One of the few routers that won’t look like a dead spider on your sideboard is the Nest Pro. These are the most attractive Wi-Fi routers you can buy, however it’s not a particularly high standard. In addition to white, the Nest Pro is also available in light blue, beige, or yellow, which may match your decor better. They look better in the open than most other routers, even if we are not a huge fan of the shiny finish because it can be a little distracting.
The Eero Pro 6E is the Nest Wifi Pro’s main rival as a mesh networking solution. Like Eero, Google is aiming for users who want a product that is attractive, dependable, simple to use, and compatible with their smart home rather than networking experts or users who want complete control over their networking setup. In tests, the Nest Pro outperformed the Eero in some areas.
Even though their connections were a little slower, they were more reliable all around the house, and Google provides some capabilities that Eero charges a monthly fee for for free. However, because Nest’s fixed 6GHz backhaul only has 1Gbps ethernet ports, it cannot support multi-gig connections and can struggle to maintain constant speeds on the nodes that are the furthest from the router.
Nest Wi-Fi Pro review: Design and Features
Google gave one Nest Wifi Pro router, which can cover up to 2,200 square feet, for our review. You can get a two-pack ($299.99) or three-pack ($399.99) that will cover 4,400 or 6,600 square feet, respectively, for larger homes. Each router is 5.1 by 4.6 by 3.3 inches (HWD) in size and is intended to be set up in plain sight on a table or bookshelf rather than tucked away in a corner or on the floor. Snow, Linen, Lemongrass, and Fog are available as colour options.
On the router, there are no buttons, but a little LED indicator lights white during startup, blue during setup, and yellow when the internet connection is broken. Once fully bonded, it is a solid white colour. There are two 1Gbps Ethernet connections on the back, one for WAN connectivity and the other for LAN connectivity or wired backhaul between nodes. The Nest Wifi Pro lacks multi-gig networking ports, as opposed to the Eero Pro 6E. To be fair, low-profile mesh systems rarely have USB connectivity, but the Google router does not have any USB ports for connecting storage devices.
The Nest Wifi Pro is a Wi-Fi 6E mesh router that can transmit on the 6GHz radio band in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands. It supports 160MHz channel broadcasts, WPA3 encryption, MU-MIMO simultaneous data streaming, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), and direct-to-client signal beamforming. Additionally, it has built-in support for Thread, a developing protocol for tying together IoT devices like smart thermostats and lights, and Matter, a networking standard created to ensure brand-neutral compatibility amongst smart home appliances.
Nest Wi-Fi Pro review: Setup
Using the Google Home app for Android or iOS is required to set up and operate the Nest Wifi Pro; Windows and Mac are not supported. I employed a Samsung Galaxy Note 20. On the negative side, I was able to integrate all the other functions of Google Home, such as lighting, door locks, and video cameras, thanks to the Google Home app. We plugged the devices in, linked one to my cable modem, and as soon as I noticed the single blue LED glowing, I tapped “+” on the Home app and then “New Device.”
We enabled the app to access the Bluetooth and location services on my phone by granting it the required rights. The router was immediately located, and after accepting Google’s permission, I snapped a picture of the QR code there. The router was given a network name and password after the room it would reside in was given a name.
The procedure concluded by saving the connection information on my phone after I authorised a connection to Google Cloud in order to activate the parental controls and guest network. Everything was in place once the two nodes, one located upstairs and one below, were added. In total, 18 minutes and 15 seconds passed.
Nest Wi-Fi Pro review: Performance and speed
Since the days of quarantine are over, we have been busy relocating our router testing setup from my house to our test facility. As a result, I am unable to objectively compare the speeds of Nest Wifi Pro to any of the systems I have evaluated elsewhere over the previous few years. Therefore, we started anew and tested Nest Wifi Pro alongside two other Wi-Fi 6E mesh routers: Amazon’s Eero Pro 6E and the Netgear Orbi AXE11000 model.
These two items each cost significantly more than Nest Wifi Pro. Despite being on sale right now, a two-pack of Eero Pro 6E generally costs $499, which is $200 more than a two-pack of Nest Wifi Pro. The Netgear Orbi AXE11000 system, on the other hand, is only offered in a three-pack that costs an outrageous $1,500. Even so, I was curious to test if the speeds of the Nest Wifi Pro could keep up with client devices using Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, pricing disparity aside.
Despite moving, my router testing setup remains substantially the same: a 1,350 square foot area with numerous rooms and gigabit fibre internet speeds. I spent several days measuring average upload and download speeds across four rooms in the space as well as a fifth room a few metres away that we’ve dubbed the “garage,” with each system’s router installed in the living room and a single extender installed in the kids’ room at the other end of the test space.
The Wi-Fi 6 test device I used was a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop that I purchased in late 2019. In the end, Eero Pro 6E recorded the fastest average speeds to that device. It was closely followed by the Netgear Orbi system, and in a quite close third place was the Nest Wifi Pro. It would be a really pleasant internet experience at home if all three kept my speeds in the triple digits in every room at all times.
Nest Wi-Fi Pro review: Pricing and availability
Nest Wifi Pro devices can be purchased singly for $200 or in sets of two or three for $300 or $400. The greatest offer is at Costco, where a four-pack costs $450. The good news is that this costs less than one-third of the $1,500 Netgear charges for the three-piece Orbi RBKE963 set. This product available from amazon or best buy.
Every Nest Wifi Pro device is identical and is initially set up as a router or node. The three-6,600 pack’s square foot coverage should be adequate for most households because they can each cover 2,200 square feet, however it is less than the 9,000 square feet that Netgear claims for the RBKE963. It’s still possible to purchase the earlier Nest Wifi units for a great deal of $150 for two. Unfortunately, neither Nest Wifi nor Google Wifi are compatible with the new Nest Wifi Pro equipment.
Final Words
Regarding the cost and simplicity of installation for this mesh system, I can’t argue. The main problem is that this mesh system isn’t all that quick, and I had no luck at all getting the 6GHz network to function. Simply put, there are Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 mesh systems that are better and faster accessible in our router buying guide.
