Eero Pro 7 review: Paying to be sold a subscription

Many years ago, I reviewed the Eero Pro 6e, which is a very easy device to get along with. The hardware is powerful, unobtrusive, and is so suitable for my home that I have no complaints about the life I live with. But Eero’s continuous tilt weapon makes you cancel everything for your monthly subscription. With an app that’s not just ads, but with a lot of basic features that I’m not able to recommend it. Thankfully, Wi-Fi 7 and new emergence Eero Pro 7 method eero There is a shot to make its previous mistake good and reverse my view. Which one will this take up, right?

For Engadget’s mesh Wi-Fi testing method, read our mesh Wi-Fi buyer guide.

hardware

Since birth, Eero has built its Wi-Fi nodes into round boxes that sit unceremoniously on side tables and bookshelf. Sadly, a huge number thing Make Wi-Fi 7 work bigger than traditional institutions allow. (Vanilla Eero 7 actually lacks support at 6GHz Appropriate So the Pro 7 abandons the classic body of the same casing on the Eero’s superfield Max 7. The vertical design is better suited to keep the components free of fans, but it is significant, especially the well-known brand, beat the point of making gear anonymous.

Each node is the same, with a piano glossy white, 7.1 inches tall and 5.8 inches wide. Turn it around and you’ll find a USB-C Power Jack, reset button and two 5G Ethernet ports, with a theoretical top speed of 4.7 Gbps. The guy on wireless radios (2×2 2.4GHz, 2×2 5GHz and 2×2 6GHz) promises to reach a height of 3.9 Gbps. Inside plugs inside are the usual smart home integrations including Zigbee, threads, matter, Amazon Connected devices, Alexa and Bluetooth LE 5.0

Install

Eero’s commitment to a “frustless setup” is not an empty one, it’s still the easiest grid system. Download the Eero app, hand over your Amazon login and plug in your cable modem, and do everything else in minutes. Each node is up and running two minutes after insertion, and most of the 15-minute setup time takes place between rooms.

Once each node is ready, you will be notified that your location is perfect for signal strength. This is useful because some meshes don’t, just expect you to troubleshoot bad performance. The app does tell me that if I put the nodes close to each other I get faster speeds, but given my house layout, this means putting them all in The same damn room.

Performance

Eero’s bread and butter performance has never been an issue, especially once the grid settles after day one or so. Most of the content used with previous versions still exists here, and for home use it is excellent. My office is a bit far from any node and is still able to pull down 250 Mbps in manual speed tests. The smart TV in this room is able to play a 4K movie without any lag or buffering, allowing me to skip pre-scrolling ads.

I can’t imagine anyone trying to throw their Wi-Fi 6e system to support this system, as you won’t see a huge performance boost. When I tested the Eero Pro 6E, I could easily get speed in my office at 250 Mbps anyway. Lag and reliability have significantly improved and cannot be known, but you will only notice them when upgrading from real old gear.

If you are upgrading from an older Eero system, it’s worth mastering the hardware to strengthen your network. Each Eero node integrates with older peers, even if you may find performance degraded. I grabbed a Pro 6e node and placed it in the infamous signal dead spot at the end of my home, just for hell. Naturally, older nodes are slower, but even so, the loss is less painful. When I connect to the 6e node and do the speed test, I’m still dropping by 200 Mbps.

Applications and Eero Plus

When I wrote Engadget’s guide to network Wi-Fi buyers, I spent months testing the hardware of all the famous people. Some are easy, some are picky, some are designed for network engineers without considering the average user. But none of them irritated me like Eero’s app, a textbook case that caught the victory’s jaw failure. Essentially, half of the Splash screen is an ad for the company’s subscription product Eero Plus. Eero has many basic features placed behind the paywall, so it is impossible to recommend. But I have to be ahead of myself.

Eero’s application is neat and well designed, providing a single pane listing each node and its signal strength. These icons indicate how much nodes are connected to each other, but without the terrain feel of the network. Below is a pane that tells you that devices on the network are currently working to name many common products (including those owned by Amazon). You can’t set traffic priority for your device yet, which will be useful when I record a podcast or zoom call.

