Eero Wi-Fi Booster Review
Eero is a new WiFi boosting device that promises to enhance your wireless signal by setting up multiple access points across your home. Here’s our Eero review.
What is Eero?
Eero Wi-Fi Booster is a wireless signal boosting device that just recently launched in February 2016.
The device is priced at $199, although the company recommends that larger homes will need three Eero devices (sold in a pack of $500) for optimal coverage.
The goal of Eero is to eliminate dead zones in your home. If, say, your basement always got spotty Wi-Fi coverage, then Eero wants to solve that problem by relaying a more powerful signal.
By placing multiple Eero devices in different corners of your home, you can ensure you’re never without Wi-Fi again.
We’ve had wireless relay devices for a long time: network extenders are separate devices that connect wirelessly to your main wireless router. Unfortunately, these devices are annoying to use. When you go to the “dead zone” part of your home, you have to separately connect your device to that separate wireless network.
Meanwhile, even the most expensive wireless routers often don’t have enough coverage to extend to all corners of your home. Plus, these routers can be nearly as expensive as Eero.
Eero was created because the developers believed they could come up with a better solution. Eero promises to work like the wireless networks you find in airports or campuses: you connect to the same network but through the nearest access point, giving you optimal coverage everywhere.
Is your home so big that your wireless signal gets weak in certain corners of the house? If so, then Eero wants to help. Let’s find out how Eero works.
How Does Eero Work?
Eero doesn’t speed up your home’s internet. That speed is controlled by your internet provider.
Eero will, however, relay a powerful wireless signal across different parts of your home. Here’s how it works:
-You plug the first Eero device into your modem
-You use the iPhone or Android Eero apps to connect to the access points via Bluetooth, finding and configuring each hub
-The app tests for interference and tells you to move your Eero devices, if necessary, to ensure optimal coverage
Technically speaking, Eero does a lot more complex work behind the scenes. The first Eero device, hard-wired into your modem, pushes data to the Eero device closest to the first Eero device, before eventually passing that data to the Eero closest to the end user. It’s like a relay race.
If you think that multiple relay points might slow down your internet speeds, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Said one Wall Street Journal reviewer,
“Testing with an iPhone 6s, I got blisteringly fast wireless Internet access. Peaks reached 90 megabits per second in one home, 120 in the other—our max levels of Comcast service, in fact. What used to be my worst dead zone is now getting a median speed of 42 Mbps (though occasionally dipping as low as 10). On devices with older 802.11n Wi-Fi, like a first-generation iPad, median speed was closer to 25 Mbps—still, more than enough to stream Netflix.”
You don’t actually have to connect to your Eero wirelessly: each device has two Ethernet ports, which means you can connect your electronics using a normal cable if you want to ensure fast connections.
Meanwhile, Eero’s “brain” is in the cloud, which means that the company behind Eero can update its software constantly, pushing security updates and other features to users on-demand. Although Eero doesn’t come with many security or network management tools out of the box, the company plans to add features in the future to enhance the way in which you use your wireless network.
Eero Pricing
1 Eero: $200
3 Eeros: $500
One Eero device is sufficient for most homes. The company, however, claims that large or odd-shaped homes may need up to three Eero devices, in which case you pay a total of $500. Eero’s manufacturer also says that you should aim to have one Eero for every 1,000 square feet of home space.
If that pricing seems expensive to you, then consider the fact that most good wireless routers cost at least $200 – especially if you’re buying a router capable of covering your entire home.
You can order Eero from Amazon.com
Note: if you preorder Eero right now before the launch, then you can purchase single devices for $125 and a set of 3 for $300.
Who Makes Eero?
Eero is made by a San Francisco startup. That startup saw a problem: we’re consuming more internet than ever before, but we’re all using the same single wireless router systems we’ve always used. When the entire house needs to stream Netflix, Skype, and download from the cloud, it can feel frustrating to be in a part of your home without adequate coverage.
The company is led by CEO Nick Weaver.
The name “Eero”, by the way, comes from the architect of the St. Louis Gateway Arch – Eero Saarinen.
The company claims to employ over 0 people, all of whom want “to change an old, broken industry” by “blazing the trial for the future of home WiFi”.
Over the coming months, Eero’s development team promises to continue adding features to WiFi “that you’ve never seen before and that you’re going to love” – although it hasn’t announced any of those features thus far.
As mentioned above, updates are delivered via the cloud, so when you buy an Eero today, you’ll still be able to enjoy future updates.
Should You Use Eero to Boost Internet Coverage?
If your home lacks adequate wireless network coverage, then Eero may be able to help. If you don’t use Eero, then there are few other options that work reliably to extend your internet coverage. New routers can be expensive and may not offer adequate coverage, for example, while wireless network extenders are inconvenient because you have to separately connect to them.
If internet access is like oxygen for you, then Eero is like getting a new lung. It’s a simple, effective, and pricey wireless signal booster that will eliminate annoying dead zone problems in your home.
Finally, you can spend more time in your basement without worrying about crappy Wi-Fi coverage.
