Gabe Turner: Hey folks, this is Gabe with Security Brands and if you are a techie like
me, you may know about mesh WiFi systems or be looking to get into the game.
Today we are going to check out what Amazon is bringing to the table with the eero mesh
WiFi system.
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Gabe: In today's review of the Amazon eero Pro and Amazon eero Beacon.
I'm going to be going over some pros and cons, its design, it features set, the installation
process, the mobile app experience, before answering a few questions and telling who
I think this system is made for.
If you want to get the full details on the Amazon eero Pro or Amazon eero Beacon, head
on over to securitybrands.com.
There I'll have comprehensive written reviews, along with more information on other types
of security like VPN's, and password managers to get you set up in your home.
Once again, this can all be found at security brands.com.
Let's kick off today's review of the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
Looking at some pros and cons, beginning with the pros.
Now, in terms of the coverage, we were really impressed by just the Amazon eero Pro alone,
which can give you 1,750 square feet of coverage.
If you want to add to that, you can add an Amazon eero Beacon to get an extra 1,000 square
feet.
Just depending on how your house is, of course, constructed in terms of the walls, you're
really going to be impressed by the WiFi coverage.
We definitely were.
When it comes to setting it up, it was very easy.
We had the entire process set up within 10 minutes using the USB-C power adapter.
I have that plugged in, use the mobile application, and you can essentially be walked through
the entire process after you put your Ethernet cord into the back of this and directly into
your modem.
For us it's a Verizon Fios modem, place it into the back and that was it.
When we wanted to add devices it was very easy.
We took our Amazon Beacon, plugged it directly into an outlet using the plug on the back,
and that was it.
All done within 10 minutes.
Now, the final element we want to talk about is the intuitive mobile application experience.
There you can set up various profiles for your friends and family.
You can actually pause the Internet activity which means you can prevent them from being
on the Internet at all.
You can decide what they're accessing, so you can prevent them from using different
websites for inappropriate or explicit content.
You can even run speed tests and see what devices are being used on your network at
any given time.
All that is a really easy process.
Now, when it comes cons of the Amazon eero WiFi system, I'm going to point to the lack
of Ethernet ports.
Now, on the Amazon eero Pro, you have, of course, Ethernet pro that's going to go directly
to your modem, and then you just have one other Ethernet port.
On the Amazon eero Beacon, you have zero Ethernet ports, and you'd like to see those to connect
other devices.
Let's now look at the pros and cons on the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
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Gabe: Hold on.
I hope you're enjoying today's review of the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
If you want to be kept up to date on the newest in WiFi systems, smart home security, cybersecurity
and more, subscribe to our channel, Security Baron.
We're dropping new content weekly.
All right, let's get back to the video.
Now that we've gone over the pros and cons for the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system, let's
talk about its design.
Let's begin with the Amazon eero Pro, which has a pretty minimalist design.
It's a little bit larger than the initial Amazon eero, but I like the design.
It's got a nice logo here, you'll see on the back here the USBC port for your power adapter.
You have your reset button and then two Ethernet ports.
One of course will go directly into your modem in your router, so wherever that is located,
you'll be able to place this directly below it.
It has a couple of bumpers to be placed down rather nicely.
The all-white aesthetic means that it's going to be pretty inconspicuous.
We're used to a ton of devices in our home, and this is not going to jump out more than
anything else.
I honestly think that's the same with the Amazon eero Beacon, which has a different
design.
It's going to go directly into your outlet.
You're going to plug it in, it's going to go up against your wall, and from there you
have your reset button on the side, but it's also not too heavy.
It looks pretty good, you have that eero logo.
I think it's a pretty solid device and it's going to add a thousand square feet of WiFi
coverage with just this much space.
I'm a big fan of the little night light, LED light at the bottom so you know that when
it's connected, when it's online.
Let's now look at the design on the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
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Gabe: Now that we've gone over the pros and cons, and the design on the Amazon eero WiFi
mesh system, let's talk about the feature set, beginning with the coverage.
