My apartment isn't a big one, but my bedroom is a dead spot for my livingroom WiFi signal, and that is where my quest began to find a good enough, cheap WiFi signal extender!
My router is a run of the mill - broadband provider - combined dual band (2.4GHz & 5GHz with a single SSID) router, and is placed in the livingroom in order to create my living room media center - along with LAN connected NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives, multiple consoles, Apple TV and a smart TV (Sounds awesome, right?!). So moving the router was never an option since most of these are wired.
My broadband infrastructure limit is 76Mb/s download and 19Mb/s upload, and using a wired connection I got pretty close to the limit at 71Mb/s download and 18Mb/s upload - so we will use that as a speed reference for the rest of the article!
I admit, in the beginning I cheaped out and bought the TP-LINK RE305 AC1200 WiFi extender for about 30$, since I had TP-LINK network hardware before and was pleased with the reliability and signal strength. Using that WiFi extender - I got up to 80% of the speed, which is great - but a few months in, I discovered a lot of drop-outs in the signal, speed going down to about 20%, clashes with the router signal, overall I wouldn't recommend buying it (in retrospect...).
Since this whole virus situation going on in the world made me work from home and use the bedroom for workspace as well, I had to solve the signal issues quickly.
I am familiar with Netgear as a good reliable network hardware company, and their latest WiFi extender was the EX6250 AC1750 Mesh WiFi extender, and you know - like Barney says - NEW IS ALWAYS BETTER.
The first thing that really surprised me was the size of the device, you can see in the picture below (banana for scale!) it is rather big.
Secondly, I always wanted to try the relatively new way to WiFi - Mesh technology - which allows the WiFi network to extend everywhere without the need to switch between extenders, and that was a good opportunity to do so.
In terms of price, it was 70$ which is more expensive then my original TP-LINK I had, but I really needed it to work on the first go! Looking online, since it was a new product - there were very few reviews, if any. I decided to take a chance.
Setup process:
The setup process was supposed to be easy, downloading the Nighthawk Netgear app and setting up the extender that way. Out of the box, the extender Firmware was out of date (Version 1.0.0.90) and wouldn't connect to the app until a Firmware update would occur.
So the whole process needed to be done via an internet browser instead, a little inconvenient but manageable.
One thing to mention here - the device boot up time is very long, about 3 minutes from shut down to operating, so be patient until that amber light goes green.
Even using the browser, the setup is rather easy and very intuitive, but takes about 20-30 minutes overall with the long boot, the firmware update and the setting up. It is important to select the One sign-on in order to allow the Mesh feature.
To see if you placed the device in an optimised location - there is a light which tells you how good is the signal from the router, and if it is best to move the device to a different location - very easy to understand and easy to implement the change.
Moment of truth:
First, the Mesh feature is amazing, the move from one room to the other is seamless and even video calls wouldn't get interrupted other than a single 1 second time delay when moving to the next room.
Now for the speed test - I am getting a consistent 67Mb/s download and 18Mb/s upload in the bedroom which is 94% of the maximum download rate I could achieve - overall very happy!
Bottom line:
The Mesh feature is an excellent thing.
It's big, keep that in mind - It was bigger than I expected, so if you have an electrical outlet volume limitation - that is something to consider.
The speeds I am getting all over the apartment are up there with being next to the router.
It is rather easy to install.
The app works only after Firmware update, but it isn't very useful once you finished the setup.