After I wrote A Mesh WiFi Network is Important to Apple Home Success, I started reading the /r/amazoneero subreddit a lot more carefully.
Here’s a good question:
I got an Eero Pro and 3 Beacons just about three years ago. Starting to do a little research about what I might get next. Either I’ll want something with a little newer tech or these will die….
/u/impreza77, How do you like your Eero 6/6E?
- PREMIUM WI-FI 6 PERFORMANCE – eero Pro 6covers up to 2,000 sq. ft. with support for wifi speeds up to a gigabit.
- SAY GOODBYE TO DEAD SPOTS AND BUFFERING – eero’s mesh wifi technology adapts to your space—so you can confidently stream 4K video, game, and video conference across your home.
- MORE WIFI FOR MORE DEVICES – Wi-Fi 6 supports faster wifi than prior standards and permits 75+ connected devices
- SET UP IN MINUTES – The eero app walks you through setup and allows you to manage your network from anywhere. Plus, free customer support is available 7 days a week.
- CONNECT TO ALEXA – eero Pro 6 doubles as a Zigbee smart home hub, making it easy to connect and control compatible devices on your network with Alexa.
To which I said:
I discuss parts of my experience with eero Pro and eero Pro 6 in A Mesh WiFi Network is Important to Apple Home Success. But the upshot is this: I had an eero Pro with two Beacons setup when we moved to this house in Fall 2020. I replaced my eero Pro with an eero Pro 6, because the biggest bottleneck in my network was that the eero Pro couldn’t route the full bandwidth that I was paying for in Verizon FiOS’ Gigabit Service (approximately 940 / 940).
What I got out of upgrading to eero Pro 6 was better in-house coverage than the old eero Pro. This allowed me to put the Beacons outside the house. See Sockitbox Makes Indoor Smart Devices Work Outside, which extended my WiFi network to just about the borders of our 3/4 acre property. eero Beacons work as well under the eero Pro 6 as they did under the eero Pro, they just don’t provide WiFi 6.
I would not personally go to:
- eero 6 because it doesn’t support Gigabit,
- eero 6+ because it’s “our most affordable Gigabit system”, but the Pro 6 is tri-band while the 6+ is dual-band. So, I think better support of things like IoT / Smart Home devices on the Pro 6,
- eero Pro 6E unless you have the devices that can use the 6 GHz WiFi 6E radio band. Otherwise the Pro 6 is cheaper, and you can justify only replacing the main WiFi Router as a mid-life upgrade to the overall system.
You don’t have the Internet bandwidth that necessitates the choices I made. Based on what you say your applications are, you would probably really appreciate an Internet bandwidth upgrade, if providers can deliver and price is not prohibitive.
The one thing I just started to notice is that I am experiencing intermittent dropouts in FaceTime Audio calls on the parts of the WiFi network that are served by the eero Beacons. I don’t get many of those FaceTime Audio calls, so I am not currently planning to address this.
I guess what I would do if I were to really need to do something is to replace the Beacons with eero 6 Extenders one at a time, and see if the bandwidth change from 350 to 500 Mbps and the WiFi 5 to 6 support helped on the FaceTime Audio call glitch.
Good luck!
/u/daveaiello
If you have a three year old Mesh WiFi network, like /u/impreza77, you can improve performance significantly. But do you need to go to the latest and greatest, and do you need to replace all of the Mesh WiFi nodes at once?
Our experience says, no, you don’t need the latest and greatest– especially if your key devices don’t support WiFi 6E. And again, no, you don’t need to replace all of your nodes at once. The most important node to upgrade is the router that eero calls the Gateway, especially if you are paying for Gigabit Internet access and your Gateway Router does not fully support Gigabit Internet.