When it comes to the coverage, the eero Pro itself gets you 1,750 square feet, and each
Beacon that you add after that gets you another 1,000 square feet.
We reached out to Amazon and essentially, there doesn't seem to be a limit to the number
of eeros you can set up on your system.
You just have to think about this rule of thumb, which is that each one gives you a
thousand feet and you don't want to put it about more than 50 square feet away from the
next device.
Each of these can handle 128 devices themselves, so you can connect 128 computers, phones,
and things of that nature.
However, Amazon states that you should probably put in only about 30 devices for each system
if you really want to get that optimal speed.
Speaking of speed, this could handle just about everything we threw at it.
With our Verizon Fios, we were getting over a gigabyte per second of download speed, which
is really remarkable.
Generally impressed with the coverage and speed on the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
When it comes to the performance of the Amazon eero mesh WiFi System, neither the Pro nor
the Amazon Beacon use WiFi 6, which is something we would love to see the big players take
advantage of.
It just hasn't happened yet.
When it comes to performance strength, we were really impressed with the eero.
We felt that it worked through thick walls and multiple walls better than any other system
that we've seen as of yet here at Security Baron.
When we're talking about tech specs, you're looking at a 700 megahertz quad core processing
power.
512 megabytes of RAM, 4 gigabytes of flash storage and it's Tri-Band, effectively doubling
the speed on its predecessor.
When it comes to controlling your WiFi with the Amazon eero mesh WiFi System, you have
a number of options in the mobile application.
You can set up profiles for each person.
You can pause their Internet access altogether.
You can set up parental controls to decide what people can look at.
You can even schedule WiFi so it goes off between certain hours of the day.
All of this we'll dive into further when we look at the mobile application.
When it comes to security on the Amazon eero mesh WiFi System, there's significant and
strong encryption.
You're looking at Transport Layer Security, which is a successor to SSL.
When it comes to security protocols, it's WPA2-PSK-AES network security.
When it comes to automatic updates, they do release the software notes, so you know exactly
what is happened, what is changed.
You can even toggle on that for notifications.
You get a direct message letting you know exactly what security fixes have taken place
in any manner.
When it comes to additional security elements, there are a number of options.
You have eero Secure, which gives you parental controls and protects you when you browse
to websites, giving you a warning that you're going to navigate to a website that is known
for phishing or installing malware.
That's going to cost you $2.99 a month or $29.99 annually.
You can also do eero Secure+.
This includes everything from eero Secure with subscriptions to encrypt.me for encrypting
your data.
Anti-virus software from Malwarebyte and the 1Password password manager, which we have
a full review on, both YouTube and our website, securitybaron.com.
That entire bundle is going to cost you $99.99 annually.
When it comes to Smart Element, you can integrate your Amazon Echo devices with the Amazon eero
system, allowing you to use your voice to control the Internet.
That's a look at the feature set on the Amazon eero mesh WiFi System.
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Gabe: Now let's jump into installing your eero mesh WiFi system.
You're going to want to download the mobile application, the eero app.
Make sure you have your modem set up in your home.
From there, you plug the USBC power adapter into the back of the eero and into an outlet.
Then, you're going to want to take that Ethernet cable, plug into the back of your eero Pro
and into your modem directly.
When you begin the setup process it's going to ask you to create an account.
You create an account, putting in your name, mobile phone number and address.
It's going to ask you to verify, after you've agreed to the terms and conditions, your email.
You use that number to verify that you are a real person setting up an account.
From there, it's going to ask you what eero device you're setting up as the gateway, which
is that which is connected to your modem.
From there, you're going to go and decide eero Pro.
We have the eero Pro here.
There's also the original eero.
It's going to make sure you have all the elements necessary.
It's going to be the eero Pro, the power cord, the Ethernet cord and the modem.
Once you plug that in, it's going to ask you for a Bluetooth access in order to connect
the eero devices.
You're just going to say, "OK."
It's going to look for the eero Pro and it finds it almost immediately.
Once it hits, it's going to say, eero Pro detected.
