Linksys WHW0301 Velop Intelligent Mesh WiFi System: AC2200 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router, Wireless Network for Full-Speed Home Coverage (White, 1-Pack)

We have a somewhat large house. As such, WiFi coverage can be spotty depending on where you are, how many walls the signal has to go thru, what furniture is in the way, and all kinds of things like that. We have a relatively new router, a Linksys AC5400 Linksys AC5400 Tri Band Wireless Router, Works with Amazon Alexa (Max Stream EA9500) . It works well and has good coverage as in my iPhone and MacBook Pro both get good signal thruout most of the house. Things had been okay until we got a new DirecTV DVR. Our previous model had worked fine on the LInksys 5 GHz WiFi band but this new model couldn't keep a connection up if its life depended on it. We tried both the 5 GHz as well as the 2.5 GHz bands, changed channels, but no joy. So a conundrum: what to do? The alternatives we came up with included: - Running CAT6 thru the walls for a direct connection - Running Ethernet over our power lines - Setting up a mesh WiFi network The first option would have been best. Direct connect to our router; no outside interference; number of walls didn't matter (well, other than running the cable). So good all around. But running wires thru a 2-story house is basically a real pain in the rear. So while we could make this work, we decided not to because of the problems running the signal cables. The second option seemed reasonable. The interface devices were relative cheap. You plug on into a power outlet near your router, run a CAT6 cable to it, plug a second unit into an outlet near where you need your network signal, plug that into your device, and all it good. So we tried a pair of Zyxel AV2000 power line devices Zyxel AV2000 Powerline Kit, Pass-Thru, 2-port Gigabit, Brown Box (PLA5456BBKIT) . Initially, this worked well: green connection lights on both units, good signal where we needed it. But it didn't last. We had a storm roll thru with a couple of mild power spikes. That killed one of our units. All our computers and electronics are behinds UPS units; there were unphased. The Zyxel unit, however, had to be plugged into the wall directly as the Ethernet signal wouldn't make it thru UPS filtering. Hmmm...bad luck I suppose. So I bought a pair of additional units, plugged one it, and all was good with the world again. That was, however, until we tried to pull some bigger download thru the unit. Our green lights turned to yellow indicating poor signal quality. Our download speed went to virtually zilch no matter what we do. Bottom line: this did not work for our needs. Our final option was to try a mesh WiFi network. I have done IT work for my entire career. Setting up access points so that you get good WiFi coverage without interference through a structure can be anything from easy peasy to downright impossible. So it was with some degree of apprehension that I decided to give this a go. As it turns out, any misgivings were ill founded as setup was a breeze. The steps were simple: - Load a free app onto your iPhone and Android phone - Wire one unit to your router and power it on - Use the app to setup your new WiFi SSID and password plus configure the device (2-3 min) - Plug a second device into power where you need WiFi coverage then use the app to configure it (again, 2-3 min) - Repeat if you have a 3rd or 4th device So this was cool: I now had another WiFi network running in my house. I joined my iPhone to it then tested it for ping, jitter, download, and upload speeds. These were the same readings I got when I tested via my MacBook Pro directly connected to that same router. Okay, we're good: strong signal, no performance penalty. So I joined my DirecTV DVR to this new network confident that I had solved the problem. Unfortunately, things did not go well. Even though I had a good connection. the DirecTV device couldn't use the signal. It told me this by freezing and becoming unresponsive any time I tried to download something over this new network. It was so hung up that I had to power cycle it to clear the condition. Well, phhhhtttttt (that's a highly technical term we us in IT when something should work but doesn't). Then I remembered: each Velop unit has a pair of RJ-45 connectors on the bottom. I wonder: could I run a short CAT6 cable from the Velop to the DirecTV DVR and use a wired rather than a wireless connection? So I gave it a shot and it worked. Not only did it work but it has stayed working ever since with nary a whimper and zero problems. Pros: - Works well - Reliable - Really easy to setup even for non-IT folks Cons: - Somewhat expensive Bottom line: - I would absolutely recommend the Velop to anyone looking for uniform, reliable WiFi coverage throughout their home.

