What's up guys. Mike here the DetroitBORG
and today we are taking a look at Google Wifi.
So this is a Google Designed
and Google made wireless router.
It is available in a one pack and three pack.
Now why would you want three routers?
This is actually part of a mesh networking solution
For your home.
Instead of buying just one router
that is designed to reach across your home,
and then sort of patch it together with range extenders.
Instead you can a system specifically designed to create a mesh network.
That covers your entire house with a reliable and fast network.
This is a great solution, especially for me
because I have a fairly large house with dozens
of devices connected to my router.
take advantage of the mesh networking
but if you need to you can buy another
one later and expanded out to fill up
your house now last year i reviewed one
of Google's partner products called the
on huh broader that was made by tp-link
now this will actually work with that so
if you want to extend the range of your
existing on the broader this is designed
to work seamlessly with that product as
well now I keep calling these routers
but they're really referred to as Wi-Fi
points because the part of a full
network of devices google recommends 1y
5.4 houses up to 1,500 square foot and
if you're between 1500 to 3000 you might
want to buy two of them but if you have
a large home around three thousand to
4,500 you want to go with the three pack
which is a better value overall so
getting to the unboxing first thing we
have to do here is remove the sleeve
next thing we want to do is peel a piece
of tape so we can open up the lid once
we do that the first thing we'll see
here are the three routers now the first
thing to know is that all of these are
identical they have the same capability
so it doesn't matter which one is the
main router and the others are the
satellite routers so what I mean by main
router is that one of these have to be
plugged into your isp so if I lift up
one of these underside you'll see all of
our ports you'll find a USB type-c
connector for powering this and i'll get
to that in just a moment and then we
have a land and when port so one of them
connects your ISP and if you need to use
it you can connect a hardline connection
if you want but of course you only have
one here so getting the three routers
out of the way let's get to the
accessories in the bottom of the box so
all we have to do is remove the tray the
first thing we'll see here is a single
piece of paper explaining how to set
this up for the first time and it's
pretty basic and we'll walk you through
that
next up we have the accessories and in
the center compartment will find a power
adapter and
ethernet cable you'll only find one
ethernet cable in the entire box so we
get a 15 watt USB type-c power adapter
which is nice and compact so we have
this external power supply that's not
too bulky
now get into the other accessory boxes
they just contain a power adapter for
each of the other units so these routers
are extremely compact and lightweight so
they have some height for the antennas
but they're not too tall like you get
with something like the airport extreme
from Apple actually think they're pretty
nice-looking so when their power on you
get an LED light that sort of wraps
around the edges it's a soft white LED
light and it does change color depending
on the network conditions or the
configuration status of the router now
the LED light doesn't completely wrap
around and you can turn this off
understandings if you don't want it on
so in addition to mesh Wi-Fi it has
pretty standard specs for consumer Wi-Fi
we have AC 1200 supported with two by
two wave to Wi-Fi so this does support
dual band attitude 11ac Wi-Fi 42.4 and
five gigahertz Wi-Fi this also supports
TX beamforming so this will direct the
Wi-Fi signal toward the device that
needs it this is also Bluetooth smart
ready for those devices that can take
advantage of it now powering each of
these routers is a quad-core processor
with 512 megs of ddr3l ram with four
gigs of emmc flash storage on board so
the first thing i want to do here is
grab one of the routers connect my isp
and the power and get it booted up for
the first time now the next thing you'll
need is the google Wi-Fi app which is
available in iOS or Android so you'll
need one of those devices to set this up
for the first time now in my case
because i already have the app installed
it automatically cease the new hardware
on the network and prompts me to set it
up for the first time
so next up the app is going to promise
me to scan the QR code on the back of
the device or i can just type it in if i
want so once that's done the phone can
securely connect to the router so we can
set it up and name is the first thing
I'm going to do here is named it office
because that's where the main base will
be housed next up we need to name our
Wi-Fi network and give it a password and
in my case I'm just reusing my existing
name and password so that all the
devices that worked on the previous
hardware will work on the new hardware
without having to relog in now I think
the other Wi-Fi point is very simple it
promised me automatically to pick how
many need to still add and talk to me
through the process and I don't need the
devices near me
in order to do that so i can go ahead
and play
some in other parts of the house and set
them up remotely the only thing I need
to do is label their location and once
those Wi-Fi access points are found it
establishes the network and we're ready
to start using it once our network is
setup we can use our google Wi-Fi amp to
manage the network and to use its many
features we can also see a complete
overview of our network configuration