You're going to want to set its location and create the network.
I put mine as office because that's where in my home the router is located.
Then you're going to make up your own network name and password.
In this case, I call it the SB eero, for Security Baron eero.
I've made my password roddypiper.
It's going to set up your network.
It takes a couple of moments and it goes, "Boom!
Your network has been created."
From there, it's going to ask you to set up another eero device.
In this case, I have the eero Beacon that I wanted to set up as my second device.
In setting up the eero Beacon, once again, it's going to ask you to understand the layout
of your home.
Mine is a long home.
I want to place my eero Beacon as centrally as possible.
In this case, we were really impressed despite the fact that we weren't near other electronics,
it doesn't want you to be.
There are definitely some large walls in between.
It really worked admirably.
We turned on the nightlight so that we can automatically have that light when the room
is dark.
Then we place it into that top location on the outlet.
You can actually have something plugged in beneath it, and it worked almost instantaneously.
From there, you're going to run a quick placement test to make sure that you're getting optimal
WiFi signal, and that's it.
Once you've done all that, it's going to upgrade the system.
You'll decide where you want it to be placed, and you're done.
It took us less than 10 minutes to have both our eero Pro and eero Beacon set up in our
homes.
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Gabe: Now that we've got everything installed, let's check out the mobile application for
our Amazon eero mesh WiFi system.
This way, you're not only going to set up your system, but also interface with those
controllable elements.
It has a pretty decent score in the Apple App Store with 3.2 out of 5-star rating.
That's significantly better in the Google Play store, where for Android users, it has
3.8 out of 5 stars.
Let's go ahead and check it out on my iPhone 7 Plus.
Here I am checking out the Amazon eero mobile application for my Amazon eero Pro and Amazon
eero Beacon WiFi mesh system.
You can see here that you have a notification immediately that we're online, that my eero
secure is active.
Let's go ahead and look at our Internet.
Looking at the Internet, you'll see here that I have the download and upload speeds, and
it's pretty quick.
It says we can stream in 4K.
Let's go ahead and run another speed test.
Now, when you're running the speed test, you're just trying to ensure that you have the optimal
speed for you to do everything that you need on your system.
Fortunately, here, we have Verizon Fios.
Things are very quick, and you can see here that our download speed is actually over 900
megabytes per second.
Our upload speed is 812.
Things really going expeditiously when it comes to Internet.
Wow, it's even gone up even more.
That's really fast.
That doesn't seem like it's possible, 1,386 gigabytes per second.
Let's go ahead and get out of here.
Let's check out Office.
This is what I've named the Amazon eero Pro.
The connection for the Amazon eero Pro is going to be wired directly to your modem.
You'll see here, there's actually no devices connected to my Amazon eero Pro because my
modem is, frankly, in a place that's not particularly accessible.
Often, I use the other elements in my WiFi mesh system to be online.
That's called Office.
It's in the space where no one else is, essentially.
Let's go to Bedroom.
This is what I've called my Amazon eero Beacon.
Here, you'll note that they're two connected devices.
It's a wireless connection, because it is essentially picking up the Internet from the
Amazon eero Pro, and giving me that connection in a wider space.
Here, the LED is light, the night light is on.
I have two connected devices, my computer and my iPhone.
Let's go ahead and check out what you can really grab from your system and the real
utility in the eero mobile application, which is setting up profiles.
I've set up my own profile here, Gabe, I'm online.
Let's say I wanted to cut off my own Internet access.
This is something you'd want to do for a child or someone who's maybe annoying you in the
house.
You can just hit pause.
Now, I've knocked out the Internet.
You can see it's not green anymore.
No one can be on the Internet, on the system.
I would take out the Apple Watch, the iPhone, everything.
Let's go ahead and unpause.
Everything is back online.
You'll see here below, I can actually pause it at a scheduled time.
I have a few set up.
I have bed time, 11:30 to 6:00 AM.
Here, I can ensure that I'm going to bed at 11:30.
If I don't remember to do that, well, my Internet's going to go off.
