what's up guys i'm Ben from authentech and today we're checking out an
affordable whole home mesh Wi-Fi system now we all know mesh Wi-Fi is a great
way for full home coverage it's easy to set up helps eliminate dead spots
seamless roaming from room to room and often results in faster speeds and more
reliable Wi-Fi overall while huge thanks to tp-link for sponsoring today's video
I'm excited to show you guys their new deco M4 system price at just $179 for
a three pack it's rated to cover up to 5500 square feet of home coverage also
at the end I'll show you a speed test I ran versus the Google mesh Wi-Fi system
which costs even more around 240 bucks the results were very interesting
starting with a quick unboxing I received the 3 pack and each deco looks
the same they look like little white pillars with a clean and modern design
on the back of each node are two gigabit ethernet ports and power on the
underside with nice cable routing besides the three power adapters for
each node there's also one flat ribbon Ethernet cable included as well so all
three nodes work together one connects directly to your modem and then the
other two are spread throughout your home they can either wirelessly connect
and communicate with each other or connect each node with an Ethernet line
for faster speeds they call this Ethernet backhaul which frees up the
wireless radios for client communication set up is a breeze and I always
appreciate that download the tp-link dekho app and I'll guide you through it
step-by-step your first and primary node plugs directly into the modem wait until
it's flashing blue connect through the app set its location where you place the
deco name your Wi-Fi network with a password and a few other options and
that's basically it the other nodes are even faster to set up place them
throughout your home plug them in and each deco via the app and they'll auto
connect to the other nodes so here's the key features of the deco and for its
dual band AC 1200 and my three pack covers up to 5500 square feet and keeps
up to 100 of reliably connected the Wi-Fi features
multi-user MIMO technology allowing the routers to communicate with multiple
devices simultaneously the mesh roaming protocol it's using is pretty
bleeding-edge 802 dot 11 kV and our support now I did a ton of read up on
these three protocols and I don't want to bore you with all the nerdy and fun
technical details but what it basically accomplishes is better and more advanced
seamless roaming in short art smart devices are actually sort of dumb
clients on the network they often don't know what's good for him like for
example which mesh node to connect to but these new advancements and features
the deco mesh Wi-Fi will help push your devices around selecting the best path
of connectivity this means you connect your device to
one single Wi-Fi name and the decos will take care of the rest
actively working on the back end to give you seamless roaming band steering and
more the m4s also have a feature called self-healing so if one deco no drops out
the system will reconfigure automatically based on the other nodes
with no network interruption so your users shouldn't even notice in the deco
app there's a lot of features and insights to check out first we can see
which devices are connected and to which node you can also give specific devices
let's say your gaming PC or a console a higher priority which is helpful and
sometimes needed you can also set a time duration as well the app also has some
really sweet and powerful parental controls let's check it out alright so
we're inside the app and here's my iPhone what's really sweet is let's say
this is little Timmy's device well we can create a new profile here let's say
this is my child's device we hit next and then we can set a filter level child
preteen ages eight to twelve teen adult here's all these different categories
that we can turn on or off tap the information to see what falls under each
one of these categories we can tap websites and add things manually okay so
let's go ahead and turn them all on just for fun then next we also can set time
limits bed time turn these on or off certain days of the week certain times
weekend's weekdays it's super in very nice ok let's turn all on and save
alright we're saved now check this out it's super sweet going to Chrome let's
try to go to Facebook just for fun don't have the app of course and look at not
loading can't reach time's out so sweet okay well what about Instagram I have
that app already downloaded alright let's try to go to a certain page and
check that out won't load we go to search try to tap in anything nothing
will load then it gets even better we can go back into the deco app go to
parental controls here's the child we can play or pause and then go in and we
can view more insights on it so what pages were they trying to access for how
long durations there's history and insights filter levels we can add more
devices all these parental controls and customization really nice feature to
have baked right into the app there's device blacklist which allows you to
block specified devices there's monthly reports showing you network details like
total connected devices blocked content website activity security threats and
more there's firmware updates that can wirelessly be pushed over the network to
update all the decos connected there's the convenience of toggling on/off or
scheduling the system LED on the notes it's an easy way to avoid bright lights
at nighttime you can activate port forwarding as well as ap mode and a
whole lot more under the settings you can add family or friends as managers to
help admin your network speaking of friends you can one tap turn on or off a
guest network with custom SSID and password the main network and guest
network are separated by VLAN which is a huge benefit as well now on to the big
speed test and comparisons versus the Google mesh Wi-Fi system I use fast comm
which is powered by Netflix I'd say they have some pretty legit servers here and
there I also find it more consistent readings over speedtest.net those guys
often give me drastically varying results super fast super slow fast calm
numbers are usually much tighter and range easier to gather an average so I
have all three of my decos spread in a triangle throughout my home my office is
here which is where my modem and Decco is located back in this corner I
have my second node placed in the master bath and ran some speed tests from my
new comfy borough sofa about 15 feet away the third node is on the other side
of the house in the extra bedroom and my speed tests were across the hallway in
the kids room about 25 feet away I tried to make sure all network settings were
the exact same with very little network activity happening in the background I
use my iPhone 10 essence is a common Wi-Fi device that also supports that
roaming standard of K V and R which I also made sure to free roam from spot to
spot allowing the mesh network to control the forced hopping now my speed
test with fast calm and Cromwell it's far from a precise science experiment
but interesting results nonetheless funny and intriguing the tests at my
desk closest to the AP was pretty similar to the Google Wi-Fi but when I
went out to the outer edges of the house both in the master and the kids room
well the decos came out on top sometimes a close race but sometimes a fair bit
faster especially with those downs for a simple little speed test I was really
impressed with how these decos came out on top especially since they are more
affordable in price also interesting before all this I was running a simple
ubiquity unify AC long-range AP with segregated 2.4 and 5 gigahertz SSIDs
there's some nice benefits that offers but when I did a speed test both here in
the office and in the opposite corner of the house well the deco m4 just blew the
speeds even on the 5 gigahertz band way out of the water I'm not sure exactly
what's going on there but I like the results just a couple last features I
appreciate the Deco m4 has both Alexa and if this then that support on the
Alexa side it supports voice commands for example you can tell your Alexa to
turn on or off the guest Network even turn on application priority mode like
hey Alexa asked appealing to turn on gaming mode there's a lot more commands
as well as for if to all the world of interconnectivity and smart home expands
even more for just a couple of fun examples you can receive a notification
whenever a cific device connects to your network
good for maybe the kids or even better receive a warning when let's say a
stranger an unknown device connects to your Wi-Fi there's other recipe options
as well so that is the new deco M for mesh Wi-Fi system from tp-link the
3-pack is priced at just 179 Amazon Prime I'll give you all the links down
below and huge thanks again to tp-link for sponsoring today's video and thank
you guys for watching if you're new around here consider subscribing for
more tech videos posted every single week and until next time let's live
authentically