![]() It's the second new version of the Eero mesh router since Amazon acquired the company, and it adds in full support for Wi-Fi 6 while keeping the cost of a three-piece setup down at a reasonable $279 - just $30 more than the Wi-Fi 5 version sold for last year. Meanwhile, a two-piece setup with the Eero 6 router and one range-extending satellite costs $199. Mesh networking and Wi-Fi 6 can indeed make for a pretty killer combination, but Eero 6 comes with some caveats. For starters, though Amazon now says Eero 6 can hit top speeds of up to 900 Mbps, those top speeds are limited enough that Amazon initially recommended it for homes with internet connections of up to 500Mbps, well beneath what Wi-Fi 6 is capable of. If you're paying for internet speeds any faster than that, then you'll want a mesh router that's designed to take advantage of them, like the Netgear Orbi AX6000 ($700 for a two-pack), the Asus ZenWiFi AX ($450 for a two-pack), or Amazon's own upgrade model, the Eero Pro 6 ($600 for a three-pack). And note that all three of those alternatives are tri-band routers that include the usual 2.4 and 5GHz bands, plus a second 5GHz band dedicated to moving data between the router and its satellites. That's a key feature if you want a mesh router that gets the most out of Wi-Fi 6 - and the dual-band Eero 6 doesn't have it.Īll of that is understandable at this price, but the underpowered hardware puts a lot of pressure on Eero's mesh software to help this thing feel like an upgrade - and throughout my at-home tests, Eero came up short. The system seemed to struggle to make good decisions about when to route my connection through a satellite extender and when to connect me direct to the main router. ![]() Worse were the system's band-steering algorithms, which are designed to automatically move you between the 2.4 and 5GHz bands depending on which is best for your connection at any given moment. In too many cases, Eero failed to move me to the faster 5GHz band even when I was well within its range, and that brought my speeds crashing down by as much as 80%. Here's the shorter way of saying all that: The Eero 6 mesh has too many holes in it for me to recommend. The Eero 6 router (left) includes two gigabit Ethernet jacks, one of which you'll wire to your modem. The Eero 6 range extender (right) doesn't include Ethernet jacks at all.Īrriving in a tidy, rectangular box, the Eero 6 three-pack makes a decent first impression. The devices inside look identical, but they aren't - one is designed to serve as the main router, and along with the USB-C power port, it includes two gigabit Ethernet jacks, one of which you'll wire to your modem. ![]() The other Eero devices are range-extending satellites, and they don't include Ethernet jacks at all.
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