router and to be honest its that that usually tends to be the weak link.

Really impressed with google wifi. We have two set up, linked by cat 5e, at opposite ends of the house. Maybe not so nice if you like to manually set a lot of things, but if you just want it to work it has a nice easy to use app and good diagnostic tests.

Thx for all the replies, still not sure what to do, in all honesty most of the jargon goes over my head and the cheapest and simplest will probably be sufficient...think I will go for the linksys reduced ones on Amazon, got to be better than my current set up and decent reduction around 60% off

I have the Linksys Velop (x4 WAPs), works a treat, great for connecting up ethernet only devices like my CCTV recorder. Had very little issue with it, main problem was getting it setup but I think Linksys have sort this with a better setup wizard.

It's pretty configurable as well with device prioritisation, safeguarding and time features, with detail DMZ and Port forwarding config.

I went with BT Whole Home system. We large (3,500 sq ft) house and the telephone point is right in one corner. To get out to the centre of the house requires two whole home hubs and further two to take us around the rest of the house. It's not lightning fast but we can stream ultra HD content on the TV without too many dramas. I hate the idea of paying money to BT but their system is very easy to set up and control. Dread having to think about it again actually. I purchased a triple pack on Amazon and got a single off eBay. It was the cheapest way I could find to do it back in 2017.

I just bought the Linksys Velop....didn't want to miss out on another "bargain" :-/

I have another question...

When I add this to my system I have two choices. I can turn my existing modem/router into bridge mode (and turn off it's wifi) and have the velop in full mesh mode. This seems to me, to be the best solution. It will allow all the features of the velop, via the app, to be used.

But, lots of reviews say that this then becomes very "techy" to set up as all my devices will not recognise the new wifi with different IP addresses. Is this the case? or should it be relatively simple to address?

My second option is to use the velop in bridge mode. Then it no longer acts as a mesh and just as a wifi extender. Reviews say this is simpler for the idiot (me) to set up, my devices will recognise as it's the old system just being boosted by the velop and gets the best wifi speeds, but I will lose a load of features of the Velop as it is no longer in mesh mode and controlling the network.

I called my internet provider who said they suggest putting the modem/router into bridge mode. So it seems option 1 is the best route. Will I be pulling my hair out by 8pm this evening repackaging and posting back for a refund?

Option 1 for me, it's not that difficult, and you get the features and propoer mesh, wifi extenders slow down the whole system and are unreliable.

Our BB router has wifi switched off and all traffic sent to the primary Linksys which is setup for NAT, all other functions are handled by the linksys. 

happy to try and help remotely if you need.

Thx, I will try that. If it all goes pear shaped I may well be back here for help

With the google wifi we had zero problems using mesh with the original router in bridge mode. Of course had to log all the devices onto the new network, but it was no worse than setting them up in the first place. Getting the original router to be a bridge was the most technical bit, but the manual was pretty clear once we found it.

Hi, I’m in the same boat re..House age and size. Thick solid stone walls mostly. I use the base router one one side of the house for WiFi , plus a linksys WiFi extender for the rest. 

My office wasn’t picking up WiFi very well, and there is no coverage in the garage at all which is where my climbing wall is and is about 50 m from the router. I picked up a couple of ‘mains internet extenders’ and now have similar speeds in the garage to plugging a laptop directly into the main router. There are some very long mains cable runs plus the main fuse board between the router and the garage, so am very impressed. The unit in the garage acts as a WiFi hub also

paul