- Hi, I'm Parris and I expect that you're
watching me right now via wi-fi,
which means you have wi-fi in your house,
which means you have the same wi-fi problems
in your house that everybody has.
One is that the coverage isn't really good,
and there's some corner of the house that
the wi-fi hardly seems to work.
The other is, the plethora of devices
that's on everybody's network now.
We have 14 devices that connect
to the router in this house,
and my desktop and my laptop I know
I have antivirus and anti-malware
programs installed that I keep up to date.
But the phones, the tablets, our Roku tv,
where do you go to get an antivirus program for your TV?
They are various degrees of protected and unprotected,
so what's the solution to that?
They sent me out their latest wi-fi mesh system.
It's called the Deco.
It comes with three units that
you place around your house so
you don't have those dead spots.
It has built in antivirus and other protection
against threats from outside on the Internet,
and as much as my daughters will not be pleased by this,
it comes with parental controls.
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- This Deco system is supposed to
be able to cover 4,500 square feet,
and you can actually get more
if you have a bigger house.
You can get up to 10 of these
and connect them all in the same mesh.
So what that means is they're
all going to share the same wi-fi connection
and present themselves as the same wi-fi network.
Makes it very easy to use.
This set goes for $300 and there's
a link to it down below this video.
If you're thinking $300,
that's a little expensive for a router,
well I have a very nice router,
that I was sent, that goes for about $200.
But how much do you spend for antivirus software
for each device in your home?
For anti-malware software?
For parental control software if you use that?
And how much is it worth to have that kid
that stays in the back bedroom stop complaining
about all the Internet problems they're having?
Here are the three little UFOs.
They're each identical,
which is another part of what makes this easy.
You hook one of these up to your DSL or cable modem.
Once that's doing its thing,
you get an app on your phone that lets you talk to these,
and the other two you place with their power supply
in strategic places in the house,
so we have wi-fi spread throughout
and these devices are smart enough
to be able to do most of that configuration on their own.
Once this is setup, it teaches
the other devices their role in the network,
and then they should all play together nicely.
Again, they're all identical,
so it doesn't matter which one you pick
to be your main piece that you plugin to your cable modem.
Each device does have two ethernet ports.
You can connect them via cable.
The only other thing that plugs into them in power.
Also in the box is an ethernet cable,
in case you need one to get started,
and what is probably the shortest
instructions sheet I have ever seen.
The next step is to download the Deco app on my phone.
They have it for Android and iPhone,
and then, plug this in and start this up.
They don't mention any other way to set this up,
so you may need to use your phone.
I downloaded the app and installed it,
and setup an account.
Now it's going to take me through
setting up the devices.
There really aren't many pieces involved.
Pretty clear and simple.
They tell you how to know if your modem
is ready to go onto the next step.
You then start checking the lights
on the attached Deco unit,
and here's the answer to my earlier question
about can you set it up without a phone or tablet?
The answer seems to be no
because you have to do it via Bluetooth.
Here's my current setup.
I have the cable modem and the router on a bookcase
in the very back corner of the bedroom
in the very back corner of the house,
probably about the worst place to share out the wi-fi.
And then I have another router a little bit more
towards the center of the room in the house.
This is the wi-fi that the TV attaches to,
and the kids' devices attach to.
I like having the second router
because the kids connect to this,
and so, I can always just pull the power on this,
and turn off the Internet to them if need be
without turning off the Internet to everything.
Also this has some programming in it
that I can have it turn off the wi-fi
at 10 o'clock at night,
turn it on again at 6 o'clock the next morning.
But I'm hoping some of these parental control
type features will be built in to the new Deco unit.
Everything is plugged in and turned on.
Here's the new Deco unit next to my router.
You may not care for the looks of the router
with antennas poking out and wires dangling everywhere,
lots of lights flashing on the front.
But since I like tech, I actually like that.
But if you like having the wi-fi,
but don't so much want to show off the technology,
the Deco device is really nice and nondescript.
You can put this anywhere on a shelf,
and it looks just like some other appliance,
so it minimizes the technical look,
but gives you all the fast technology inside.
With Bluetooth turned on,
the phone is automatically gonna find it, I think.
Yes, it found it.
Now it wants to know where I have placed this one.
Okay, so I'm gonna say I've put this in the bedroom,
so this is gonna be the bedroom of the three devices.
I guess that's what it's going to call it.
Now that the phone's connected via Bluetooth
to the Deco device,
and the Deco device is on the Internet,
I'm going to setup my wi-fi network.
Well, that was quick.
Let me try to connect my laptop and see.
My laptop connected right up to it,
and it's full strength here in
the same room as the Deco router.
Let me move to the far corner of the house.
See what the strength is with one Deco router setup.
Here in the far corner of the house,
the signal is a little weaker on it.
So, to get full bars everywhere in the house,
and out front, I'm going to add the other two devices.
Let's see what's involved with that.
Find a suitable spot, okay.
I've chosen the very center of the house for this Deco unit,
and then the third one I'm going to
put in the far opposite corner.
No ethernet cables involved here,
just plugging in the power,
and according to that, think it's ready to go.
Is that it?
Let's see.
