Amazon Eero 6 Mesh Wi-Fi 6
User-friendly but short on advanced features – and it doesn’t tap into the full potential of Wi-Fi 6
SCORE
PRICE 3-pack, £233 (£279 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/324Eero
If you’re familiar with Amazon’s original Eero mesh kit, the Eero 6 will hold few surprises. It’s almost identical, save for the fact that this latest model supports Wi-Fi 6.
The Eero platform emphasises ease of use, with a friendly smartphone app putting all network monitoring and management options quite literally at your fingertips. However, there are already plenty of Wi-Fi 6 meshes to choose from: does the Eero 6 stand out from the crowd, or is it a case of wireless meh?
The basics
The Eero 6 is a dual-band dual-b 802.11ax mesh system system. Each unit contains a 2.4GHz radio rated at up to 600Mbits/ sec and a 5GHz one capable of connections at up to 1,200Mbits/sec. Unlike triple-band systems, that single 5GHz radio is used bo both for exchanging data w with connected clients and for forwarding traffic to and from other nodes. This means that while the hardware technically supports speeds of up to 1,200Mbits/sec, not all of that bandwidth will be available to your devices.
The router and extender nodes can be bought individually, or in two or three-unit packs. Amazon claims the router alone should cover an area of 140m2, while one extender doubles this to 280m2 and a second takes you up to a huge 460m2.
As usual with mesh networks, the Eero 6 is designed to connect directly to a broadband modem, replacing your existing router. If you’re currently using a combined modem/ router, you may be able to put it into modem-only mode, or you can allow the Eero to run its own subnet inside your existing network (this is known as double NAT). You can also use the Eero 6 in bridge mode, effectively turning it into an extender system for your original router, but this disables most of its native features.
The speed
We tested the Eero 6 triple-pack, which contains two extenders and costs £279. As ever with Amazon products, you may find it cheaper during sale periods. You can also buy the router on its own for £139 and extenders for £99 apiece. At this sort of price the obvious rival is the TP-Link Deco X20 ( see issue 318, p84), another dual-band Wi-Fi 6 mesh that claims the same speeds and costs £230 for a three-unit kit. For the best mesh performance you should move up to a more expensive sive tri-band system such h as the Eero Pro 6 – but that’s only available in the US for the moment. Brits have other options, including the user-friendly Netgear Orbi RBK752 ( see issue 318, 18, p83) p83 for £369, and d the more advanced Asus ZenWiFi AX ( see issue 318, p87) p87 for £424.
So, how does the Eero 6 hold up? I placed the main router in my study with extender nodes in the adjoining bedroom and the downstairs living room. I then took an HP Elite Dragonfly laptop around various parts of my home and measured the upload and download speeds when copying files to and from a NAS appliance attached to the router over a Gigabit Ethernet connection.
You can see the results in the graphs opposite. It’s no surprise that the Eero 6 can’t keep up with the Netgear and Asus systems – they’re more expensive tri-band meshes. But it’s a little embarrassing that, in almost every location, the Eero 6 lagged behind TP-Link’s Deco X20, even though the two have ostensibly identical ha rdware. Still, the margin isn’t huge, and the Eero is more than fast enough for domestic roles – a download speed of 20MB/sec is equivalent to 160Mbits/sec.
I also compared the Eero 6’s performance with two Wi-Fi 6 routers. The Asus RT-AX88U ( see issue 318, p86) costs around £280 while the Asus RT-AX82U ( see issue 318, p80) is available for roughly
£180. These routers don’t have to reserve bandwidth for a backhaul connection, and they all have high-speed 4,800Mbits/ sec radios – so it was a foregone conclusion that they would outperform the Eero 6 over short and medium-range connections.
What might surprise you is how well the routers performed even at the far end of the house. In the tough-to-reach bathroom, situated at the back of the building and obstructed by two thick walls and a mess of copper piping, I obtained perfectly good speeds from the midpriced RT-AX82U and the RT-AX88U actually delivered faster downloads.
The styling
The Eero 6 nodes are made of shiny white plastic. With a footprint of only 99 x 97mm they’re unobtrusive, and each one draws its power from a USB-C socket at the rear.
The only other connectors are a pair of Gigabit Ethernet sockets at the back of the router node. One of these connects to your modem, while the other lets you connect a single wired client (or a switch if you want to connect more than one device). The extenders don’t have Ethernet ports, so the Eero 6 can’t directly support wired devices in other rooms.
