hey everybody it's lon seidman and we're
taking a look today at another wireless
mesh system that is from linksys that is
called the velop and we'll be taking a
look at this and maybe uh comparing it to
the google Wi-Fi we looked at not that
long ago i do want to mention in the
interest of full disclosure this came in
free of charge through the Amazon vine
program however all the opinions you're about to
hear are my own
nobody is paying for this review and no
one is reviewing this content before it
is posted all right let's take a closer
look now at the hardware and just like
other wireless mesh systems on the
market this is going to set you back
quite a bit the 2-pack that amazon sent to
me for the review across 349 dollars and
you basically get two identical devices
in that box and one of them becomes the
router the first one that gets plugged
in and the subsequent devices become the
remote nodes and you can also get a
three pack if you want to pay more for
485 dollars now by comparison the google
Wi-Fi system gives you three units in
the box for 299 and the reason why I
think this one cost a little more is
that it does have a more robust wireless
radios this has a three-by-three
wireless radio versus a two-by-two on
the google Wi-Fi i'll put a link down
below to a video that I did explaining
what that means but basically there are
more channels available on these devices
and that means at least in my testing
that you will see faster speeds from the
remote nodes when they're connected
wirelessly back to the main nodes so
seeing almost double the speed i was
seeing on the google Wi-Fi because there
is just more radio to work with on these
things so that is probably why they cost
a little bit more whether or not you
need that is going to be up to you now
the bottom here you've got a couple of
ports only two actually uh two ethernet
jacks here and one of them on the main
unit will go into your cable modem or
DSL modem to bring the internet in the
other Jack here you can use to plug in a
game console or a computer or something
like that on the remote nodes both of
these ports will be available because
this device will be communicating back
to the mothership wirelessly so you can
plug in at two different things on there
now we have more things to connect via
ethernet you can always get a very
inexpensive ethernet switch i'll put a
link to one down below in the video
description probably about thirty dollars or so
you plug that switch into one of those
ports and then you'll get a bunch more
ethernet ports available to you so these
things tend to not have many ethernet
ports and this one is no exception
there's a reset button here for getting
it back to its the native state your
power goes in there and there's a power
switch and speaking of power i noticed
that the uh power adapter for this thing
its just odly wide in fact wider
than it should be so it doesn't give you
a little separate brick but they built
it all into the unit that goes into the
wall and I think it's just a little too
wide for some outlets at least maybe
think he might have next to it atleast for me i
have a light switch where I was testing
and I couldn't get the dimmer
switch to work because the wide uh nature
of the power plug took up a lot of room
there and I ran a number of speed tests using
the open-source iperf software to see how
fast we can transit data over the
wireless network my methodology is I
take a laptop connected via ethernet to
the main node and then i take another
laptop out and try to connect back to it
with a wireless connection and I used a
brand new macbook pro that has the
latest wireless technology on it to
conduct the tests so we can get a good feel
as to how everything would work under
ideal circumstances and the first test
I ran was a very ideal circumstances test
where i had the wireless hub over
here and our computer right here and i
was getting speeds about 400-500
megabits per second wirelessly so the
speed here is at least about the same as
I thought on the google Wi-Fi when
connected to the main node when I went out to
the remote mesh node though it actually
did better than the google Wi-Fi was
getting anywhere from 200 to 300
megabits when i was connecting to that
wireless remote node and sending that
data back wirelessly to the main unit
and I think that's where I having the more
robust wireless radio on this product
makes a difference was really a lot
faster than when i tested with the
google Wi-Fi with that same equipment in
the same spots in the house here so good
performance on the back haul from the
wireless side of things and I think if
you are setting these things up ideally
where you have one kind of overlapping
the other I'll get really decent wireless
performance I didn't see all that much
of a drop-off in latency either we are getting
about anywhere from four to nine
milliseconds of latency connecting from
the remote wireless note back to the
main unit here so we actually doing pretty
well and I was very impressed with how
well it did work in the last thing I
tested was I took the remote node and
connected via ethernet back to the main
unit because these units support a wired
back hauling in other words instead of
using the wireless to come back to the
main unit
I can actually connect it up to a
network jack and have it send its data back
via an ethernet cable and if you have
ethernet throughout your home it's a
great way to get better performance when
I did that I was getting about 500
megabits per second on the remote node
because it didn't have the bottleneck of
the wireless network hopping back and
forth between these notes back to the
main ones if you can hook up via a
wired network that is the way to go if
you don't have computer network jacks in
your home but you do have a bunch of
cable outlets are the technology called
mocha that I've done a lot of videos
about that i will put a link down to some of
those videos in the description where
you can actually turn your cable
television wiring into ethernet
essentially and get really good speeds
back to your mother ship in the house
so all in very good performance but let's take
a look now and see how the software side
of this works using their mobile app and
the software at least the time that i'm
recording this video does need some work
because i'm connected right now to
velop system with this phone
wirelessly as well as the computer that
is here next to me i think one upstairs
might be connected to it as well
none of them are showing up here on the list of
devices and I'm saying that this device
which is very slow to update and
sometimes if you go out of the app and
then try to reopen it basically from
scratch which I'm going to do it might
give you a better connection here so
let's see if this all works better now
at least give us an update here as to
whether or not things are working at
this screen here where it's getting
router settings you will see quite often
even if you hop out the app for a minute or
two and go back in sometimes takes awhile for
this thing to update but now that we've
come back into it is now giving us the
correct number of devices so i have my iPhone
and my macbook air here both connected
via a 5 gigahertz connection the
problem though is that was it doesn't tell you
which node that you're connected to on
the network you're trying to
troubleshoot why somebody connection is
so bad you're not really going to know
which one they're connecting to and
that's a bit of an issue for me I'd like
to be able to see exactly which node i'm
into so that i can figure out if it's
the computer or the node as something
else on the network causing issues that