Oh.
Well, it's happy I'm happy.
This one is living room.
Okay, one more, for the far corner,
and it's happy again.
So all three are now doing their thing.
Oh, and it's already tested speed out.
Ah ha, take a look at those parental controls.
Yeah (laughing), that's what I'm looking for.
(phone clunking)
Okay, she gets a Teen rating there.
So, what is this going to filter?
Information.
Okay, so I think these are the two
that are automatically added,
and if I hit + to something here,
oh she would not like this (laughing),
then I think those get blocked as well.
Okay, so now games is also added to
the blocked content for the Teen category
to let her have games again.
Just put it back, okay, what's next?
Time Controls,
daily time limits.
Oh, this is different than any of
these that I've used before.
They'd always been "set the time",
so it's like from, okay, you can have the Internet
when you get home in the evening from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.,
and in the morning from this time,
and you set it like that,
but they always complain that
"well I was busy, I was out,
I was doing something else during that time,
so can you set it up so I can still have my time?"
If it keeps track of the total
amount of time that they're online,
that'd be interesting because they can have
just a certain number of hours to use whenever they like.
Yeah, so we do this already with the way
I have the other router programmed.
Weekdays the wi-fi turns off at 10.
Going to set it now,
they get up early, believe it or not, Artana does.
Ximena is not a sunrise seeing person.
And this screen seems to be where I'll add in their devices
because it doesn't know who belongs to what,
so, when they get home,
and their devices are on the network,
then I should see them here,
and I'll be able to add them into their profile,
and those are the devices that these controls will work on.
The antivirus protection is provided by Trend Micro.
They're a big antivirus protection company.
I don't see there's a lot of things to do here
except turn protections on and off.
It automatically updates,
and it checks all the Internet traffic.
So if you're trying to go to a website
that could infect your computer,
as I understand it,
it'll even pop up on the screen,
and say "we really don't recommend that you go there".
Now to see what's been happening,
here's our zero days without an accident.
You can go to your "Antivirus History",
and you can see, I guess,
what malicious websites have been blocked,
and what virus downloads have been thwarted.
Here's quality of service.
You set this for the devices as a whole it seems,
so I already know what everyone's
gonna tell me we need to set as the highest priority,
and that would be Netflix streaming.
And how's the wi-fi signal strength now
in the far corner of the house?
Looks like it's full strength.
And how bout out in the driveway
in the front of the house?
(birds chirping) Well it's not full strength,
but it is up to medium strength
from low that it was before.
I've just run an Internet speed test,
and you'll notice the download results
are about 100, upload is 20.
Now, if you remember, on the phone
it was showing previous speeds were
200 something download and upload of 20.
There's a reason for that.
With this type of multiple device mesh system
to paint your house with the Internet so it goes everywhere,
the downside is that the devices having to
speak to each other, there's sort of a go-between effect,
which effectively cuts in half the speed of the network
because the devices have to
not only talk to your device,
they also have to talk to the main device,
the one that's plugged into the modem.
So that results in cutting the speed in half.
Now is that going to affect you or not?
Well, our speed here, that we have with,
it's not Time Warner anymore, Spectrum,
is 300 down and 20 up.
And we often don't see the 300,
but we'll usually get over 200, 200 something,
and it's rare that we'll see a speed under 200,
so I'm pretty sure this 100 represents that
overhead of using this mesh kinda system.
This speed, however, is fine for streaming anything,
even you can have multiple devices watching Netflix.
It shouldn't be an issue.
There's still plenty of speed for that.
Couple times you would notice it is,
one, if you are downloading something,
a big four gigabyte game onto your Xbox,
onto your computer,
and you have very high speed Internet,
faster than 100 megabit per second download,
it will take longer.
You used to be able to connect at 200, 250,
now you're gonna connect at 100,
so it might take twice as long
to download in that situation.
Also, if you have a computer
that's functioning as a file server,
or you have a network attached storage device
where you grab files from that,
put them onto your computer,
it would slow that down as well.
Otherwise, daily use for most people,
you're not going to notice a difference.
I just walked back over to my room,
next to the first of the Deco devices that I installed,
the main router, as it were,
that connects directly to the modem.
Here's the speed that I get,
so yes, it's definitely,
when you're connected to one of the satellite devices,
that's when you have that cut in speed
down to about 100 megabit per second.
So those are the pluses and minuses
of the TP-Link Deco system.
Thanks again to TP-Link for sending me one to try out.
I like this system.
It looks good, it's very unobtrusive,
little devices you just stick here
and there in your house,
and everybody gets that good Internet coverage.
It also provides your antivirus and anti-malware protection
right in the little Deco box itself,
so you don't have to worry about
"hey, do I have that antivirus protection
on my phone, or on my TV",
when you're connecting through
your wi-fi through this device.
Roxanna and Ximena may not be the biggest fans
of the parental control features with this,
but hey, being a parent isn't about being popular.
Find out more about the Deco Mesh Internet System
at the link down below this video.
I'll be back soon with more tech and other reviews.
You can keep checking back for those,
or you can click that subscribe button down below.
You'll get notified when our videos go up.
See you on the next review.
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