Tenda Nova MW12 Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi System
What’s the better buy? The latest, expandable, last-gen tech or the expensive current-generation?
A year ago, we reviewed our first Tenda Wi-Fi product and were impressed with how easy it was to get up and running. At that point Tenda was an established brand in China but only really known on these shores for being sold in OfficeWorks. Now, it’s more widely available and is offering this quasi-premium, three-node, last-gen Wi-Fi mesh pack for a not-insubstantial $366. In a mature, mesh market is that good value?
Each Nova node is a white, 10cm cube with a subtle cross-weave pattern on the sides that will fit discreetly into most homes. Each has three Gigabit Ethernet ports (one doubles as WAN for plugging directly into your modem). A small LED light on the top glows green when operational or orange when there’s an issue.
Setup via phone was simple and all three nodes automatically detected each other just by turning them on. The app shows you which devices are connected and allows you to add descriptive labels. It offers access to settings including Guest Network, QoS (albeit for games and web browsing only) and some excellent parental controls which offer a wide range of incremental limits per device or group of devices. Also included are Port Forwarding controls and the ability to specify LAN IP addresses – rare for an app. Plus, a nifty Smart Assistant feature can force connectivity to the 2.4GHz band for 30 minutes while you attach any smart devices to the network.
The nodes promise AC2100(Mbps) speeds which, on paper, isn’t too fast, but few superior mesh systems touch their potential. It also operates across three bands – 2.4GHz (300Mbps) and two 5GHz (867Mbps) with one of the latter being reserved for backhaul between nodes.
To see how it performed in the real world, we transferred large video files from a node connected to a Synology DS1019+ NAS (on the groundfloor of a three-storey Sydney Town House) to a Dell XPS 15 OLED laptop. We did this next to it and then on each subsequent floor. On the ground floor, it scored a very impressive 414.5Mbps, which is essentially 98Mbps faster than any mesh we’ve seen before. One floor above it dropped to 207.5Mbps, which, despite the decline, is also the best mesh score we’ve seen. On the top floor it scored 108Mbps, which is only bettered by TP-Link’s Deco AX mesh – but not by much. Together, makes it the best all-round performing mesh we’ve seen. You can further expand coverage (and performance) by adding any model from Tenda Nova’s broad node range.
A top Wi-Fi 6 router will usually beat any mesh system, but most cost a great deal more than this. A mesh can also be more flexible than a single router, which can still struggle at distance if the construction of large premises are not conducive to Wi-Fi.
$366 is not cheap but it costs significantly less than many Wi-Fi 6 systems and yet can rival their performance at distance. If a single router doesn’t suit your premises (or budget), this makes a great choice.
NICK ROSS
Fast, well-featured, easy-to-use with good, reliable coverage – everything you could want from Wi-Fi.