Nest WiFi Professional evaluation: Google’s WiFi 6E mesh is extra approachable than the remaining

Google’s pitch for its personal mesh networking merchandise has been to give attention to intelligent trade-offs to maintain the associated fee down, making it accessible to the lots. The Nest WiFi Pro, the corporate’s newest flagship, builds upon that current (and profitable) system with the addition of WiFi 6E. A part of its attraction is the Google model, plus the promise of normal free software program updates and tight integrations with many of the world’s sensible residence gamers. In a head-to-head race, the Nest WiFi Professional might be bested by loads of its rivals, however Google’s user-friendliness means it’s the default possibility for just about everybody.

{Hardware}

As I stated in our foremost mesh WiFi purchaser’s information, I’ve been utilizing Google’s first-generation model for years, and likewise reviewed the second-generation Nest WiFi, so I really feel like that is my turf. The Nest WiFi Professional is Google’s first to harness WiFi 6/6E, which was irritatingly omitted from the final mannequin on price grounds. Due to this, they’ll’t combine together with your current Google / Nest WiFi {hardware}, which means that any improve would require you to start out contemporary.

By way of appears, the Professionals are ovoid bumps that stand taller than their predecessors and demand more room. ‘Spherical again, you’ll discover the jack for the barrel energy cable and two ethernet ports which Google says “assist 1 Gbps wired speeds per router.” Inside, it packs a Cortex A35 dual-core 64-bit ARM CPU paired with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage like its predecessor. It’s accessible in 4 colours: Snow, Linen, Fog and Lemongrass.

The Nest WiFi Professional doesn’t reserve a piece of its spectrum for devoted backhaul. As an alternative, it dynamically shunts visitors across the accessible house for optimum efficiency, which can primarily happen on the 6GHz band, since loads of units in our houses don’t have the parts essential to entry it. Google adds that utilizing 6GHz as backhaul frees up numerous house within the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, bettering efficiency for all the opposite units on the community.

One attention-grabbing tweak from the final mannequin is which you could’t get the Professional with a built-in sensible speaker. That is good, since I by no means favored the thought of getting a speaker inside my WiFi equipment. However I’ll concede that I did like having the ability to use Spotify Join on the original Nest WiFi in my kitchen with out shopping for one other speaker.

Set up

Since it is a Google product, anticipate the Nest WiFi Professional to be comparatively straightforward to put in via your cellphone — for many of the course of. In the event you, like me on this occasion, already had a Google mesh in place, you may have to manufacturing facility reset, wipe and deactivate every little thing. As soon as accomplished, you may simply join the primary node to your modem with an ethernet cable (equipped) and let the app do the remaining for you.

The Google House app will nearly immediately discover the brand new product ready to be put in and get you began. It took me ten minutes to get the primary one working, and that included an unrelated difficulty with my cable modem that pressured me to restart. It took one other ten minutes to put in the opposite nodes, however all I needed to do was scan the QR code and comply with the on-screen directions.

The app doesn’t supply any recommendation about optimum node placement or figuring out potential weak spots. Google’s web site affords the inventory line that it’s best to put a node midway between the first and wherever in your house you want WiFi. That’s nice, however I believe novice customers may admire extra steerage, particularly in the event that they’re fighting structural points that imply adjoining rooms aren’t getting sign.

Efficiency

I don’t have many WiFi 6E-compatible units at residence, and there was a good distance between the closest node and my workplace, so I did not have excessive hopes that switching to the brand new system would ship nice positive aspects. But, in comparison with the WiFi module in my workplace, which is related through Ethernet to my modem, I noticed my velocity bounce from round 120 Mbps to a median of 240 Mbps.

The one place the place the Nest WiFi Professional’s connection was something aside from eye-wateringly quick was in my infamous again bed room. The room, surrounded by Victorian (and trendy) plumbing, was beforehand barren territory for my older system, but it surely was now joined up right here. And whereas speeds fell to 63 Mbps, I by no means noticed a dropout or stutter in efficiency. Actually, WiFi efficiency in that room is greater than ample to work and take video calls.

Regardless of the less modules, connectivity was steady and I by no means seen a drop after I ran between rooms. Armed with all of the units I may muster, me and my children scuttled round the home strolling to the furthest factors of the home watching loads of streamed video, and none reported a difficulty. My common velocity checks shook down to shut to 250 Mbps, and the connection was clean sufficient for my functions.

Further options

The Nest WiFi Professional helps Matter and Thread, so you may management your sensible residence from the Google House app. Once I opened the app after putting in the brand new {hardware}, it requested if I wished to hook up with my Philips Hue and iRobot merchandise. You’ll nonetheless have to have your Hue Bridge related, nonetheless, so that you’re not saving a plug in your Ethernet change. That’s unlucky in comparison with, say, some Eero fashions which have built-in Zigbee items that mean you can ditch the bridge totally. However when you’re all-in on Google’s Assistant then you definitely’ll profit from having every little thing attached inside one app.

A key promoting level of Google’s community merchandise is the promise to maintain them updated with software program and safety updates. The corporate has rolled out fairly regular updates during the last seven years and there’s no indication but that it’s going to cease. I’ve been pretty proud of the work accomplished for my first-generation Google WiFi pucks. If I do have a priority, it’s that Google generally axes merchandise not lengthy after launch, so that you do run the danger of investing within the firm just for its impatience to get the higher of it.

App and controls

I most popular when you possibly can management your Google WiFi via the standalone app, however nowadays it’s all rolled into the corporate’s House app. That’s nice as a one-stop store for any suitable sensible residence devices you might need, but it surely’s much less complete. When managing your community, you may have a look at per-device visitors, set precedence entry (or pause connection to) any machine on the community. You’ll additionally be capable to run velocity and mesh connection checks to make sure that your community efficiency is perfect.

A few of these options aren’t commonplace on different routers, and a few you have to pay additional to entry. Others could give you deal extra, too. In the event you’re searching for extra fine-grain management, you in all probability gained’t discover it on the Nest. As a lot as Google calls this a “Professional” router, it’s extra to gesture towards being extra premium, slightly than for precise professionals. There’s no entry to among the harder-core settings or browser-based controls web page for energy customers. As an alternative, this can be a locked-down, curated expertise for individuals who need their WiFi to work with out a lot .

For parental controls, you may arrange teams throughout the Household WiFi menu to pause a number of units without delay. You too can schedule entry occasions, a function that a number of different mesh merchandise anticipate you to pay to make use of. And whereas there’s no particular method to filter particular person web sites, you may designate some {hardware} to be routed through Google’s SafeSearch to dam a broad swathe of content material on-line. What this technique lacks is any fine-grain management for involved mother and father or the power to watch a particular machine’s searching historical past. However I’ve all the time been of the opinion that overzealous parenting simply creates children who be taught at a younger age to cover what they’ve been as much as.

Wrap-up

What Google’s WiFi merchandise have all the time provided is a reasonably acceptable mix of energy, worth and efficiency. You gained’t be moving into the nitty-gritty components of working a community, however you’re additionally not paying an enormous amount of money. It ought to attraction to individuals who actually don’t wish to fear about doing rather more than working the odd velocity check and shortly establishing a visitor community with none stress. One thing just like the TP-Hyperlink XE75 may run quicker and supply extra options, however for this worth, Google’s remained true to its ethos of creating the proper compromises.