I have been running 3 eero Pro 2nd Generation devices for 3-4 years and have been happy with them. Amazon has the Pro 6e on sale for $399 w/$80 trade in for my old pros. Seems like a good deal. Wondering if anyone else has upgraded or is running the 6e and what their take is on these devices? Worth it? The current ones are rock solid so I'd hate to ruin that, but I know they are moving towards EOL.
Why not just wait for a WiFi 7 model to be released?
From "the Verge"
The new tri-band router will be available, like other Eero routers, in packs of one ($599.99), two ($1,149.99), or three ($1,699.99). The company didn’t provide a release date, only saying it would be “available soon.” Those prices are far above the Eero Pro 6E, which is available in three-packs for $399.99 right now.
So that could be 1300 reasons to not wait.
Very good reason!
Are your eeros using wireless or ethernet backhaul? If wireless, I'd say the 6e is a good choice as it'll likey use the wifi 6 channel for backhaul (leaving 2.4 and 5 available for devices).
If ethernet backhaul, the 6 channel is pretty much wasted unless you have numerous 6 devices (which many of us don't) -- in that case, I'd stick with the plain Pro 6 since you can take advantage of both its 5 channels.
I have 3 eeros. All connective via ethernet. So maybe not worth it.
I just use one Pro 6 (small house) and I decided against the 6e since we don't have any 6 devices at all.
By the time we upgrade our current phones and laptops (at least 2 years from now), they might be 7 - who knows. In that case, I'll then consider the Pro 7 (or whatever they call it). But the 6 channel on the 6e simply isn't useful to us as things stand now.
I have 3 Eero Pro 6e and they work quite well. They are all hard wired and cover my whole house with a good Wifi signal. They auto-adjust their frequency to find the one(s) with the most availability.
All-in-all, I would say it’s a good deal.
I had the "original" Eero (pre-Amazon), one mother-ship and two sats. It was the best consumer router I owned. Only Unifi/Ubiquiti has been more reliable.
Can you lock them to a channel/channels if you want to once they settle in, to avoid them moving to channels that conflict with HE/Zigbee?
I'm pretty sure you can't... If you somehow can, I'm not seeing it in the settings. I think that's intentional as part of their guiding principle of keeping things simple (like it or not!)
But I think eero does a good job deconflicting itself - it seems to dynamically adapt to its surroundings instead of trying to bully its own way in & around. I've never had reason to suspect it's ever stepped on my HE or Hue zigbee.
What @hydro311 said. You can’t.
Arent the Eero routers really locked down?
I guess that's one way to look at it. But as long as it works well (as it does for me), it's actually pretty darn refreshing to have a network/automation device that doesn't have a gazillion options to learn, navigate, and futz with. I already have enough off those to deal with.
Which is damn well does, at least in my experience.
I have to say that my 2nd generation eeros have been 100% trouble free. And yes, I was initially annoyed that I couldn't adjust every single setting. I used to run OpenWRT, Cactus etc. on older WiFi routers and "enjoyed" tinkering, until I didn't. My first foray into mesh routers were 1st gen Orbi's that lasted about 51 weeks into their 1 year warranty and one of the units flat out died. I returned them because I could (Costco) and just impulsed bought the eeros because I needed to get back up and running while teleworking at the time. I've been seriously happy with them for 3-4 years. The price of the 6e really got to me. Ultimately though, since everything is working perfectly I don't feel like futzing with them at the moment. And since my mesh is hardwired anyway, I'll stand pat. But, I appreciate everyone's input. Maybe in another year the 7's will be down in the "impulse buy" price range.
They are and also use 40Mhz channel width on the 2.4 radio which is frustrating to live near. I have a few neighbors that have them and had to dial in my Unifi equipment to deal with that situation.
Bump. Just to mention that eero Pro 6E is on sale for $159.99. I had an old Amazon Fire Stick in the junk box whose trade-in took another $35 off that.
Replaced my gateway eero with almost no effort. All settings, reservations, device database, etc. are automatically migrated. Things are running well, except ...
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It has a Zigbee radio and I just as soon it didn't as I have no plans to use it. There is no way to turn it off. It has been said that unlinking the eero from your Amazon account will turn it off, but 1) that possibly leaves the radio on, just inaccessible, and 2) that turns off other desirable features.
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When NordVPN is active on my PC (which had been working fine with 2nd gen eero; a wired gigabit connection), something is slowing down new connections, such as putting a new URL in a browser. There's a 4-5 second pause. I'm suspecting maybe DNS lookups, but still investigating.
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Alexa integration is having issues. Alexa is unable to control devices in Hubitat, but if I reboot hub, it starts working again, then stops hours later. Hub IP is reserved. All this was working fine previously. I've seen similar reports here lately, so it the router swap may be a coincidence.
I don't have a 6e, so I can't speak for certain, but are you referring to the Thread radio or a no-kidding ZB radio?
They've (eero) been putting a Thread radio in units for a while now, but I've always been able to turn it off in the "Settings - Network settings" area.
That's at least been true for my old Pro 6 and now for my Max 7, but it's definitely possible the 6e works differently.
When Amazon bought Eero I believe they started to include a zigbee coordinator in at least some models, presumably so they could incentivize some consumers to buy more zigbee gear if they didn’t also own, say, an Echo Plus (the first Echo model with zigbee).
No kidding. It’s a zigbee radio that can’t be turned off