Good performance but APP needs some work. I have struggled as a non-IT tech, but as an engineer with some technical capacity, to get decent and reliable WI-FI in my house without having the place festooned with ugly IT hardware. I even installed ethernet cable to strategic points to get wireless access points hooked up -however setting these up for success seemed to require several year of IT training. I ditched a standard high-end router and WAPs for these. So far so good in terms of WIFI performance. The set-up and monitoring APP is simple if all goes well, but leaves something to be desired : - Gets stuck on location /finding an additional node and keeps asking you to reset . Only way to get out of this seems to be to switch i=phone off. - Dropped a node off the monitoring APP that was previously connected. Status light on node shows it supposedly working ok. Its recognised in the system via ethernet connection. - Told me it couldn't connect a node, but then when I quit it appeared. Minimal specific feedback . -There is very little in the APP instructions on connecting ethernet to it -I don't know wether this confuses APP vs status lights I think part of my seemingly lifelong WI FI struggles to dat has been heavy interference from neighbours. I get a strong signal from several nearby houses as we all play the Wi Fi arms race. The channel optimizer feature is good as it takes the guess work out and seems to help. It would be useful to have more information on wether its possible to integrate with existing WAPs -even if the answer is no it would be clear so then I can permanently decommission them. UPDATE : After a firmware upgrade the APP seems to be working as expected -all my nodes are showing up with correct status per lights on node. The WiFi performance continues to be excellent and a vast improvement.

I live in a smaller apartment and I didn’t necessarily need a “mesh” network, what I really needed is a reliable network that can automatically switch between 2.4 and 5 GHz because my gigabit internet works only on the 5 GHz while the 2.4 GHz is less than 10% of the full speed. This is where the Velop does an outstanding job. While our computers, smart phones and tablets can easily connect to a 5 GHz network, the several smart devices we have can not most of the time. I don’t want to go into the details of the exact devices and brands, but what I noticed is that several smart devices can “see” and “connect” to my Gigabit 5 GHz network, but the connection drops several times and in many cases that leads to resetting and restarting with all the inconvenience that goes with that. After installing the Velop, I never had a single problem with any of my 18 smart devices. Once again, I live in 1,100 sq ft apartment and I only needed one Velop. Besides, it looks really cool and installation took me less than five minutes. I have it at the furthest corner at a corner room and the signal is excellent all over the apartment. What an amazing device. It is worth every penny.

I very much like this router, but it is a bit more expensive than I would like. If this router could setup a wireless bridge (instead of just a wired bridge), then this review would be 5 stars. That being said, my setup is over wifi to a main house, where I live in an in-law unit. Other options to connect to wifi in the main house have all been terrible at best, and this router has been stable and seems to offer 50+Mbps consistently (that's the connection to the internet, so likely the connection to the router in the main house is well over that speed, but I just haven't clocked it). Other setups that did not succeed: * I was unable to flash openwrt and LEDE onto my linksys ea3500 to create a wireless bridge * replacing the provided comcast router with my linksys ea3500 in the main house provided a weaker, less stable connection (via desktop wifi) * connecting to main house wifi via desktop PCI wireless card and sharing internet through another ethernet interface (there are 2 on my desktop) was the most stable, but only reached speeds of 6+Mbps, very inconsistently (frequent connection drops, and choppy connection even when not dropped) * TP-Link AV200 ethernet over power either had too much interference or somehow was not able to send data between outlets in the main house and in-law unit * Linksys AC1900 Gigabit range extender provided a decent connection, but would drop out entirely every 30-60 minutes when using my PS4, but was stable with just internet connection (typical browsing, and some streaming of twitch.tv or netflix) Finally, I decided a mesh wifi system seemed to be the best way to have 2 radios that could establish a strong enough connection to cross outer walls and a bit of the roof of the main house and the outer walls of the in-law unit (which is a little bit higher than the main house, so I'm not sure how much of a role the roof of the main house played in blocking wifi signal). Note also that the router in the main house and in the in-law unit are about 25 feet apart, so the materials in-between the routers seem to be the biggest factor in blocking wifi signal. Overall, I've had this product for a few days and have experienced only 1 drop, and otherwise I have been able to fully utilize my network now, and so am very happy with the situation.

We have AT&T and used their WiFi and it was always flaky. Then after many visits from them and rebooting the router etc, one smart AT&T technician came over and said we should turn off the WiFi and plug in Linksys Velop nodes. We plugged on into the back of the router and placed the others around the house. Instant fix! Setup is easy, WiFi speed is great and the kids are on multiple concurrent Zoom calls with no complaints. It has both 2.4ghz and 5ghz so we run phones, computers, WiFi power outlets and all our Ring cameras concurrently. We have never had an AT&T tech over since. The app is really good and simple to turn off devices that you don’t want. We had ONE issue the other night the prompted me to write this review. We had an internet outage and I changed the system password and one node just wouldn’t take the password. I called Linksys at 10pm and the agent was SO knowledgeable and helpful. She talked me through resetting things and got it all back up and bulletproof again. These are very reliable but stuff will go wrong with anything and when it does its so important to have the best tech support and Linksys has that. Could not be happier with the whole package.

