Google Nest WiFi Point

I’m no IT professional, so I was taking a gamble as to whether adding a 3rd wifi point would solve coverage issue in my home office. Luckily it did, and it took less than 5 minutes to add it in my Google Home app and get it up and running.

I have new "smart home" where a large number of different types of devices are connected via WIFI to the internet. Many of these devices (but not all use Alexa). The builders of the smart home put a single WIFI Access point in the ceiling of the main (great room) room and this was supposed to cover the whole home as well as devices located outside the home but still on the property. In most (but not all) rooms inside the home this access point is putting out 324 Mbps. In some rooms less, and outside the home (patio, sides of the home where WIFI connected plugs/switches are located), as well as WIFI connected Home Generator and Water Softener are) much less and sometimes no connection. I decided to install a Google Nest Mesh WIFI network with the router and 3 access points. Now I have 750 to 860 Mbps in EVERY room and 500 to 600 Mbps on all points on my property. This device also allowed me to set up a guest network so I can provide access to WIFI for all my guests (which is badly needed to maintain telephone reception given the block and steel used in the homes construction) without compromising my primary network password. If have a growing number of devices I would highly recommend setting up a Mesh WIFI network.

If I can give any word of advice, stay away if you have a whole interior and exterior array of smart home devices. The Google home wifi products are the least configurable technology devices I've ever seen released in recent history. Plus, they are not cheap. They are great for really simple setups, but if you have a bunch of products from different vendors trying to connect them all together across a home, then I would steer away. They consistently crash, try to force all products up to 5ghz spectrum (even though the router is aware that the devices aren't compatible), and the mesh consistently crashes. We have a lot of key home automation devices that we want to control while on travel. The Google wifi products are unreliable and cannot be trusted.

I already had the main WiFi Hub installed and added the access point to have better coverage in the living room area. The setup was a breeze and it is working as described.

My son wanted this device for our home app. It works well 👍🏽

I have the Amazon Nest system and it works better than any wifi I have had in previous years. It is super easy to install, and I love the points that extend the wifi and have speaker "Hey Google" capability. I just wish the main wifi also had the speaker.

I needed another access point to cover more areas outside of the house. I already had the google nest router and an access point so it was easy to add on. Just get the google home app and follow the instructions on the screen. Just plug it in and it takes about 5 minutes to set it up. Overall good coverage!

It took me about an hour to add this point to an existing network. Most of the time was incurred trying to figure out where the eight digit setup code is located on the bottom of the device. Hint: it’s under the peel-off QR code. Clear instructions on where the code can be found and also making the code much more readable for people with subpar vision would have been EXTREMELY helpful. After finding the code and getting it entered I then had to proceed through a number of options to complete setup, absolutely none of which are essential for the device to function. To add insult to injury, the reason I wanted to add this point to my network was that I bought a new laptop (which I use in only one location in our house) and the laptop was not getting a strong WiFi signal. Other devices in the same room get strong WiFi signals. I thought that by putting a point 10-15 feet away might help. Since one cannot force a device to connec to a specific point on a Google Nest Mesh network, so far adding the point hasn’t helped as the laptop continues to connect to a different point. And, yes, I did have the laptop “forget” the network and turned off the laptop before installing the new point. So far, a day late delivery, money spent, time invested and no benefits.

Mesh network stops working several times a day and requires a reboot (while WAN access works perfectly). This is a no go for someone who often works from home and has many Zoom calls. There are many similar complaints on Google forums, but still there is no official fix.