Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX mesh router – simple is as simple does (network review)

When we get too smart for our own good and overthink the process, we make simple things needlessly complicated, a.k.a. routers and home Wi-Fi. The Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX mesh router is simple is as simple does.

And this is good for the tech unsavvy. So if this describes you and the thought of ms lag, Mbps, MBps, -dBm, MHz, GHz, and more tech terms make your eyes glaze over, then just buy it. It will work quite well in smaller single level homes and apartments.

But as we found in our deep-dive review, simple also means that some features are MIA (not that Joe or Jane Average needs them), the Wi-Fi range is not as expansive, it won’t support 75+ devices, and the smartphone interface (for Android and iOS) is very basic.

What is eero?

Eero (Est 2015) was a start-up to cash in on the future trend to mesh Wi-Fi. It burnt US$90M in venture funding and got seven patents largely for what it calls TrueMesh. Amazon’s US$97m takeover 2019 was for a company carrying crippling debt at over twice that amount.

Its first Amazon product was simply called eero – a dual-band Wi-Fi 5 AC router and satellite for homes up to 450m2. It claimed speeds of up to 350Mbps and support for 50+ connected devices. In my past life, I reviewed it and found the maximum speed was about 125Mbps, and it choked on <20 devices. Way less than advertised, and I decided then that dual-band Mesh was, in a word, a WOFTAM! Don’t worry; I said the same of all dual-band AC Mesh routers from Orbi, D-Link, TP-Link etc.

In 2021 I tested the dual-band AX1800 eero 6 in the same testbed. It claimed 500Mbps and 75+ devices, but it achieved 150Mbps and choked on around 30 devices. WOFTAM.

For comparison, I get up to 2400Mbps full-duplex from my NETGEAR AX11000 reference router, which supports 50+ devices. BTW – choking means unacceptable lag times using voice commands to access IoT devices.

Now we have the tri-band AX4200 eero Pro 6 offering gigabit (1000Mbps) speeds and 75+ connected devices. Let’s see how it fares.

Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX router 3-pack

Website	Range and Product Page (US pricing)
Price	1-pack $439 (185m2), 2-pack $TBA (325m2) and 3-pack $999 (557m2) Shop around for seasonal sales and make sure the price is for the Pro 6.
From	Amazon, JB Hi-Fi, Bing Lee, Office Works, Bunnings
Warranty	1-year ACL
Country of Origin	Vietnam
Company	Wholly owned by Amazon
More	CyberShack router news and reviews

What is the Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX mesh system?

One, two or three (or more) identical units. The one connected to the gateway (or another router ideally in bridge mode) via Ethernet cable becomes the router. The others become a satellite to connect to the router. Each has six antennae. It uses a Qualcomm IPQ8174 Oak Wi-Fi 6 system on a chip, 1GB DDR4 RAM, 4GB eMMC storage (mainly for its eero secure apps), and Qorvo Bluetooth-Zigbee-Thread IoT radio (not tested). The majority of the internal space comprises heatsinks as the units get pretty hot.

Each has Wi-Fi 6 AX (full-duplex only with Wi-Fi 6 devices) and eight streams

• 2.4Ghz Peak PHY rate 574Mbps (287Mbps half-duplex), 2 x 2 stream (approx. 1000mW transmission strength)
• 5Ghz 1201Mbps (half-duplex with Wi-Fi 5 AC or earlier devices) 2 x 2 (313mW)
• 5Ghz 2402Mbps (full-duplex dedicated to front/backhaul between the router and the satellite) 4 x 4 (953mW)
• Two gigabit Ethernet ports (WAN or LAN) no Link aggregation.

Now, if you add the Mbps up, it comes to 4177, and eero calls it AX4200 (as it is allowed to do), but the maximum Wi-Fi 6 AX device connection using VHT 80MHz band is 1200Mbps.

While we can tell you about the hardware, we have little to no information on the TrueMesh operating system. It is proprietary (unlike most open standard 802.11s Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol routers), and the app is very basic and quite limiting.

Updates

Eero is prolific in issuing performance and bug fix updates. It offers five years of support from the devices last eero website retail availability. The third generation Pro 6 has had 16 updates since December 2020, which is ironic as the marketing tag line is “Finally Wi-Fi that works”. There are still fixes and feature updates (beta) to come.

