A smart home is only as good as its wifi connection. And to ensure that your smart devices can actually reach wifi, it’s important to get a mesh wifi router that’s worth your time and your money.
Getting a mesh wifi setup is like buying an actual blanket, if it’s full of holes and comes up short it’s not really worth the purchase. Mesh devices cover your home in a blanket of wifi. A warm cozy wifi blanket that’s just super fast and consistent.
For the TL:DW crowd, between the Google Nest, Linksys Vello and Netgear Orbi, the Vello comes out on top. It’s the strongest overall performer. Next up would be the GoogleNest Wifi followed by the Orbi.
BUT I’ll be honest with you, between the last two products, the Orbi may be better in some instances like gaming, NAS-ing and homes with brick walls whereas the Google product might be better for those in smaller home, who live in a perfect wifi environment and use voice commands all the time.
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Get the Google Nest on Amazon! Amazon US: https://shreh.ca/2WdM4Hl Amazon CA: https://shreh.ca/3aWAzbr Amazon UK: https://shreh.ca/3aUL1jN Amazon DE: https://shreh.ca/3d2N3QQ
Get the Netgear Orbi on Amazon! Amazon US: https://shreh.ca/3aWry27 Amazon CA: https://shreh.ca/39OwLJc Amazon UK: https://shreh.ca/3aYuGKZ Amazon DE: https://shreh.ca/2QhAVSd
Here’s are the following speediest setups (00:02:46) I used to test these smart home mesh’s:
Base station only - 00:03:26 Base station + Repeater - 00:04:47 Base station encased in brick - 00:05:55 Base station encased in brick + Repeater - 00:07:07
For test #1, the Google Nest Wifi came out on top whereas the Orbi performed the poorest. If all you need is a good base station, the Google Nest Wifi is definitely the one to get.
For test #2, which would be your typical smart home setup, the Linksys Velop performed the best. It had the most consistent results. The Orbi was terrible in our tests.
For the brick test, Linksys Velop came out on top, giving us the highest speeds. The Orbi again performed the worst, especially when it came to distance from the router.
With the last test, the Orbi did the best which was surprising given how poorly it performed on all the other tests.
UI/Setup - 00:09:49
When it comes to the UI and setup, the Google Nest Wifi and Linksys Vellop were easy to setup. Between the two, we’d give the nod to the Vellop because it only takes one app to setup and manage whereas the Google Nest Wifi uses the Google Home App to setup and any additional features requires the use of the Google Wifi app.
The Orbi’s app is fine but the setup process required several attempts to get going. As a side note, during our testing, we turned each router on and off and the Orbi also took the longest to come back online.
Hardware - 00:11:10 For hardware, there are two things you need to consider. The size and the # of ports. The Google Nest Wifi has the smallest footprint but the least expandability. The base one one port and the repeater has none.
The Linksys Velop provides a single extra ethernet ports on the base and repeater. From a size perspective, it’s tall and slender so it’s easier to tuck away.
The Orbi looks like a piece of technology. It’s large and ugly (from our perspective) BUT it offers the most built-in expandability with a plethora of extra ports to plug in whatever you want.
Router Management - 00:12:57 For most people, you’ll just need to plug in th units and run the app. For people who need a bit more, managing the Linksys Velop is simpler as everything is done through an app.
The Google Nest Wifi installs through the Google Home App and is managed through the Wifi App. It also has time-caps on the device priority which is seems silly to me.
The Orbi app has the fewest options to manage your router. If you want the full gamut of router abilities, you need to use the web-interface to manage your device. This isn’t explicitly stated anywhere in the packaging or routers. I just stumbled across it by accident.
Special Features - 00:16:32
If you’re a big fan of using Google Assistant, the repeater with the Google Nest Wifi has a speaker and Google Assistant built into it. The base does not (also, the repeater doesn’t sound as good as Google Home.)
With the Linksys Velop, you have a feature called aware which uses the wifi signals to detect movement in your home. It’s a neat feature but the problem for me was that I had no idea if the movement was from inside my home, on my property or was it movement from my neighbors?
The Netgear Orbi by itself doesn’t anything special BUT Netgear does offer an outdoor module so that you don’t have to cover your repeater with a ziplock if you’re looking to expand your wifi outside.