On top of each unit, a single multicoloured LED glows white to let you know that everything’s okay – or green, blue, yellow or red to indicate various conditions. The range of different colours is ba mboozling at first, but it means there’s no ambi guity as to what the Eero is trying to tell you.
“The range of different colours can be bamboozling at first, but it means there’s no ambiguity as to what the Eero is trying to tell you”
The app
The Eero platform doesn’t support web-based configuration. To set up and manage your new mesh network you’ll need the Android or iOS app. Happily, this works seamlessly: once I’d plugged in my Eero 6 units, the app used Bluetooth to detect and register them automatically. As the app links to your Amazon account, most people won’t even need to set up credentials; just provide a name and passphrase for your network.
The main screen of the app shows the status of your internet connection and your Eero nodes. Scroll down and you can browse connected clients, or review ones that have recently been online.
Handily, you even get a notification on your phone whenever a new client connects for the first time. This makes it all but impossible for an intruder to sneak onto your network.
The homescreen lets you create and edit “profiles”, which are how the Eero manages parental controls. Under each profile you can define one or more “scheduled pauses”, during which internet access is blocked. Profiles can be assigned to any device, although each device can only have a single profile applied to it.
Buttons along the bottom of the app screen access other pages. The Activity view lets you explore each client’s bandwidth usage and track the speed of your internet connection, while the Discover page lets you check in on any Amazon Echo devices on your network, and manage other smart home appliances courtesy of the Eero’s built-in Zigbee hub.
There’s also a link to “Eero Labs”, where you can try out new features. At the time of writing there are two toggles on this page, to enable DNS caching and the latest WPA3 security standard respectively. It’s good to have these options, but we’re not sure why they’re still stuck in beta – other routers have had full WPA3 support for more than two years.
The security
The other big feature you can manage from here is Amazon’s two-tier network security service. The basic level is Eero Secure, which blocks dangerous websites and (if you wish) adverts – and allows you to add category-based web filtering to your profiles. A year’s trial is included with the Eero hardware, after which it costs £3 a month or £30 a year.
For all-round security, you can step up to the Secure+ package. This adds subscriptions to the 1Password password manager, Encrypt.me VPN and Malwarebytes virus scanner, for £99 a year. It’s not bad value, but they aren’t the brands we’d have chosen.
The final tab in the app is Settings, from where you can modify your Wi-Fi name and security settings, configure the guest network and so forth. You can customise your DNS, DHCP and NAT settings too, and set up IP address reservation and port forwarding. There’s little in the way of extras, however. Although the Eero app lets you monitor network traffic, there’s no configurable QoS to let you prioritise certain devices or types of traffic. Similarly, VPN connections aren’t supported at the router level – you’ll have to install the software on each client you want to protect – and the router doesn’t integrate with Dynamic DNS services.
Wi-Fi settings are even slimmer. You can turn on band steering but you get no option to split up the bands, which could cause a problem for some devices, and you don’t have control over radio frequencies and channel widths. Advanced users are likely to find this frustrating.
“Aside from allowing you to extend and target your network coverage, the Eero 6 is gloriously simple to set up and manage”
The verdict
If you’re considering the Eero 6 for your next mesh system, the first question to ask is: do you need a mesh at all? The latest routers do an impressive job of punching through obstacles and overcoming interference, and you can get a high-end model for the same price as a midtable mesh. Even if your old Wi-Fi 5 network was slow and patchy, Wi-Fi 6 may give you all the coverage you need from a single unit.
If mesh is the right answer for your situation, the Eero 6 has its strengths. Aside from allowing you to extend and target your network coverage, it’s gloriously simple to set up and manage, and more than fast enough for most internet connections.
Yet, while the app is snappy, it’s short on advanced features, and it rankles that the security functions are extra. The dearth of Ethernet ports is also an irritation. Meanwhile, the TP-Link Deco X20 provides similar speeds (and more ports) for a similar price. All this makes it hard to recommend the Eero 6.
SPECIFICATIONS
Wi-Fi 6 router plus 2 x Wi-Fi extenders 2.4GHz/5GHz dual-band WPA3/WPA2 encryption 2 x Gigabit RJ-45 ports (router only) up to 600Mbits/sec over 2.4GHz up to 1,200Mbits/sec over 5GHz integrated Zigbee radio iOS and Android apps 99 x 97 x 61mm (WDH) 1yr limited warranty