was a problem that i saw there
back to the dashboard here you can get a
feel for your internet connection you
can then go in and turn on the guest
access there's also parental controls
you can set on a per device basis so for
example i'm trying to prevent a phone or
a computer from connecting to
facebook.com I could go over here to the
device section selected device that I
wish
to not get onto facebook go over to
parental controls and then a block a
specific site in here provided that the
app they're using to connect to it actually goes
to facebook.com sometimes these apps
connect to some other address and
then you have to try to figure out what
it's connecting to but now that site is
blocked and if they try to use it they
can't get on there
likewise they can also just turn the
computer off the internet completely
just by clicking on the block button
here and they are completely knocked out
it doesn't have any scheduling or any
grouping or that kind of things you have
to set up the blocking on a per-device
basis you can't just say here's all the
kids devices and then knock them all
off at the same time this is just a
couple things lacking on here that I've
seen on other routers and Wi-Fi systems
lately that are not really on here
device prioritization might be something
useful if you have a game console or
gaming pc on the network that you want
to make sure always get the best
possible connection you can select up to
three devices on your network to always
take priority over everything else so that
might be helpful if you have someone
uploading a lot of stuff and you want to
still have your game work you can have
your gaming pc kind of be the primary
device for that there isn't much else on
here though it really is a pretty
Spartan interface actually very similar
to many other devices like this one so
for example if i go over here to
advanced settings there was just a couple of
things like port forwarding this basic
port forwarding you might see on other
routers you do have the ability to set
up some Wi-Fi mac filters if you want to
prevent certain connections from
happening on your network for example
and you have some very basic internet
settings here as well there really isn't
much that you can do with this routing
device again because it's more of a
consumer-driven thing my biggest gripe
comes in the administration of the node
so the setup process like I said it's
very easy to get everything hooked up it
finds everything on the network and just
kind of works but the problem is that
you don't get an ongoing connection
status from the remote nodes right now
I've got one of these things set up in
my kitchen at the office one is the one
that's on the desk next to me but i
have no idea as to a signal strength
right now I got a little notice that it
was good when I first took it up but I
don't have any way of knowing on an
ongoing basis how good that connection
is back to the main unit and I might
want to adjust things over time and
maybe move it around a better part of
the room and the only way to really get
another connection
test out of it is to actually
reconnect it from scratch and that
seemed to me i'm not the best way to do
it
probably a fixable problem again this is
all software stuff so that might be a
better way to go about it but right now I'm
not crazy about how those nodes
report their status back to the main
unit here I think there's better ways to
do that you also do have a guest network
available as well in fact you can turn
it on and off with alexa with your voice
if you want to do something like that
so there are some neat little features here that
come into play but overall I think the
software here is a bit lacking and i
would like to see a little bit more
robustness and it's parental controls as
well as some of the I maintenance kinds
of things when you're looking at
different devices on the network now one
other area that needs some attention on
this device is how it picks the Wi-Fi
channels that operates on so Wi-Fi like
everything else that comes over the air
like TV stations and radio stations has
different channels available for devices
to operate on and what they're supposed
to do is find the one that is the least
saturated with other stuff so it doesn't
have as much interference which means
you get a better performance and
actually leave Wi-Fi channels available
here at the house for things like this
that i'm testing and for whatever reason
why this device when I plugged it in
insisted on attaching to the channel
that everything else here in the house
was operating on and as a result i
wasn't getting great performance out of
it initially because it was interfering
with my other equipment and I ran its channel
search function and still kept putting
itself on that channel until I
unplugged it and plugged it back in a
few times and finally it got itself onto
something that would less saturated and
i say this because if you are in a
dense environment where you have a lot of other
homes around you
those other homes likely have Wi-Fi
devices operating and those will present
some interference and these things
really need to be smarter about which
channels they choose to operate on and this
one didn't demonstrate to me that it was
doing that I think it's fixable via
firmware but it is i something i would
like to see fixed on it because I really
does perform well when it does find a
nice clear channel to operate on in fact
it's the fastest device I've seen from
the remote node perspective in other
words the speed that I got when I was
connected to a remote node wirelessly
and then having that wireless node
connect wirelessly to this one really
was the fastest connection i've seen so
far in some of the stuff that i have
tested the really good performance out
of it but again it wasn't so smart about
finding the right channels so the big
question here is
whether or not the higher price tag of
the linksys makes sense
compared to the google Wi-Fi and I think
in most cases the answer would be no
because for google system you get three
notes for 300 bucks
this one came in two nodes at $350 now
these are faster in between each other
but i don't think most consumers will
benefit from that speed and I think
picking up an extra node for less money
will actually improve things more than
you might realize because I think a lot
of folks are having Wi-Fi problems not
because of the speed of their Wi-Fi but
the quality of the connection to the
more connection points you can set up
throughout your home the better and i
just think this is a little overpriced
given that its software isn't as good as
the google system even though the speed
in between nodes is a lot faster so i
think if you are a enthusiast or someone
who's got a lot of data to copy back and
forth between computers on your network
this is going to do better of course
because your file transfers will be
faster but i think for what most consumers
do on the Internet
this won't offer anything more for its
high price than the google system does
so just something to think about as you
are out there shopping but there is room
for improvement on this especially on
the software side i think the hardware
is very sound so im actually eager to come
back to this maybe in a few months after
some software updates have taken place
to see what kind of improvements they've
made because i really like the
performance of the hardware the software
is kind of lacking for me and again
doesn't make a justification for its
significantly higher price tag over the
google Wi-Fi this lon seidman thanks for
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