The latest Eero ($249 for the three-pack we tested) marks the company's first offering since being acquired by Amazon earlier this year. It's a mesh Wi-Fi system that provides coverage for homes of up to 5,000 square feet and uses a thoughtfully designed mobile app that makes it a cinch to install and manage. Like its predecessor, the Eero 2nd Generation, this system offers strong parental controls and protection against viruses and other malware, but you'll have to pay extra to take advantage of these features. It delivers good throughput performance, but it's not nearly as fast as our Editors' Choice for mesh Wi-Fi systems, the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus.
Stylish in Any Decor
The Eero three-pack comes with three identical low-profile Eero router nodes. Each square node measures 2.4 by 3.9 by 3.9 inches (HWD) and has a living-room-friendly design with rounded corners and a glossy white finish. The nodes are equipped with two gigabit LAN ports, a status LED, a reset button, and a power port, but they lack USB ports for connecting external drives and printers. As mentioned, the three-pack covers homes of up to 5,000 square feet. Additional nodes cost $99 each and provide an additional 1,500 square feet of coverage. To compare, the Deco M9 Plus provides coverage of 4,500 square feet.
The Eero is a dual-band system that uses 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology and supports MU-MIMO simultaneous data streaming, direct-to-client signal beamforming, and automatic band steering to select the optimal radio band. As with earlier Eero models, you cannot separate the bands. It uses a 700MHz quad-core processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of flash storage and can reach maximum speeds of 400Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 866Mbps on the 5GHz band.
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If you have an Alexa device, you can give voice commands to the Eero system to do things such as turning guest networking on and off or pausing network access for specific devices. It also supports Amazon Wi-Fi Simple Setup which uses settings from existing Amazon devices such as Echos or Fire Sticks to help configure new devices with fewer steps.
The system offers robust parental controls and anti-malware tools that protect the network and all connected clients from viruses and other online threats, but you'll have to subscribe to an Eero plan to use them. For $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, the Eero Secure plan provides family-safe browsing that blocks access to violent, illegal, and adult-oriented sites; ad blocking that removes pop-up ads; and threat scans that block access to known malicious sites. The Secure Plus plan will cost you $9.99 per month or $99 per year and adds Malwarebytes antimalware protection, encrypt.me VPN protection, and the 1Password password management utility.
By way of comparison, the First Alert Onelink Secure Connect AC3000 comes with free parental controls and malware protection, and the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus gives you three years of free parental controls, malware protection, and customizable QoS (quality of service) settings. Like the previous generations, this latest Eero system lacks QoS settings.
The user-friendly iOS and Android mobile app has been given a makeover since we reviewed the second-gen Eero back in 2017. Instead of a network map, the home screen displays the network name and status (online or offline), accompanied by tabs labeled Profiles, Computers and Personal, and Recently Online. A plus sign in the top right corner lets you add new devices and invite users to your guest network.
You can also create a profile for each family member, adding devices and assigning parental control filters and scheduling access times for each profile. Tap the network name to open an expanded view with tabs for each node and an internet tab with a button for testing upload and download speeds, and tap any node tab to see which clients are connected to it and to view its connection status and IP address.
To view information about connected clients, tap any entry in the Computers and Personal tab. Here you can see which profile and filters (if any) are assigned to that client, view current bandwidth activity, and see which node it is connected to. The Recently Online tab lets you see which clients were recently connected, when they were last active, and their profiles. You can also block access to the network for any client.
At the bottom of the home screen are Home, Activity, Discover, and Settings buttons. The first takes you back to the home screen from wherever you are in the app; the second takes you to a screen where you can view internet speed stats and colorful security graphs that tell you how many scans have occurred and how many threats and ads have been blocked. Tap any graph for a daily view of these activities and to see which clients were involved.
The Discover button brings you to a screen where you can view your Eero Secure subscription status and enable ad blocking and other security features. Use the Settings button to change the network name and password, enable guest networking and notifications, and update the software. Advanced settings let you edit the time zone, configure DHCP and NAT settings, enable IPv6 and UPnP settings, and configure reservations and port forwarding settings.
Installation and Performance
Any mesh Wi-Fi system worth its salt is easy to install, and the Eero is no different. I downloaded the mobile app, created an account, and tapped Get Started. I selected the appropriate Eero model from the list, tapped Start, and followed the app's instructions to unplug my modem, connect an Eero node to it using the included LAN cable, and power up the modem and node. After 30 seconds or so, the Eero LED went from blinking blue to solid blue; I tapped Next and gave the network a name and password.
I tapped Next again to add another node and answered a few questions about my home, including its shape (long or square) and number of floors. I placed the second Eero node in a room about 30 feet away, plugged it in, and waited about 30 seconds for it to connect. I ran a placement test, which came back as "placed like a champion," gave the node a location, and repeated the procedure for the third node. I updated the firmware and the installation was complete.
See How We Test Wireless Routers
The Eero nodes delivered good, but not great, performance in our throughput tests. The router's score of 459Mbps in the close-proximity test was a hair faster than the Nokia Beacon 1, but not quite as fast as the Google Nest Wi-Fi router. The TP-Link Deco M9 Plus led the pack with a speedy 546Mbps.
At a distance of 30 feet, the Eero's throughput of 199Mbps couldn't keep pace with the Nokia or the TP-Link systems. This time around, the Google router took top honors with a speed of 291Mbps.
As for the Eero satellite node, it came in last in the close-proximity test with a score of 210Mbps. The Google Nest node managed 251Mbps and the Nokia Beacon 1 node 240Mbps. The TP-Link Deco M9 Plus node blew them all away with a score of 410Mbps. Results were similar in the 30-foot test: the Eero node posted a speed of 167Mbps, trailing the Google node by 23Mbps and the Nokia node by 28Mbps. The TP-Link node was twice as fast at 330Mbps.
Simple, But Not the Fastest
With the new Eero system, it's easy to eliminate Wi-Fi dead zones and control your network from your phone, and its low-profile router nodes are attractive and unobtrusive. The dual-band Eero router offers decent performance and the retooled mobile app makes it a snap to manage your network and all of your connected devices. You also get capable parental controls and malware protection, but these features, along with VPN and password management tools, require a paid subscription.
For about $50 more, the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus offers faster throughput and comes with a free three-year subscription that combines robust malware protection and parental controls with QoS settings. It also doubles as a home automation hub that can control devices such as smart lights, door locks, and thermostats. As such, it remains our Editors' Choice for mesh Wi-Fi systems.
The Eero is a stylish mesh networking system that offers solid performance, but it can't keep up with comparably priced competitors.
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