Hiding in the home office? A wifi mesh system can make sure you don’t lose any speed

TP's Wifi extender connects into your router and sends almost as strong a signal to the second box

Easy fix: Google Nest Wifi slots in with your existing Google devices

TP's Wifi extender connects into your router and sends almost as strong a signal to the second box

Easy fix: Google Nest Wifi slots in with your existing Google devices

TP's Wifi extender connects into your router and sends almost as strong a signal to the second box

Adrian Weckler Twitter Email

March 25 2021 02:30 AM

Many of us are working from home. We naturally want to work in different rooms when there are multiple family members at home working. But our wifi often seems to stop in certain rooms. What can you do? Here are two ‘mesh’ wifi systems that are far more reliable than patchy ‘boosters’ or ‘extenders’.

1. TP Link Deco M5

Price: €229

TP Link’s mid-priced, three-pieced package is good for larger homes, as the third box lets you reach up to 30 metres away from your router, even through thick walls.

It’s typical of how mesh wifi systems work. In plain English, it connects into your existing wifi router and sends almost as strong a signal to the second small box, somewhere else in the house. That second box then becomes a sort of a twin to your router, capable of beaming out almost as strong a signal as your first router. You can then add the third one in an even more distant part of the house (or a home office out the back), if you like; that third one connects to the second one in a daisy-chain effect, losing very little of the speed you get from the first, original router.

Each of the three small white boxes has its own plug and adapter. In our house, I tested it by connecting the first box into the router, which is placed in our hall. I put the second one on the landing, where there’s a socket. Right away, the signal strength went from around 40Mbs on the landing to around 70Mbs in every room.

Because ours is a recently-built townhouse, it has a third floor where the main bedroom is. So that’s where I put the third TP-Link wifi box. It takes its signal from the one on the landing and propagates it in the bedroom. The result is that I get around 80pc of the original router’s signal in the farthest area of the house, where it would otherwise fall as low as 10pc.

The system is agnostic as to the original broadband source. So it works equally well for a mobile 4G broadband setup as it does for a fibre, cable or phone line setup.

It’s also pretty easy to set up. You just download the TP-Link app and it walks you through it, telling you when each thing is successfully connected.

Easy fix: Google Nest Wifi slots in with your existing Google devices

Google Nest Wifi

Price: €219 from Store.google.com

Google couldn’t resist throwing a smart feature into its Nest Wifi system, although this hikes the price a little.

It comes in two units, a main router and a ‘point’. The router plugs into your main broadband connection. The ‘point’ unit can then be placed anywhere up to 10 metres from the original point.

That ‘point’, by the way, is now also a fully functioning smart speaker using Google’s Assistant. In other words, you can ask it the weather, the news, for an alarm or a music selection. The speaker is absolutely decent for what it is – it projects clearly and with a reasonable amount of bass in it. It works well as a radio, for example.

The whole system works using a ‘mesh’ wifi network, which means that you can add extra ‘points’ in case you want to add the back garden or some other area of your demesne. However, these extra points aren’t cheap, at €139 each – which is more than Google’s Nest smart speaker (€99).

One nice thing about this system is that you can switch in and out of older Google Wifi setups. So if you happen to already own an older Google Wifi unit, you don’t need to buy the full Nest kit – just the ‘point’ parts. They’ll work fine with your existing Google Wifi router.

The main advantage of the new kit over the old one is that it spreads the signal more widely. It’s all relatively easy to set up too, although you’ll obviously need to have a spare socket handy.

One of the things I like about Google’s hardware is that they take a lot of the messy heavy lifting off your plate. There’s no entering a system app to find out whether you’re using optimum frequencies – Google’s tech handles it all for you.

That said, you’re paying a slight premium for it here.