TL;DR: Unifi mesh is bad, Orbi is pricey, TP-Link is surprisingly good.

Recap (2024 home wifi history)

  • I had Netgear Orbi (75x series) for 4 years (2020-2024)
  • Last summer, I experimented with Unifi (see earlier posts); to put it bluntly, it sucked for mesh use, and I went back to the Orbis
  • The Orbi still did not support wifi 6E which modern Macbook Pros need for more than 1200mbps wifi phy (= more than 600mbps data rate)
  • So, I was on the hunt for more hardware..

New challenger is found

In early Black Friday deals in mid-November, I spotted a TP-Link Deco BE65 set at a quite reasonable discount. On the paper, it seemed quite promising. Why is that?

  • wifi 6e
  • also wifi 7 (not really relevant, we don’t have about any of those but I suppose the number of devices will increase over time)
    • MLO (using multiple bands for both its meshing as well as for the clients)
  • Two nodes cost about same as single Netgear Orbi with wifi 7 (I have no idea what’s going on with Orbi pricing, but it seems excessive)
  • 4x 2.5Gb ethernet ports in each device (which is nice, although not really requirement)

So, I ordered them just for science (after all, I can deduct most of IT stuff in taxes as I need to be up to date about how horrible this stuff is). Gear acquisition syndrome had nothing to do with it.

New hardware appears!

I got the hardware sometime mid-November as well. It took me probably week to get around to unboxing it, as my life was quite busy, but here are a few exciting pictures anyway:

The app is a bit clunky, but works, and as I use them only in AP mode it does not really matter what the app is like as there is no need after the initial setup. The setup took less than Unifi one (as I did not need to deal with setting up controller, and device pairing was bit simpler).

Evaluation - worth it?

Although I do have more detailed data (who wouldn’t gather data? It’s fun!), I’m providing just a summary here. To be honest, I was amazed by the results I got from these relatively cheap and cheerful boxes.

Raw data rate

The raw data rates at or near primary AP were impressive:

  • over a gigabit of real data rate from my laptop (with wifi 6E) to my wired devices (with 2.5 Gb connectivity) on my home network
  • saturated external network connectivity (asymmetric 600/100 Mbps thanks to wonders of cable modems..)

But even the mesh networked node downstairs, with some nasty stuff on the way to it (e.g. floor heating pipes, wires in the walls, ..), and to which Orbi provided perhaps 100-200 Mbps and Unifi even less, now can almost saturate the external network connectivity.

Mesh reliability

My metrics data for the Unifi experiment is already gone (I try not to retain data too long), but even here it is easy to spot change in pattern. For two security cameras, ‘spot the Orbi leaving’ exercise is here: The 10 second responses are basically timeouts. The number of timeouts decreased dramatically when the Orbi was replaced with the Deco setup.

Lingering worry

The hardware is relatively fresh now, released in April 2024 ( see TP-Link Releases Deco BE65: A New Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 7 Router ). Despite that, only concern I have is that TP-Link officially provides security updates for BE65 only unti September 2026 ( Duration of Security Support | TP-Link Singapore), but perhaps extended support will happen. And in general, as I am using them as dumb APs, I am not that worried about the devices themselves, although I am bit leery of their central network components. Perhaps I will just isolate the devices from the internet once the security updates end for them.