Hey what’s up, Alex here!If you have been
following my videos, you will know that I have been planning to upgrade my home network
since the end of last year. So 2 questions, why i want to upgrade and why the delay?
The obvious reason is of course the speed increase. But besides that, in
my current setup, I am already hitting the number of recommended connected devices. I also have a
couple of dead zones I would like to fix. So instead of buying additional mesh
nodes for my current wifi 5, why not take this chance to upgrade at the same time.
As for the reason of the delay, is because I am kind of waiting for Wifi 6E to
be released in Singapore. But till now, this is not approved by IMDA. Even if it is approved,
the price of wifi 6E is ridiculously expensive, supported devices are also very very few. Good
thing is due to the release of wifi 6E routers, the price of wifi 6 routers dropped. So no more
waiting, let’s go and check out Wifi 6 instead. So that’s a quick tour of my house if you
have never watched my home tour videos before. This is a 1200sqft 5 room HDB apartment. HDB is
basically Singapore’s public housing. I did not hack away any of the walls so I have 1 masterbed
room, 2 common bedrooms and a huge living room space. I even built a partition wall in the
living room for a separate study room area. I considered this to be the general standard
HDB layout for at least the past 10 years. My current internet service provider is Singtel, a
1Gb plan which is definitely sufficient for a normal family usage. I will say 1Gb is
like the standard default now in Singapore, which is actually a lot if you compare with
many other countries. For the benefit of my overseas viewers, the DB board is located
right beside the entrance of the front door, hidden inside this carpentry cabinet. You will
find the fibre optics point here, then the fibre optics cable will connect to a device like a modem
provided by your ISP. So I can place my router in the DB board or somewhere in the living room TV
console area. For me, I choose to place it inside the DB board because I want strong signal for
my smart doorbell which is outside the house. But regardless, having just 1 router will only
be able to cover the living room and study area. All the bedrooms and toilets will have weak
or even no signal at times especially with all these thick cement walls, glass partition,
wooden doors and all the carpentry around, all these will affect the wifi signal. If you
are good with networking stuff, you can go with the AP + AC solution, but this is a separate topic
which I will not go into it in this video. So for most people the easiest, most straightforward way
to is to go with a wifi mesh system to extend the coverage to the entire house.
And here is a brief recap what is mesh There are two types of mesh setup, wired
or wireless, of course wired will give you a much better and stable connection. In my test
setup, I will have my 2nd node placed in my home office room, this will be wired. Then, I will
have the 3rd node placed in my masterbed room, this will be wireless. So it will be a total of 3
nodes setup. I have gotten wifi mesh systems from the 4 big main networking companies - tp-link,
netgear, linksys and asus. Here is the lineup from the cheapest to most expensive. First up we have
the Tp-link Deco x20. It is an AX1800 dual band. 2 pack costs $199, 3 pack costs $309. Next is also
an AX1800 dual band, it's the Asus XD4. 2 pack costs $329, 3 pack costs $459. Next moving to the
next tier we have the linksys MX5400, its a dual band, 2 pack costs $499, 3 pack costs $699. Next
at similar price range is the Tp-link Deco x75, from here on it will be all tri band systems.
The 2 pack cost $509 and 3 pack cost $709. Next is our first netgear, the RBK75x. This is AX4200
tri band, 2 pack costs $649, 3 pack costs $999. Next up, the Asus XT8 which is an AX6600 tri band,
2 pack costs $759, 3 pack costs $1,198. Then next is the top model from linksys, the MX4200 tri
band, 2 pack costs $799 and 3 pack costs $1,099. Lastly we have the top model from netgear, the
RBK85x which is an AX6000 tri band. The 2 pack costs $1,099, 3 pack $1,499. All amount you see
is their retail price in Sing dollars. You keep You keep seeing AX then with 4 numbers. What does that
mean? the X simply indicates that it supports the wifi 6 standard. The 4 numbers is the maximum
bandwidth of all the wifi bands added up together. Generally, the more the better,
but the prices also increase as it goes higher. These are the models that you
will typically see at big mega electronic stores, locally distributed with warranty support. This
is why the amazon eero series is not included, same case for xiaomi. The google nest wifi
is not included as well because they don’t support wifi 6. For ubiquiti, unfortunately
no response from them when i tried to reach out. So a total of 8 models that I will be
testing. I will be using all out of the box default settings, but I will update their
firmware to the latest version, that’s all. I will be carrying out speed tests at 3 different
spots in the house that I will frequently use wifi and not get very strong signal. First, is sitting
at the opposite end of my living room sofa. Second spot is sitting on the toilet bowl
inside the common toilet with the door closed. The third spot will be in the masterbed room,
lying on the inside of the bed with the door closed as well.. This is the point where I will
have no signal at all if I didn’t have a 3rd mesh node placed inside the room. I will be
using my Samsung S21 to do the speed test. The speed test server I will be using is the default
one from Google. For each spots,I will be doing 5 tests at 3 different times of the day 10am, 2pm
and 9pm. So total of 15 tests for each spot. This means that for each mesh system, I will be taking
the average from a total of 45 test results. Before I share the results and my recommendation,
I just want to say that none of these are sponsored by these companies because I got a
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ALEXTEO for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! Alright here are the test results for each of the
spots. First one you see here is the spot in the living room. If we scale price with performance,
then by right the Netgear RBK85x should always be better than the rest. But for this, the Deco x75
actually did very well for it’s download speed. The linksys MX5400 is struggling a bit here.
