Hello and welcome to the show!
My name is Alex and this is TechFlow!
Today, we've got an awesome video for you inspired by a tweet from one of you guys and
that tweet reads: Can you make a vid on making WiFi better?
I get confused with all the boxes and wires.
I need fast internet at my home, please.
Introducing the Asus Lyra.
Let's do this.
OK, so this is the Asus Lyra.
Let's unbox it and see what's inside and make sense of all of this.
So, Asus are making things really simple with these three, what they're calling, nodes.
And you start with the one that says "start" on the back.
This is going to act as your standard WiFi router.
Now, what you're going to go ahead and do with this one is plug in the WAN port in to
one of these ethernet ports and then the other one is a LAN port for you then to connect
a wired computer on your network or in to a network switch to expand your wired network.
And once this one is configured to your WAN and it has internet access, it's then going
to wirelessly share the internet connection to each two of these nodes which are then
going to broadcast the same SSID or network as this one, creating one whole blanket of
a WiFi network around your home and garden.
But you're probably thinking: Alex, isn't that pretty much the same as just using your
standard WiFi router in your house and then connecting a wireless extender/repeater?
No, it's not.
Wireless extenders and repeaters halve the band-width because of the way that they're
configured and the way that they're set up.
With this, this is called a tri-band system.
It uses one of those bands in the tri-band - the three bands that it has - to communicate
between the first node and the other two nodes and then the other two bands left over are
to connect the nodes to your phone.
No bandwidth or throughput is lost like it would be with a wireless repeater set up.
This is going to have your full internet throughput and speed at each of these WiFi nodes.
But does it actually perform?
Let's get in to it.
So, let's get a basis down here.
We'll start you guys off with a graph up there.
Bang, there you go.
One, two, three.
We're going to do speed tests in three locations with our old router and then with the Asus
Lyra mesh system.
This is the first speed test, right in the main room where the router is.
As you can see, 16 ping, 53.39 down, 8.23 upload.
Let's move to our second location - follow me.
So, here we've arrived in our second location.
Let's test again.
As you can see, it's not looking good for the conventional wireless router.
18 ping, 0.75.
Oh no - 18 ping, 0.78 down, 0.08 up.
Let's move to the third location.
The third location.
Test again.
Test failed - nothing.
Nada.
Game over.
So, let's download and install the Asus Lyra app.
Once that's finished, we're going to disconnect and throw out our old router.
Right, so, once we've gone ahead and downloaded the app and plugged in our first Lyra point
to our ethernet, to our WAN, and plugged in the power, we can go ahead and launch the
app and see how easy this is.
This is the first time that I'm doing this.
So, now it's currently configuring my WAN connection all by itself - something that's
usually very difficult through a web interface with a standard off-the-shelf router from
the shop.
It's done it already.
Now it's asking me to configure the name SSID, the WiFi name for my network and also give
it a password.
For the sake of this video guys, I'm going to call it "TechFlow" and give it a password
of one through eight.
So, as you can see, I'm connected to my new network TechFlow and the app is telling me
that Lyra is set up.
It's saying: Do you want to add another Lyra to your network?
Yes.
We've got two more to add.
Let's move to the next location and add Lyra.
So, as you can see, the Lyras, the actual points themselves, look really, really, really
sleek and they pretty much, they fit in with any home decor which is what I absolutely
love about them and I also love this about the app; as you can see here, it says: Connection
level; good.
Now, this has been changing between great and good whilst I've been in this room.
The main point is upstairs and, obviously, the main point upstairs has to wirelessly
connect to this one.
So, this is an indication of whether we are in a good or great place to place one of our
mesh points.
There we go guys - Lyra is set up.
Do you want to do another one?
Yes, we've got one more to do.
Good job, Lyra.
And the third node set up; just as easy as the other two.
Now, in this office, we have three nodes set up.
So now, the next thing, is most routers you have to configure with a web UI or you have
to go in to, like, 192.168.something in to your web browser and it's all a bit complicated
- as you've seen, we've set this thing up so far in the app.
But it's not just the set up that stops there.
As well in the app, you get a lot of useful features that make this really, really simple
for anybody to set up and maintain.
Let me just show you a few of them.
So, as you can see up here, we have TechFlow's network, we have the internet, then we have
the main mesh point.
I've named this mesh point over here "Living Room."
This is where the internet goes in to.
And, as you can see here, wirelessly, this spurs off to the kitchen mesh and the bedroom mesh.
Each node - we have three in the network.
Scrolling down in the list gives you some little, well, little useful tips.
It's saying that my admin password is weak, so it's telling me to change it.
It's telling me my WiFi password is weak, telling me to change it.
You can set up things like family members and that is pretty much limiting certain members
in the family, so, like, limiting the kids to certain content, so content blocks.
Limit devices from accessing the internet or adult content.
As well as this, the whole system has in-built AI protection which keeps your network up
to date with the latest security.
As you can see, the security was last updated fourteen minutes ago.
The network is secure.
Just below that, we have the real-time traffic.
Right, let's see, let's see if the range and the speed is good.
Now, that is squeezing every last drop out of our internet connection in to the office.
We get about 74 megabits in and 8 megabits up.
As you can see here, 17 ping, 74.16 down and 8.24 up.
So, as you guys can see, 18 ping, 66.34 down and 8.35 up, in the second location.
I think with our previous router, we were only getting something like a couple of meg
in here, if that.
Right, third location.
So, third location - we got absolutely nothing here before with the previous router, as I've
mentioned, we're in an old office building - massive...
Wow.
Ha!
19 ping, 49.42 down, 8.35 up.
It speaks for itself, doesn't it?
And here comes the conclusion: It has the range and it has the throughput.
This thing is going to cover your house ten-fold.
It's stylish, easy to set up and easy to maintain, with family features and AI protection.
This is by far one of the most simple and easy to use and easy to set up WiFi mesh systems
I've come across to date.
Pricing availability will be down there below for you, guys.
We hope this video has been informative - we'll see you guys in the next one.
Adios.