First impression – nice presentation

It comes well-presented in a 3-pack. There is minimal documentation – just a card that says download the app for Android or iOS and a warranty card. The three devices are identical – any can be the router or a satellite.

The white devices are smallish – 139 (square) x 52.6mm (high) x 678g. The USB-C charger outputs 6V/2A/18W or 9V/3A/27W (this is what it needs), and it is RCM C-Tick approved. You should always use the supplied charger, but it appears to be USB-C PD 30W standard.

Setup – simple

Download the app for Android or iOS and follow the well thought out prompts. It requires you to set up an eero account or sign in with Amazon. Plug in the first device (it does not matter which) to your gateway via Ethernet cable (it does not matter which of the two ports you choose). It asks you to name the network and a password.

Now router placement is critical to efficient Mesh (Read our guide Fix Wi-Fi blackspots fast and often at no cost). It should be the dead centre of where most of your internet-connected devices are, and the satellites should be no more than about 10m from the router. Don’t tuck this away in the garage or a cupboard!

Once done, plug in the second satellite (initially about 5-10 metres away line-of-sight), and it detects and joins the Mesh. Then repeat with the third etc. If the signal strength between the router and satellite is too weak, it will ask you to move it closer, but it lacks a signal strength meter.

That was the case with one satellite about 10 metres away through four walls – a stretch, but the NETGEAR Orbi Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 reaches that. It connected at 7m.

Simplicity also means a scale back in features. For example, there is no internal web server interface (192.168.x.x) to fine-tune the system. There is no signal strength meter to allow for the best location of satellites. These are the start of several deal-breakers for a techie like me.

Wired backhaul – OK, eero has redeemed itself a little

You can use gigabit (1000Mbps full-duplex speed both ways) Ethernet cabling to wire the front/backhaul.

We don’t know but suspect that the second Wi-Fi 6 backhaul band then becomes available when Ethernet is connected.

What speed do you really get? Real-world tests

First, there are three vital measurements:

• The Mbps (megabits) speed between your Wi-Fi device and the router or satellite. Everyone quotes this, but it is a poor indication as you also need to know the signal strength measured in -dBm (decibels per milliwatt – lower is better). For example, 1200Mbps at -20dBm is excellent, but 1200Mbps at -65dBm (or more) is almost unusable. The free Network Cell Info Light for Android will tell you this.
• The internet speed using OOKLA SpeedTest measured in milliseconds lag, download, and upload in Mbps compared to what you get at the router. For example, if you have NBN 100/20Mbps, you generally get full speed, and 10ms lag at the router but significantly less at the satellites.
• Copying a large file over the network measured in MBps (MegaBytes per second).

Second, note that Wi-Fi 6 AX only works with Wi-Fi 6 devices to get the advertised gigabit speeds. If not, it reverts to Wi-Fi 5 AC or earlier. For example, our reference OPPO Find X3 Pro gets -15dBm  (excellent strength), 2400Mbps full-duplex and 150MBps file copy at 2m from the NETGEAR AX11000 reference router that has 5Ghz VHT160MHz channels enabled.

Speed tests

At 2m on eero with 5Ghz VHT80Mhz

• Wi-Fi 6 AX -28dBm and 1200Mbps. File copy 70MBps
• Wi-Fi 5 AC phone -34dBm 2.4GHz/5GHz 286/866Mbps. File copy 13/33MBps
•  Wi-Fi 4 N gets -36dBm and 2.4GHz 6Mbps

At 10m Wi-Fi AX gets -65dBm and 1200Mbps, but this is unreliable.

There is a big difference between the device-to-eero connect speed and the internet throughput (our NBN Plan is 100/20Mbps).

• At 2m from the router (same room), 30ms latency, 108.2/13.8Mbps DL/UL. File copy 33MBps
• At the satellite 10m line-of-sight from the router 48ms and 88.3/14.5Mbps. File copy 11MBps
• 10m (through walls) from the router 60ms and 33/14Mbps. File copy 7MBps
• 10m (disabled, so the test is on the router) line of sight, 54ms and 34.3/15.9Mbps. File copy 2MBps

The maximum 5Ghz line-of-sight distance from each satellite is about 7-10 metres, but the app does not tell you signal strengths, so it is all too easy to overstretch the coverage.