Next spot is a problematic one and you can see some interesting results here. By right, my phone
should be connected to the 2nd node which is in my home office to get the best result. But the
problem is some of them like the Netgear RBK75x is still holding on to the device at the first
or third node. Seems like the athenas are very strong, no idea what is the threshold before it
swaps to another node. You also see a significant increase in performance from the 2 AX1800 models
to the AX5400. For the last point, this is testing the wireless mesh performance. The Asus XT8
managed to get the best download speed here. One interesting thing I realize is for asus and
linksys, the node is linked from the office node while tplink and netgear is linked from the 1st
node in the living room. More or less the results here scale with the price but you don’t see big
performance increase from the cheaper models to the expensive ones and this is also what
I observed from the overall performance. For a 5 room or smaller HDB, you won’t be able to
see the full potential of those higher end models. Of course this is depending on your needs, but
for an average family household, there is actually no need to spend too much. So I will be sharing
some recommendations for different price points. For my budget pick of less than 300SGD, I
am going to go with the Tp-link Deco X20. Tp-link has always been very competitive with
their pricing. The 2 node costs you $200, 3 nodes are just a little more than
300. Overall very stable connections, you get what you paid for, I don’t see very
crazy fluctuates. For this price point, usually you will only find 2 ports. The app
and setup is the fastest compared to the rest, not to mention that they are also
the winner of my popularity test. Ok so moving to the next tier pricing, your budget
should be around $500 for 2 nodes. This includes the Linksys MX5400, Tp-link Deco x75 and the Asus
XD6 which I didn’t include inside the test because I only have 2 nodes. My recommendation is if you
are able to do wired mesh and only require 2 nodes then the Asus XD6. If you need 3 nodes
then you can get the Linksys MX5400. But if you have to go wireless mesh, then having
tri band is important and the Tp-link Deco x75 is the cheapest with tri band in my list here.
If you are a smart home user and is using the Apple Homekit, no need to look elsewhere and
just go for the Linksys MX4200. It is like the successor of Apple’s router the AirPort which they
don’t sell anymore. Not to mention that the design has the Apple style to it. It is currently the
only model that is supported by Apple that comes with Homekit integration and is able to provide
very good network security controls for your smart home devices. Each node comes with 4 network ports
and a USB port. If you connect a harddisk to the USB, you can turn this into a network storage for
the entire family to use. It is quite expensive at $799 but they have promotions before, I
saw this at $599 in June so keep a lookout. If you are looking for the best range,
I will recommend the Netgear RBK85x. When I am setting up the first node, I am
already able to get good signals with this. I am not able to test out its full potential
because of the size of my place. But for houses that are bigger than mine, for example a
maisonette or you are staying in a landed property, you can place 1 node at each level of
the house, somewhere near the stairs area. And that should be able to give you good coverage for
the entire level. The Netgear Orbi mesh systems have a dedicated router node and satellite nodes.
I like that they have this sync button that allow you to add satellite nodes without going to
the app. They also have a 2.5G internet port if you subscribe to a 2GB service plan.
Ok now for my final recommendation that I find the most value for money and also what
I am going to upgrade for my own house is the Asus XT8. Based on my tests, it gives very good
consistent performance and very stable connection. Of all the apps, I like their app the most, not
just the interface but also giving me the settings control I want. The heat management and airflow
is one of the better ones where I don’t feel the unit getting very hot. Not to mention that
they have the black color option which I like. Talking about design, Asus has the XT12 which
I find they look the best aesthetically. But this is also super high end and super expensive, I
will say this is more suitable for a small office setup. Even the XT8, I also find that the price
is at the higher end, so most likely I will get a combination of XT8 and their XD6 to form the mesh.
So if you are not aware, all of these brands allow you to mix their nodes together. For example,
you can use the Tp-link Deco X20 with X75. The Linksys MX5400 with MX4200, same
for Netgear. Their RBK75 and 85 series. So to wrap up with some closing thoughts. To me,
Wifi 5 is like 2 generations behind the latest standard, if you are setting up network for your
new house, I will suggest looking into wifi 6. As for how to decide dual or tri band, the general
rule of thumb is if you can go with a wired mesh setup, then you can consider getting a dual band
to save some cost. If you have to do a wireless mesh, then I will highly recommend to get a tri
band system because of that dedicated band to ensure performance. Buying a wifi mesh systems is
not very straight forward, i am lucky to be able to borrow these products to do actual testing,
so i think comparison videos like this will help you to make your purchase decision. There are a
lot of videos that share what’s their top 5 mesh systems,but throughout the video you don’t see
the actual product at all, it’s just marketing footage. So for those, I will suggest not to read
too much on what they say. With that being said, that’s all for this video. Thanks for watching
and I will catch you in the next one, bye!