I'm like, "Oh, yeah, be asleep, go to sleep."
Then for meditation, come home from work, come home that early, I can actually cut off
the actual Internet, give myself a second to pause, reflect, maybe cook some dinner,
get things prepared.
That's a really useful element of the eero mobile application.
Let's go ahead and see what that process looks like.
Let's set up a new one scheduled.
Let's call it, Morning Meditation.
I want to do morning meditation.
I can start that, let's say, 7:00 AM.
Let's have, oops, I'd changed it to PM.
Let's change it to 7:00 AM to 7:25.
I've saved that, Sunday through Thursday.
I have little morning meditation from 7:00 AM to 7:25.
You can jump into your headspace, where you're calm, take a moment to use one of those apps
to help you decide, relax a bit.
If I want to go below that, you'll see safe filters in here.
You can actually filter out content that's not appropriate for you or for anyone in your
home.
This is really useful, especially if you have children.
They can have an iPad anywhere and no one is watching them, but you can go ahead and
tap on, like the search results itself.
Here in search, it's going to just filter out all inappropriate sites and images from
Google and Bing search results.
You can actually filter out content.
It's going to block all gambling or dating or profane or explicit content, illegal content,
criminal content, or even a violent content, which is very useful.
We're trying to create a nice family-friendly environment.
Let's go ahead and jump out of here.
Look activity, where you can just see your download speeds, the scans that are being
done for your security, the thread blocks, and privacy and safety elements.
You can go in and check and see what has been filtered out.
We don't have any filter setup here.
I can do that.
I can go ahead and say, OK, now, I've blocked all adult content for Gabe.
There's not going to be any adult content there.
I'm not going to be able to actually go on Internet and find anything of that nature
using any of the devices connected to my profile.
Of course, we go beyond that to our settings tab.
In our settings tab, we have the name of the actual system, the SP eero and the WiFi.
You'll see our password, which I've set to, roddypiperrestinpeace.
You can decide what notifications you like, software updates, new devices, things of that
nature.
You're never really surprised by anyone or any device that happens to be on your home's
mesh WiFi network, which is really useful, because sometimes we want to know, who's into
using our Internet, especially in a place like New York?
That's our look at the Amazon eero mesh systems mobile application.
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Gabe: Let's answer some common questions people are having regarding to Amazon eero Pro and
Amazon Beacon.
The first question is, "Is the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system secure?"
I would say, yes, it's pretty secure.
It's using some of the newest technologies when it comes to encryption.
It has nightly automatic updates to prevent exploits.
The next question is, "Does the eero WiFi system work with Fios, Xfinity, or live Internet
service provider?"
Yes, the Amazon eero WiFi system should work for virtually every Internet service provider
in the country, so that shouldn't be something to worry about.
Lastly, does eero WiFi support WiFi 6?
No, the Amazon eero Pro, Amazon eero Beacon do not support WiFi 6, opting instead to support
WiFi 5.
Those are just some of the common questions regarding the Amazon eero Pro and Amazon eero
Beacon.
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Gabe: Now I'm going to tell you who I think the Amazon eero mesh WiFi system is made for.
I think it's the person who just wants to plug and play, who wants to have a really
easy setup experience, plug their eero Pro into the modem, and essentially be ready to
go within 10 minutes.
It's also for the person who's already in the Amazon ecosystem.
If you're familiar with Amazon, it's really easy to have your Amazon eero set up and integrate
with the Amazon virtual assistant.
Finally, I think this is for the person who wants to pay a bit of a premium but essentially
get all of their cybersecurity tools and Internet browsing security in one.
That's with the Amazon eero Secure+ subscription at $99 a year but with it you get, of course,
encrypt.me, Malwarebytes, and the 1Password password manager.
That's our look at the Amazon eero Pro and Amazon eero Beacon as they make up the Amazon
eero mesh WiFi system.
If you appreciated today's review, give us a like and hit that subscribe button.
As always, this is Gabe at Security Baron.
[snaps fingers] Be secure.
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