Screenshots by Ry Crist/CNET The setup process The Eero 6 setup process could not be any easier. I bemoaned the lack of extra, Alexa-specific features with last year's Eero, so all of that is a nice, user-friendly step in the right direction - though Amazon still hasn't gone as far as Google, which built fully functional Google Assistant smart speakers into each Nest Wifi satellite. You can also enable Thread, an additional Wi-Fi protocol that lets you connect with certain kinds of smart home devices. ![]() You'll need to connect the router to an Amazon account in order to put it to work, but once you do, you'll unlock nice, common sense features like Device Name Sharing, where your custom names for network devices in the Alexa app automatically port over to the Eero app. That lets you connect things like smart locks and smart lights with Alexa without need for an additional Zigbee hub. That's good, but you can find better - for instance, though it doesn't feature Wi-Fi 6, last year's Nest Wifi supports 3x3 connections.Īlong with Wi-Fi 6 support, the Eero 6 router also includes its own Zigbee radio. It also supports 2x2 MU-MIMO connections, which lets it use two antennas to split its attention to two separate devices at a time, or aggregate the signal from those antennas to a single device with multiple antennas of its own. Inside, the Eero 6 router runs on a 1.2GHz quad-core processor with 512 MB of RAM and 4GB of flash storage. It also means that you can't wire the range extenders back to the router for faster performance. That's not ideal if you're like me and living with a handful of streaming devices, gaming consoles, smart home hubs and the like, all of which work best with, or require, a wired connection to the router. That means that you only get a single spare Ethernet jack that you can use for hardwired connections to the router. The other Eero devices are range-extending satellites, and they don't include Ethernet jacks at all. The devices inside look identical, but they aren't - one is designed to serve as the main router, and along with the USB-C power port, it includes two gigabit Ethernet jacks, one of which you'll wire to your modem. ![]() Ry Crist/CNET Design and specsĪrriving in a tidy, rectangular box, the Eero 6 three-pack makes a decent first impression. The Eero 6 range extender (right) doesn't include Ethernet jacks at all. The Eero 6 router (left) includes two gigabit Ethernet jacks, one of which you'll wire to your modem. That's a key feature if you want a mesh router that gets the most out of Wi-Fi 6 - and the dual-band Eero 6 doesn't have it. And note that all three of those alternatives are tri-band routers that include the usual 2.4 and 5GHz bands, plus a second 5GHz band dedicated to moving data between the router and its satellites. If you're paying for internet speeds any faster than that, then you'll want a mesh router that's designed to take advantage of them, like the Netgear Orbi AX6000 ($700 for a two-pack), the Asus ZenWiFi AX ($450 for a two-pack), or Amazon's own upgrade model, the Eero Pro 6 ($600 for a three-pack). For starters, though Amazon now says Eero 6 can hit top speeds of up to 900 Mbps, those top speeds are limited enough that Amazon initially recommended it for homes with internet connections of up to 500Mbps, well beneath what Wi-Fi 6 is capable of. Mesh networking and Wi-Fi 6 can indeed make for a pretty killer combination, but Eero 6 comes with some caveats. Meanwhile, a two-piece setup with the Eero 6 router and one range-extending satellite costs $199.Īn Eero 6 three-pack costs $279. It's the second new version of the Eero mesh router since Amazon acquired the company, and it adds in full support for Wi-Fi 6 while keeping the cost of a three-piece setup down at a reasonable $279 - just $30 more than the Wi-Fi 5 version sold for last year. Either one makes for a tempting upgrade - but hey, why not both?Įnter Eero 6, a new mesh router from the company that helped bring mesh to the mainstream several years ago, and which Amazon bought outright in 2019. The second is the arrival of Wi-Fi 6, the newest, fastest and most advanced version of Wi-Fi. The first is the rise of the affordable mesh router, with an abundance of new, multipoint Wi-Fi systems that cost a lot less than the initial crop of mesh routers did three or four years ago. There are two big, recent developments from the world of routers that are worth paying attention to. Poor band-steering and signal routing causes speeds to drop when they shouldn't Not fast enough to take full advantage of gigabit speeds ![]() Steady network performance with no dropped connections during testing ![]() Built-in Zigbee radio for pairing devices with Alexa
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