eero: First Look

After almost exactly one year after placing the pre-order, after missed deadlines and multiple delays, after frustrated rants, my Eero finally arrived last week:

Finally!

And today I got around to unboxing and setting it up! So here’s a first look at that process and some quick thoughts.

First, packaging is sleek. Very Apple-esque.

To setup Eero, you need to download their mobile app, power up the Eero and then just follow the on screen instructions. It’s a breeze!

Once the first Eero is setup, the app will walk you though creating the the WiFi network (SSID, security etc). There aren’t any options in this process (e.g. 2.4-GHz vs 5-GHz, which “band” to use, WPA vs WPA2 etc) but that’s really a feature, not a bug.

You can just right into setting up additional Eero’s as needed (I pre-ordered the 3-pack).

The app shows you some tips about placement (line of sight, height etc) and runs some sanity tests:

If everything looks good, the new Eero will get added to your network:

After setup is complete, Eero will even run a speed test (which you can manually trigger at any time). The home screen shows your Eeros, number of devices connected and speed test results:

All in all, very positive first impression. Of course, all of the problems I had with my previous mesh setup didn’t manifest themselves immediately, so I’ll give this another month or so before I declare victory over my wifi woes!

Of course, even for a v1 product that shipped a year after pre-orders, there’s a lot that I find missing.

Missing/Coming Soon?

• Ability to setup multiple wifi networks, one in 2.4-GHz spectrum, another in 5-GHz spectrum. Note that there is already support for “guest” access, but given the wifi density in urban areas, sometimes a 5-GHz network works better.
• More visibility about the network and connected devices: right now Eero just shows number of connected devices and nothing else. I want to know which devices are connected (is it my TV, my neighbor’s phone, some rogue device), I want to see what is happening on the network in real time (upload/download rates for instance) and how that traffic is distributed (e.g. YouTube or Netflix or something else)
• This is probably something most people don’t care about, but I do want to be able to see the IP addresses assigned to the devices and if possible, even change the DHCP range. The latter is sometimes required if the IP range used by default conflicts with, say, IP ranges used by work and I try to VPN in.

Looking forward to the updates!