![]() ![]() To be honest, I expected it to sweep the field clean based on my experience with their UAP line of traditional wired-backhaul access points. AmpliFi HDĪmpliFi is Ubiquiti’s answer to wireless mesh networking. The visuals it generates are an absolutely invaluable tool if you want to geek out hard and get the most out of your Wi-Fi coverage. I was impressed enough that I actually installed Windows on a laptop just so I could run it-and it was worth it. Hutchinson introduced me to NetSpot, a free-as-in-beer visualization tool for Mac or Windows that lets you walk around your house and map out the signals throughout. We tested each device using iperf3 to get raw throughput numbers in several sites throughout the house, but first and more importantly, we’re going to look at heatmaps of the Wi-Fi signal produced by each kit. At press time, we don’t have a fix from the Eero team, so we regretfully had to put Eero aside for now. ![]() We’d originally intended to test the new Eero v2.0 firmware, too, but unfortunately two of our three test units refused to make it through the update process. Our trio of contenders are Google Wifi, Plume, and AmpliFi HD. Luckily, today happens to be a bit of a boom for mesh offerings. But if you don’t want wires and you don’t want the possibly intimidating controller systems like Ubiquiti’s UniFi interface, mesh might be for you. To be fair, nothing Wi-Fi at all comes close to the performance of wired Ethernet itself, so don’t get too excited about the “3.2 gigabits per second!” that AC-3200 Wi-Fi router promises you. I’ll save you some time up front: I’ve played with just about everything out there, and nothing comes close to the performance of multiple access points with full wired backhaul like the UAPs. A lot of people either can’t or don’t want to run cables through their house at all, though, and that’s the niche Wi-Fi mesh kits seek to service. The problem with this though is that without those big, gaudy antennas prodding out from every side of the unit, most routers can suffer performance issues once you get more than 10ft away from the base station.Here at Ars, we’ve been rocking some high-tech Wi-Fi setups for a while-in particular, Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson and I are fond of Ubiquiti’s UAP line of wireless access points. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it’s also not that exciting when you remember that by their very design, wireless routers often need to sit in the most central part of your home in order to get the best signal to every corner of where you live and browse on a daily basis.Īside from the ultra-enthusiast who likes to show off that they take networking hardware seriously to their guests, most people would prefer to have a router that they actually want to look at sitting on their coffee table. Sure, there are outliers like the nostalgia-heavy Linksys WRT1900ACS or the TP-Link Archer C9, but other than those select cases pretty much every other router on the market right now looks like, well, a router. ![]() Whether they’re made for gamers, media professionals, or just your average household, it seems like they all tend to cycle through a similar smattering of archetypes that fall into three main categories: black with lots of antennas (performance-only), neon-colored with sharp angles (for the “xtreme gamer” in your house), or some muddled combination of the two. ![]() If there’s anything that routers have been in dire need of for a long time now, it’s a well-deserved facelift. ![]()
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