Eero 6 mesh Wi-Fi review: The hardware
The Eero 6 nodes are moulded in shiny white plastic, with a wedge-shaped design that makes them look sleeker than they really are. With a footprint of just 99 x 97mm they’re physically unobtrusive, and each one draws its power from a USB Type-C socket at the rear, with no bulky bricks or protuberant cables to worry about.
The only other connectors are a pair of Gigabit Ethernet sockets at the back of the router node. One of these connects to your modem, while the other lets you connect a single wired client (or a switch if you want to connect more than one device). The extenders don’t have Ethernet ports, so the Eero 6 can’t directly support wired devices in other rooms.
On top of each unit, a single multicoloured LED glows white to let you know that everything’s okay – or green, blue, yellow or red to indicate various conditions. The range of different colours can be a bit bamboozling but it means there’s no ambiguity as to what the Eero is trying to tell you.
As for positioning, Amazon recommends that Eero 6 units should be placed no more than 15 metres apart. With two nodes, this gives you the option of extending the signal for well over 30 metres in a straight line – or, of course, you can dot them around your home in whatever configuration helps reach the areas that most need a boost.
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Eero 6 mesh Wi-Fi review: The Eero app
The Eero platform doesn’t support web-based configuration. To set up and manage your new mesh network you’ll have to use the mobile app on Android or iOS. Happily, this works seamlessly: once I’d plugged in my Eero 6 units, the app used Bluetooth to automatically detect and register them. Since the app links to your Amazon account, most people won’t even need to set up credentials; just provide a name and passphrase for your network, and you’re away.
Once your network is running, the main screen of the app shows the status of your internet connection, and of your Eero nodes. Scroll down and you can browse connected clients and review ones that have recently been online. You can give them intuitive names and icons if you wish too, which is just as well, since the app sometimes shows only a cryptic hardware ID.
One feature I particularly like is the option to receive a notification on your phone whenever a new client connects for the first time. This makes it all but impossible for an intruder to sneak onto your network without your knowledge. It helps, too, that the Eero doesn’t support any form of WPS, so there’s no way to connect without the passphrase, although this can make connecting clients a bit fiddly.
The home screen also lets you create and edit “profiles”, which are how the Eero manages parental controls. Under each profile you can define one or more “scheduled pauses”, during which internet access is blocked. Profiles can then be assigned to any device, although each device can only have a single profile applied to it.
Buttons along the bottom of the app screen access other pages. The Activity view lets you explore each client’s bandwidth usage and track the speed of your internet connection, while the Discover page lets you check in on any Amazon Echo devices on your network, and manage other smart home appliances courtesy of the Eero’s built-in Zigbee hub.
There’s also a link to “Eero Labs”, where you can try out new features. At the time of writing there are two toggles on this page, to enable DNS caching and the latest WPA3 security standard respectively. It’s good to have these options, but we’re not sure why they’re still stuck in beta – other routers have had full WPA3 support for more than two years now.
The other big feature you can manage from here is Amazon’s two-tier network security service. The basic level is Eero Secure, which blocks dangerous websites and unwanted adverts and allows you to add category-based web filtering to your profiles. A year’s trial is included with the Eero hardware, after which it costs £3 a month or £30 a year afterwards.
For all-round security, you can step up to the Secure+ package. This adds subscriptions to the 1Password password manager, Encrypt.me VPN and Malwarebytes virus scanner, for a total outlay of £99 a year. It’s not bad value if you want to use all those services across your network, but these aren’t necessarily the brands we’d have chosen. Check out our picks of the best password managers, best VPNs and best antivirus where you can find our recommendations.
The final tab in the Eero app is Settings. As you’d expect, here’s where you can modify your Wi-Fi name and security settings, configure the guest network and so forth. You can customise your DNS, DHCP and NAT settings too, and set up IP address reservation and port forwarding. Unexpectedly, you’ll also find an option to enable the IPv6-based Thread network protocol, although I’ve yet to see any devices that support it.
There’s little in the way of extras, however. Although the Eero app lets you monitor network traffic, there’s no configurable QoS to let you prioritise certain devices or types of traffic. Similarly, even though the Secure+ package includes a VPN service, VPN connections aren’t supported at the router level – you’ll have to install the software on each client you want to protect – and the router doesn’t integrate with Dynamic DNS services, either.
Wi-Fi settings are even slimmer. You can turn on band steering, to encourage devices to connect to the 5GHz network rather than the slower 2.4GHz network, but you get no option to split up the bands, which could cause a problem for some devices, and you have no control over radio frequencies and channel widths. We understand the Eero platform is designed to prioritise simplicity and accessibility, but advanced users are likely to find it frustrating.