Picked up two of these when it went on sale. The good: The only real advantage here is having a "single network" over a wide area, which is very convenient if you're running a lot of Wi-Fi devices for a smart home. The bad: It was kind of a real pain in the ass to set up. Not as straight forward as you would want, even if it tries to dumb down a lot of the steps. Coverage is relatively good, though each node is not quite as strong as a single strong router. It's slow to respond when setting up (like really slow) and rebooting. DO NOT USE THE DEVICE PRIORITIZATION OPTION. This slowed my internet speed greatly when on a Gigabit connection (we're talking 950mbps down to 480). Perhaps it won't be as bad on slower connections, I don't know. The ugly: This seems to be a mesh issue in general (Google topics on Seamless Roaming and AP steering), but switching from one node to the next if you wander far away from your original connection point is supposedly controlled by your device. Even if your device support it, It only switches as a last resort. This means that it does NOT allow you to wander around the entire area freely and seamlessly. I would argue that this makes it even worse than normal routers in that aspect. The workaround is that if you wander away from your original node and connection drops drastically, you can choose to just disable and re-enable your Wi-Fi on your phone (or other mobile device) and it'll connect to the nearest node. It's either that, or wander far enough that you drop off the original connection and it'll reconnect to the nearest node in range. Usually if you wait long enough, it'll fix itself but you might have shitty Wi-Fi connection in that time. As I said, it's not a Velop-specific issue but it's something to beware of for those looking to get into the whole Mesh network setup. It's very device-dependent. Setup: Modem wired directly to Velop main node. Velop main node wired directly secondary node, which in turn runs out to my switches. Edit 2 years later: In the end, after nonstop disconnects, I believe the issue is that thjs router has a maximum number of wifi devices that can be connected at one time. Exceeding that limit causes other devices to disconnected. Please don't waste your time.

This unit was purchased to replace an Apple airport that was several years old and no longer doing the job. We have a 1500sf 2/3 ground floor condo. I debated buying the 2-pack and decided to try one first. Setup was super easy. I was a bit apprehensive when the only instructions in the box were to download the app. But from the time I opened to box to updating my devices was about fifteen minutes and much of that was debating about passwords and what to name it. The difference it made in the quality of my WiFi improved 100%. It is as though I purchased a new iPad. Games that had been freezing and kicking me out are working smoothly. So far the coverage is more than adequate for our space so I will not need a second unit. I am very pleased with my new router!

This is a great router, it was easy to setup with the app and works great. I only started with a single unit for my house approx 1900 sq ft 2 story and my whole house has coverage so there is no need for me to get a second unit. I can’t speak on the mesh network part as I only have one unit, but it seems like a great addition if needed. One thing to be aware of that I missed when ordering. There is only 2 ports on this unit where most wireless routers have at lease 4 built in. I used one port from my cable modem and the second to uplink to a switch which feeds my wired network. The router did also supply DHCP etc. on my wired network as well (I was a little worried it might not with the lack of ports) I would have been irritated if I didn’t have a spare switch around and had to Order one afterwords.

They're good but not great. I already have 2 nodes and needed 1 more to complete the coverage in my home, as the one upstairs doesn't reach all the way to the back of my house. Pretty easy to set up if the signal is alright for pairing to the parent node. Connection speed I find is random in my house. I find any of my devices will have issues getting a constant fast connection and maintaining one. All in all these are nice routers with a few bugs that need to get ironed out. As for receiving my Linksys Velop, it was ahead of schedule by a day and no damage to box.

Quick integration with my existing linksys to boost coverage

Received in good condition!

Decidí comprar un solo nodo ya que mi casa no es muy amplia pero todos los muros son de concreto con lo que la perdida de señal era muy latente con los modems comunes. Mi primer experiencia con 1 solo nodo fue que mejoro el alcance pero aun así tenia puntos sin internet y la mayoría de los dispositivos se conectaban a la red de 2.4Ghz la cual el tiene mucha interferencia por los dispositivos comunes y el ancho de banda era muy bajo ya que yo tengo 150MB. Decidí comprar 2 nodos mas y con eso asegure una cobertura global de 5 Ghz con velocidades de descarga de de 148 MB, y así pude unificar la red local de mi domicilio. Actualmente ya no tengo problemas con que se desconecten los equipos o que Siri no controle todos mis dispositivos , etc. En general recomiendo el producto pero calen con 1 y con ese se pueden dar cuenta cuántos nodos les hace falta para una red de 5ghz. Saludos!!!

Evidente la calidad de la señal de cada nodo vendrá de la construccion de tu casa , tengo buena recepción en toda la propiedad con muy poca degradación en lo que sobresale es en el modulamiento de trafico , un modem tri-banda permite tener mas de una persona en conferencia y viendo videos en tiempo, si tienes un smarthome o mas de 10 dispositivos conectados a tu red es momento de invertir , para hacerlo funcionar con homekit tienes que bajar el firmware de la pagina de US e instalarlo manualmente , pero funciona sin problemas lo tengo ya en el 3 dia funcionando con homekit sin problema