The eero selects the best band (you don’t have separate 2.4 and 5GHz networks). This causes issues with IoT devices that often need a dedicated 2.4Ghz network. For example, our Lifx smart lights would not connect to the eero (an eero fix is coming).

There is an option for a guest network that uses the same bands but allows for a different password.

Eero Secure

You get a free 30-day trial of eero secure, which at US$2.99 per month includes threat blocking, parental controls, ad blocking, and activity insights/reports. Adblocking is not as effective as browser-based apps like Ghostery that block adverts and trackers.

For US$9.99 per month, you get eero secure+ that includes password manager 1Password (5 licenses), VPN Encrypt.me, Malwarebytes (3 licenses) and remote network access.

Whether this is good value depends on if you can use these products. There are better password managers and VPNs (for Australia). Other brands usually supply Parental controls for free.

Privacy – be warned that you are entering an Amazon rabbit hole.

Amazon’s business model is to know more about you than you do – and recommend and sell its products.

The US seems to trust Amazon, but that is changing if we go by recent sales of smart speakers. Google Assistant now has about 45% of sales (growing at 50% per year) to Amazon Alexa (30% losing 30% per year) and Siri (25% growing at 180% per year). Source Omdia.

In Australia, Amazon is not a household word, and Google Assistant has 85% of the market compared to Amazon Alexa (10%) and Apple Siri (4%).

The privacy policy is lengthy, and while it primarily collects device data and your mobile phone data, it also links to your Amazon account. It collects Personal Data linked via your phone number and Amazon account. You are giving Amazon and its affiliates more information about you.

To summarise

• Wi-Fi AX only works with Wi-Fi 6 AX devices – it does not speed up other Wi-Fi devices
• The maximum speed with a Wi-Fi 6 AX Device is 1200Mbps (both ways – 8021.11a OFDMA). Wi-Fi 5 AC is 866 (433Mbps half-duplex), and Wi-Fi 4 N is 433Mbps (216Mbps half-duplex).
• The maximum line-of-sight distance for a decent Wi-Fi 6 AX backhaul is about 7-10M
• The maximum distance through walls, floors, cupboards etc., is about 5-7m
• Ethernet backhaul is up to 100m and offers 1000Mbps full-duplex (each way) data transfer rates – the best connection.
• The effective area of each eero satellite is a 15m diameter circle of about 180m2, so don’t waste coverage by placing it against an external wall.
• While we can’t dispute that it supports 75+ devices, significant voice command lag shows the effective figure is around 20-30 devices as it only has 2.4Ghz 574Mbps 2×2 (2-steam) spread across the Mesh

Cybershack view – Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX mesh router has a place

Eero is for people who just don’t want to fiddle with anything. For that, you pay a premium price. It works reliably, it will reduce black spots, but you are not getting the data throughput that other systems can deliver. It is enough to stream 4K HDR10+ TV? That depends on the satellite signal strength.

For all others, it is not nearly as good as the marketing hype makes it out to be.

This review is technical because we want to help our readers sort the wheat from the marketing chaff. In this case, Amazon’s carefully wordsmithed performance claims don’t meet our tests or expectations.

It will not match the NETGEAR RAX200 AX1100 tri-band router for raw signal strength or data throughput speed. You can Mesh one or more of the AX6000 EAX80 to it and get vastly better signal strength (-dBm) and throughput for not much more cost than the 3-pack eero.

The other more powerful is the Orbi Mesh AX6000 tri-band system (RBK852 2-pack $1199 and RBK853 3-pack $1749). These have 2.4Ghz 1200Mbps, 2 x 5Ghz 2400Mbps and eight antennae – also supporting up to 2.5Gbps Ethernet backhaul. They will handle 50 or so devices, and each unit covers 250-300m2.

I can only recommend the Amazon eero Pro 6 Wi-Fi AX mesh router for Ethernet backhaul installations (especially on separate floors) or smaller homes where you can place satellites 7-10m line-of-sight from the router.

Amazon eero Pro 6