LinksysVelop MX4200 Tri-Band Whole Home Mesh WiFi 6 System (AX4200) Router, Extender & Booster up to 3000 sq ft, 3.5x Faster Speed for 40+ Devices, MU-MIMO & Parental Controls - 1 Pack, White

Intro - Setting up this device was a very straight forward. Turn it on, download an app, follow the guide and you're online. Obviously being a WiFi 6 (AX) device there is plenty to talk about when it comes to it's coverage and speed. To give a quick caveat, I'm sure this device could achieve much faster speeds with purely WiFi 6 clients. There are not many available so these tests were performed in a mixed environment. From a Apple Watch Series 3 (2.4Ghz WiFi 4 N standard) to an iPhone 11 (5Ghz WiFi 6 AX standard) and a couple of AC WiFi 5 standard laptops.Testing - when my iPhone 11 is in the same room as the Velop router it gets 705Mbps, a Lenovo laptop with an AC wifi adapter I get 866Mbps. Further away on the ground floor my iPhone gets 300-400Mbps on average, the laptop gets 400-700Mbps. The WiFi signal barely manages to go beyond our outer house walls. I am certain this is because our house is made of traditional stone on the outside and pretty solid masonry on the ground floor between rooms. Explains the above speed drop off for the iPhone. So I'll likely need a second device in/or near our conservatory to get garden WiFi. As a baseline reference; with an older Asus RT68U AC router this is significantly better coverage for a single router. Overall I am very impressed.Device Management - is a different kettle of fish. You can use a web browser and login to it. However, it's very keen you use the Linksys App instead. The app does it's job well. It's geared towards novice users who just want to set it up. Speaking of which the app device setup flow was a piece of cake. Very simple UI with minor user input, it's impressive how things have changed.The apps main purpose seems to be more about current status and info, than making any significant change to its operation. It does lack information on device connectivity speed (I had to use a separate app for testing mobile to router connection speeds). It is also missing control which of the tri-bands have specific WiFi traffic on. For instance I'd like my iPhone on one 5Ghz band at WiFi 6 speeds, the other 5Ghz band in mixed mode for WiFi 4 + 5 speeds. 2.4Ghz for any device that needs to defer to it for better range. This is technically managed by the routers own algorithms as is the channel selection for each to be broadcast. I appreciate that is a selling point of this device - self management be it a mesh setup or a single node. I just like to make my own technical decisions. Ultimately for the price of the device it does give you a very technically sophisticated device that operates very effectively. For said price, I'd have expected an expert mode, allowing me to change what I want though.Summary - I think the product itself is excellent and does exactly what I needed it to do; make sure all our devices get WiFi and the router has plenty of resources in reserve to manage all the traffic we throw at it. I did originally have the Velop WHW0303 3 pack (WiFi 5 AC Tri-band version) but wanted more wired ports for our Hive, office desktop computer etc. WiFi 6 also future proofed us and because it's physically bigger allows for more antennas for each one of the three WiFi bands. I'd like to see Apple Homekit support as the cheaper WHW0303 has it advertised as 'Coming Soon'. So I'd hope that extends to their top product too. Also expose more control in the app for the routers features.

Whilst this is an expensive mesh solution, it has worked perfectly so far and done exactly what it is intended for - creating a single network that covers our house. We have an old property with a newer extension and previous BT Home Hub had areas it would not reach, and we had to use two networks to get coverage downstairs, and upstairs was always extremely patchy.The Linksys app worked really well and guided the set up using our Home Hub 4 as the modem. When plugging in the parent node, the app says use any port on your modem, but it actually has to be an ethernet port - the WAN port will not work. It just took a minute or two to connect, choose a new network name and it was a simple as that. The second node connected without a problem and the app helped check that the position upstairs was suitable. The third node for our extension has a wired connection, as we put in a Cat 5 cable during the extension build. Again, this was simple to set up - just switch on the node (close to the parent) and add it to the network as a wireless node. Move it to your desired location and use your Cat 5 cable to attach one of the the node's ethernet ports to a parent node ethernet port. It's a simple as that, as the system automatically will switch the new child node to wired set up. All 3 nodes now cover our 4 bed house and single story extension in a unified network, which is great for mobile wifi calling (very poor mobile network), shifting where you work, wireless printing etc. The speed of the wifi has noticeably improved with the tri-band too, which is a bonus, though it wasn't that bad previously.One final adjustment was to change the Home Hub configuration via the online Home Hub Manager to disable its wifi, just so there was no contention with two networks. It's now just working purely as a modem and seems fine to do so.Overall, very happy with the investment in this. It may be pricier than some, but so far no complaints at all.