View this screenshot of the active pane and notice how much or less it has, showing you only the highest speed and quantity of up and down data. Each one is linked to another pane with some more detailed information, but even so, visualization is more or less meaningless. This illustrates the big problem with Eero’s software setup and business model.

I think Engadget readers are divided into two camps: People who know DHCP have Related to their internet But you won’t touch something because you’re afraid of destroying it, while those with 192.168.1.1 burn the muscle memory of your fingers. The Eero’s tone may irritate both, as it strips you of even the most basic agency to run your own damn Wi-Fi.

For example, you could set a Wi-Fi name and password and set the same name and password for the guest Wi-Fi, but other than that, oh boy. You can group devices to allow you to set time limits for your child’s gaming console or computer. You can set DHCP to manual or bridge mode, subscribe or forward to set ports and disable support for IPv6. And, that’s all.

That is, unless you are $9.99 per month for spring or $100 per year Eero Plusand then open the toolkit. To do this, if your Wi-Fi drops, you can set the mobile hotspot to an Internet backup. Subscribers will also access parental controls, historical data, AD and application blocking, company’s advanced security suite, DDN and content filters. Additionally, you will also subscribe to Guardian VPN, Malware and 1Password.

Look, I understand. All hardware companies (even those owned by Amazon) need to make sure they have multiple revenue streams to keep lighting. And I’m sure there are many people who feel the increased allegations may be worthy for peace of mind. But you need to know that the competition from Eero offers these features without asking for more money. Google’s Nest Wi-Fi includes parental controls and security updates in addition to the guest network. Although Nest hasn’t launched a Wi-Fi 7 product yet, so this isn’t an equivalent comparison, the Eero Pro 6E is just as restricted as Amazon’s promotion of plus-signal subscriptions. If a company wants to charge me $700 for product and then keep the basic functionality back to me $100 per year, I am hostile by default.

Price and competition

The Eero Pro 7 has one, two or three node packages for $300, $550 and $700 respectively. Wi-Fi 7 systems are currently available for early adopters and you will spend a lot of money on choosing a company you buy from any company. I won’t do a direct Apple-to-Apple comparison here, as there are many significant spec differences between the various Wi-Fi 7 routers. NetGear’s Orbi 770, for example, has longer broadcast range and faster wireless speeds, but has slower Ethernet ports and can only handle half of the connected devices as many connected devices as the Pro 7. In this early stage, you will research specifications with priority based on your specific needs. So, I can’t say the $900 Orbi 770 is better for you than the $700 Eero Pro 7.

If you want to upgrade and put your heart on the Eero, it may be worth looking into the last generation of hardware. At the time of writing, the three-pack Eero Pro 6ES costs $550 and its performance is impressive. It has the same problems as its successor, but backward compatibility is a useful benefit. Wi-Fi 6e is a major upgrade to any Wi-Fi you may use at home right now.

wrap up

There are a lot to like Eero’s mesh Wi-Fi system That Much has bothered me I don’t recommend them. They are really easy to set up, very easy to use, and the performance you get from it is very good in terms of speed and reliability. I really like the hardware designs, even if they are more eye-catching than the older models. And I do think that $700 for a family-wide Wi-Fi 7 system is very good when other companies now ask for a lot or more companies. This is especially true for those who mess up each knob and dial to adjust their internet to n-level. The hardware passes the test “You can hand it over to the technophobic family members” “You can hand it over to the color.

Unfortunately, I can’t overcome the nickel and two-point enthusiasm that I think should be free to function. I think every router should at least provide basic parental control and some kind of URL blocking or content filtering. Even if you don’t use them, these features will be blocked from your milk’s recurring revenue Rough. If you are standing in a car dealership, someone is trying to sell you a sedan with three wheels CarSubscriptionPlus is only $9.99 per month! – You will walk away in disgust.