and its health so for example we can go
up to internet to see our speed so if
you want to test out our network speeds
we can do so right from the app we can
also see our usage unfortunately this
only works when you're actually looking
at the usage is not constantly recording
it in the background next up we can see
r3/y five points so in my case you can
see the primary point is in my office
and we also have the bedroom and family
room and I can go ahead and test the
mesh network integrity so i can see how
healthy that network setup is and if I
need to move them closer to each other
or add additional Wi-Fi points so my
case although not perfect my network
looks pretty strong there's a few other
things under Wi-Fi points to take a look
at so if you go to settings you'll see
your current software so you can update
that we also can restart the network
which is very handy and we have factory
reset if we need to restore everything
back to factory conditions we also have
our device settings so if you click on
one of them you can change the LED
brightness or turn it off
you can also restart that specific
router you can also factory reset that
specific device instead of all of them
next up we can also take a look at all
of the devices currently on our network
which is very handy to have so you can
see all the devices currently connected
and whatever is pulling the most data
will be toward the top so if i go ahead
and click on one of them i can see the
usage information so again i can see the
download and the upload rate and if i go
the details I can rename the device if i
want i can also see which Wi-Fi point
that one is connected to I can see the
IP address mac address i can see whether
it's using the five gigahertz or 2.4
gigahertz network and the type of device
it is now there's another tab along the
right that brings us to many features
and settings we can take a look at such
as Network check so now we're checking
allows us to test our internet speed and
the mesh strengthen you can also chest
the device's Wi-Fi speed so if you're in
other parts of the network and you want
to test the Wi-Fi strength this is a
great place to go so if you want to find
those weak spots in your network this is
the utility you might use to find them
you can also select a priority device so
if you have a device
on your network that you want to give
the most bandwidth to you can select
that specific device so for example if I
want my imac to have the most bandwidth
so i can upload this video i can go
ahead and select that now this is
limited to one two or four hours so you
can't set this permanently under network
settings we do have our advanced
networking for things like our dns when
as well as upnp dhcp IP reservations as
well as port forwarding so you can lock
your IP established port forwards and
much more
you can also add additional managers to
this network so they can modify the
settings and view the activity on the
network but what they can't do is
factory reset it or add additional Wi-Fi
points we can also easily set up a guest
Wi-Fi network here so you can name the
network you can give its own password
this allows you to the sandbox those
users from your main network or having
access to a sensitive password and you
can give them authorization to access
certain devices on your network so if
you want them to have access to your
chromecast you can enable that under
settings so that they can share their
music and videos without having to log
into your network family Wi-Fi is an
interesting feature that basically
allows you to pause internet access for
certain devices so for example you can
create a label for one of the kids in
the family and then add their devices to
this label so that means when you click
pause this will pause internet access
only for those devices now you don't
have to create these labels the pause
you can do this mainly just by going
through the list of Wi-Fi devices on
your network and if you want this to
automatically kick off you can specify
an end time another really interesting
feature is called home control so this
allows users who are logged into our
Wi-Fi network to go to on dot here on
their web browser to control
home automation devices in my case those
are philips hue lights now if I don't
want people to have access to this or
control them i can remove this under the
app settings but basically this gives me
a web interface that only people logged
into my Wi-Fi network have access to so
they can turn on specific lights change
the brightness or even the color so i've
been using google Wi-Fi for about a week
in my house and it's been a big
improvement over my previous system
which was a combination of a time
capsule which had been range-extended
with an airport extreme na express for
some reason that network became very
unreliable had
actually restarted because devices would
lose their connection or they would slow
down i think this has something to do
with the handoff between the different
zones created by the range extended
network which isn't a true mesh network
and with the google Wi-Fi system it's
much more adaptable its able to change
the Wi-Fi channel for each device on the
network depending on the network
conditions and the google Wi-Fi system
offers much more software management
options that are simply not available
with the airport utilities so generally
speaking this is a fantastic system and
i highly recommend it for its ease of
installation it's great software
features that are much better than the
comparable Apple experience and it's
highly scalable for any situation
alright guys hope you enjoyed this look
at google Wi-Fi if you guys like this
video please give it a thumbs up to let
me know and I'll see you again in the
next video