Google Mesh Wi-Fi Router Whole Home System, White, Pack of 3

We have been using Google Wi-fi for 3 months. We received 3 small unobstrustive white round wi-fi points. Simply download app to a smartphone and scan barcode. Easy to follow instructions given. 1 primary point uses an ethernet cable to connect to your modem. Each satellite point needed to be 1 room away or 1 floor up (we have thick walls and tall ceilings; further and it doesn't improve wi-fi- app tells you to move it closer to primary point). We have a long 4 bedroomed property. I think most will need a 3 pack unless property small (though if small will get less benefit from increased spread anyway). They are powered from mains so need to be near a socket. It seems to work well with our BT Home Hub 5, on Fibre 2 BT contract; Google wi-fi allows network from modem to remain active (unlike some other mesh networks you don't have to switch original network off and allows a ethernet cable to be inserted either in wi-fi point or original modem for game streaming, in our case via Xbox). It has improved signal strength to furthest parts of our property (download increased from average of 6-8mbs to 56-58mbs; upload 1-2mbs to 9-10mbs in our end room; average at home hub is 62mbs/ 17mbs) , works seamlessly (no drop outs or deterioration in speed so far); nb- it increases the spread of wi-fi, not the speed coming into the modem/ router.; and if in an area with faster fibre available/ contracted to get, check top performance parameters for google wi-fi before buying (it is lower than some alternatives). Simple to use app, does what I want it to do, and can be monitored remotely. Price has come down, but still relatively expensive like most mesh networks. Overall buy if you want something easy/ stable to improve spread of wi-fi and can afford the cost.

GOOGLE MESH SOLVED ALL MY PROBLEMS I was in the process of installing 4 Reolink dual band security cameras on the outside of my largish house (4500 Ft). I first tried to connect the cameras to my ISP Combi Modem/router. Soon the router bandwidth was clogged with camera data and the whole PC became instable. It was also difficult to connect the cameras in Wi-Fi mode as they were too far away. I read about Wi-Fi Mesh and decided after thorough research that Google Mesh was the one for me. I bought a box of three and installed them in such a way that they should pick up the signals from the various cameras. I had some trouble working out whether I should set my ISP router to Modem only or to Combi as I could not find the cameras to connect. I had the Google Mesh router running apart from my old router. I phoned the Google Wi-Fi help line twice and they could not have been more helpful and patient. The person I spoke to suggested that for my problem I could make one large network but with only one SSID. So now my ISP modem/router, the Google router and the two Google pods are all one big home hub. There was only one little problem left and that was to connect each camera separately to the appropriate bandwidth of the hub. This I did by hand in the Camera App. The Google Mesh App is one of the best, simple and fool proof apps I have seen. It guides you through the setting up and later the testing of the system. It is a joy to use and even when you know everything works perfectly one still wants to go back to the App and test a bit more. Of course, it has not only improved the camera system which is connected both with PC, Camera recording, Ipad and iPhone it also has improved the signal throughout the house. I could not be happier with Google Mesh. It does everything it promises.

Quite frankly the worst piece of tech I have ever purchased, and I've purchased a lot of tech. The devices look pretty, as does the app. However... Took me 3 hours to set-up what should be a relatively straight forward process, numerous errors, with no helpful suggestions of what to change or check. Devices regularly being added incorrectly, for example after adding the first station, and then trying to add a second, the app just asked me to rescan the original base station and adds that again, so you have the same base station in the app twice, and no second station. The range of these is terrible, devices no more than 5 meters away just not picking up any signal from any other device. And the drop off in speed from one device is incredibly bad. On the 3rd hop you have dropped from 250mb+ to just 2mb. Its going straight back for a refund. The bottom of the range TP Link I have which was less than half the price, offers so much more bang for your buck, easier to set-up, better range, and less drop off in speed between hops. I expected so much more from google, so disappointing.

I bought this product to replace my Virgin hub 3. After suffering months of poor/non existent internet signal 10 ft away from the router, I was quite desperate to find a sustainable solution. Enter Google WiFi (2016). Although I wasn't familiar with wifi mesh previously (and not technically inclined by any means), I was super impressed by how easy it was set to set up. Installation takes 10 mins max, guided by the Google WiFi app and is ready to go. Additionally in urban environments, it's important to have automatic channel switching and security updates, something the router does automatically. I will make one caveat on the above. Although the above is an improvement on the Virgin hub alone, I ended up buying a nest wifi router from Google as my primary router (in addition). As the latter has faster speeds and better coverage, I would strongly recommend this if you have a place with lots of walls and dead spots to optimize your mesh coverage. I found with the Google WiFi mesh system alone, I would struggle to perfect connection in my house. However with the upgrade, I get great connection and faster speeds.

