I recently bought BT's whole home mesh wifi and while sitting here having a late night drink thought I would set part of it up. I have a large Edwardian house set over three floors and extended at various times. So it has thick walls and odd angles. I have several dead spots and wifi speed drops off considerably in some locations. Most notable is the kitchen, which is very close to the living room where the wifi router currently is, but is a horrible dead spot. I've previously fixed these issues with powerline to the main PC upstairs and a combination of powerline and a separate portable wifi router plugged into the powerline in the kitchen.
The BT whole home mesh wifi that I bought is a set of four discs. My plan is to put the main disc in the living room (later to be moved to the office), the kitchen and then one on each of the first and second floors. But for now I just tried two of the discs in the living room and kitchen.
Previously on my Home Hub 3 I was getting about 38mbps on my phone while standing next to it. On the BT whole home I am getting 40mbps. The increase in speed is probably just due to the HH3 being so old. But I'm getting that same 40mbps in the kitchen with the second disc where I was previously getting almost no signal from the HH3 (I also tried connecting directly to the BT whole home primary disc in the living room while in the kitchen and achieved 25mbps, which shows the whole home discs have a much stronger signal overall than the HH3).
The ping I am getting on the whole home mesh is about 10ms while standing next to the primary disc and 12ms to 13ms while in the kitchen on a secondary disc. For reference I get 8ms to 10ms on my gaming PC one floor up hard wired into a powerline connection. So it's slightly worse but probably not notieable. I haven't yet decided whether to keep the whole home mesh, which is why I just tried two discs rather than install the whole four discs across the home. But that's just down to the cost of it over my previous solution. So far, from a performance standpoint, I am quite impressed with it.
One other thing to note is that the BT whole home come as quite large discs which some people tend to find a little less attractive than solutions from Google, etc. But I actually like them for one reason; it looks like they might be able to be mounted on a ceiling or wall quite easily. The stand isn't obviously removable but I have read online that it can be removed if you open the case and unscrew it. Then you have a flat disc with a mounting point. If I keep them then I will be mounting the kitchen disc in a cupboard.
Overall I'm quite impressed and I do feel like I've just tried the future of home wifi (I'm sure many of you tried it years ago - but I thought I would share my experience).
EDIT: TLDR; I get almost the same speeds in my kitchen, where I used to have a deadspot, as I get standing next to the router. My pings are 13 ms rather than a hard wired 8ms to 10ms.
The BT whole home mesh wifi that I bought is a set of four discs. My plan is to put the main disc in the living room (later to be moved to the office), the kitchen and then one on each of the first and second floors. But for now I just tried two of the discs in the living room and kitchen.
Previously on my Home Hub 3 I was getting about 38mbps on my phone while standing next to it. On the BT whole home I am getting 40mbps. The increase in speed is probably just due to the HH3 being so old. But I'm getting that same 40mbps in the kitchen with the second disc where I was previously getting almost no signal from the HH3 (I also tried connecting directly to the BT whole home primary disc in the living room while in the kitchen and achieved 25mbps, which shows the whole home discs have a much stronger signal overall than the HH3).
The ping I am getting on the whole home mesh is about 10ms while standing next to the primary disc and 12ms to 13ms while in the kitchen on a secondary disc. For reference I get 8ms to 10ms on my gaming PC one floor up hard wired into a powerline connection. So it's slightly worse but probably not notieable. I haven't yet decided whether to keep the whole home mesh, which is why I just tried two discs rather than install the whole four discs across the home. But that's just down to the cost of it over my previous solution. So far, from a performance standpoint, I am quite impressed with it.
One other thing to note is that the BT whole home come as quite large discs which some people tend to find a little less attractive than solutions from Google, etc. But I actually like them for one reason; it looks like they might be able to be mounted on a ceiling or wall quite easily. The stand isn't obviously removable but I have read online that it can be removed if you open the case and unscrew it. Then you have a flat disc with a mounting point. If I keep them then I will be mounting the kitchen disc in a cupboard.
Overall I'm quite impressed and I do feel like I've just tried the future of home wifi (I'm sure many of you tried it years ago - but I thought I would share my experience).
EDIT: TLDR; I get almost the same speeds in my kitchen, where I used to have a deadspot, as I get standing next to the router. My pings are 13 ms rather than a hard wired 8ms to 10ms.
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