I bought the Google mesh hubs to replace our existing Wi-Fi extenders in May. During lockdown the whole family were spread out across the house trying to use the Wi-Fi to work, attend school zoom calls etc., and we need something better suited for the task. The google mesh network was great at eliminating our previous Wi-Fi blackspots and improving the consistency of signal strength across our 4 bed house even getting through solid walls and chimney breasts. The system is also very easy to setup – just connect one of the hubs to your router and it acts as the main hub for the other satellite hubs, which will auto connect. The hubs change colour to show their status – white for working, blue for powering up, flashing white for synching to network and red/orange for connection issues. The google Wi-Fi and home mobile apps are great for managing the system and provide other tools such as checking the network speed (including to specific devise), usage and whether to prioritise or block Wi-Fi to specific devices. The latter option are great if you want make a work video call doesn’t drop out or if you want to make sure no devices are used by the kids after lights out! I deliberately chose this version of the Google mesh network as a) it doesn’t have speakers (which I didn’t want) b) The hubs all have Ethernet ports which enable you to connect devices that are not Wi-Fi enabled to the network. All in all a great buy!

I have extended my house and now my bedroom has an external wall between it and the main house. Despite paying for 200mbps virgin wifi, I was still only getting about 12mbps in my bedroom. I tried a wifi extender. That increased it to about 20mbps but I still struggled when streaming Netflix etc. I purchased 3 of these google mesh hubs. I now have about 40mbps in my bedroom. I can also prioritise my tv when streaming through the google wifi app so I'm very pleased. The setup was quite easy using the app. I thought I could place the hubs anywhere and wanted to put one in my troublesome bedroom but they each had to be within a certain distance of each other to get a signal. My nearest one is about 5 metres from my TV but always has a great signal. One is on the landing and there was nothing there to sit it on so I purchased a wall mount for it from amazon. Another feature I love is being able to set limits on each device you connect. I have set my 13 year old sons Xbox and mobile to lose wifi at 8pm. I also love being able to prioritise any device I need at any time. I would definitely recommend it.

Pros: The units look great, the app is very well designed and easy to use Cons: I found the performance varied from OK to very poor, the units are expensive I had read some very good reviews about the Google mesh wifi kit so was expecting great things from it. The units look good so there were no worries about trying to hide them from sight. Setup was fairly simple, but only after realising from reviews here and elsewhere that you have to put any internet router (e.g. in my case a Virgin super hub) into modem mode; simple to do but if you didn't realise that you could be fighting with it for a long time. You need to download their app, which is very well designed and user friendly. I got the mesh units up and running and talking to each other and apparently all giving very good data speeds. But it wasn't long before one of them went offline, presumably because it couldn't communicate properly with either of the other two units. Often there would be two offline. Each time this happens I needed to restart the unit in question to persuade it to talk to the rest of its little family. The problems persisted. I moved units, I restarted them, I did a full reset several times. Still not right, so I'm now returning the whole lot to Amazon and going back to Homeplug / Powerline, which always just works straight out of the box and is pretty much rock solid even if the throughput might not be quite what Google mesh claims to be able to achieve (but never did in my experience). I suspect the problem is that my house is fairly large - although still within the recommended max area for a 3-unit setup - and has block walls. I tried moving units but there's only so many places where there's both an electrical socket and a suitable surface for putting the unit which isn't already occupied. With Homeplug, by contrast, you can have your internet connection anywhere there's an electrical outlet. It's a shame because from both professional and end user reviews this was touted almost as the solution to all your domestic internet worries and I was looking forward to using it. But unless it's completely trouble free and performs exceptionally, it turns out to be a very expensive waste of time.

Purchased this in place of the Netgear Orbi (which I had major issues with) and found that this was far easier to setup and get working. On receiving the packaging it was in Google's usual packaging format and not bulky like other products and was also a lot lighter. On installing the first unit, I downloaded the Google WiFi and followed the instructions and the first device was easily installed, then followed instructions for installing the other two. I was able to change the network name and password and this was done automatically across the units and they all received the latest updates. Overall for installation of 3 units it took about 20 minutes, this was over 2 hours quicker than the Orbi and was nowhere as complicated. Google just done everything with minimal input from me. The speeds of the units are brilliant and from the app you can test the download speed from the internet to the main unit, test the performance of the mesh and also the performance to other devices connected to the units. The app will also let you see the usage of individual devices providing realtime/day/week/month usage. The transition between each unit is also seemless and I'm impressed with the system, compared to what I was previously using. The system can also be set up to run in bridge mode(AP mode) but you do lose a lot of the features, including the monitoring of the network, no mesh abilities as each unit will work independently, no security as these will all be done by the your main router. The issues that I've found is that Google have disabled IPv6 over PPPoE which is used by most providers using fibre, even after trying to enable it, I'm still unable to get IPv6 working and there are a few posts on their product forums about this. I do think this is a bit of a silly move as everyone is moving towards IPv6 and hope they re-activate this and also enable mesh network when using as an AP. I've been in touch with Google in regards to the IPv6 issues when connected to another router and as far as google are concerned ipv6 will not work, even though their support pages say it will work. this is a major limiting factor with the system. You can only use Ipv6 if GW was acting as your router