BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi, Bundle Pack of 4 Discs (Trio + 1
BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi, Bundle Pack of 4 Discs (Trio + 1 Additional), Mesh Wi-Fi For Seamless, Speedy (AC1200) Connection, Wi-Fi Everywhere in Larger Homes, App Control And 3 Year Warranty
 |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | Dual-band AC1200 | Dual-band AC2600 | Tri-band AX3700 |
| Perfect for | Families or households that want all their devices connected to a strong, fast wi-fi signal in every room. | Busy families or households that want to download and stream films on any device, in any room. Boosts super fast wi-fi to every corner of the home. | Bigger families or households with multiple users streaming content or gaming at the same time. The best solution for maintaining faster, stronger wi-fi in every room. |
| Level of app controls | Medium | High | Full |
| Works with all UK broadband providers? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No. of ports | 1 WAN/LAN Gigabit Ethernet port | 1 WAN/LAN Gigabit Ethernet port | 2 WAN/LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports |
| Weight: | 1.88 kg |
| Dimensions: | 33.6 x 26.4 x 19.1 cm; 1.88 Kilograms |
| Brand: | BT |
| Model: | 101550 |
| Colour: | White |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | BT |
| Dimensions: | 33.6 x 26.4 x 19.1 cm; 1.88 Kilograms |
Very easy to set up.
Super fast wifi, I use them so my son can do online gaming in his room as the normal signal is intermittent there.
Absolutely brilliant. Even in my front garden I get super fast broadband now, even though the nearest disc is on my upstairs landing!
100% recommended.
was struggling to get a reliable wifi signal outside the house. Tried a range extender which gave me wifi in my garage but not outside so decided to go for the mini whole home system mainly because it was cheap (reasonably priced) and voila I now have wifi where I need it. Easy to install and speedy signal. Whether its speedy enough for gaming I cannot say but we have five devises connected through it and its more than capable.
I had terrible problems in my old house. Wifi signal couldn’t reach by study from the router. This solved the problem easily and even allowed me to extend the wifi signal to the loft. I now have uninterrupted and strong wifi all over my house. Even better… I can change my broadband supplier without having to re-connect all of my devices again.
The main going I now see is a constant wifi speed of near my downlink speed from BT, and a lack of latency on interactive devices.
All in all, I’m very happy and the BT App is easy enough to use.
Now a tip to help you set up easily. First go onto your router admin and remain the SSID of any wifi (both 2.4Ghz and 5GHz) to something other than they already called. Now when you setup the discs, change the SSID of your new network to the name of what was your old network, naming sure the oassword is also the same. By doing thus, any existing devices will automatically hook into your new mesh network without any setup effort from you. Easy!!!
Bought these when they were on promotion after having BT fibre installed. Because we had to reposition the router coverage was poorer in some parts of our three storey house. Installation was pretty simple and straightforward.
Coverage was improved but the downside of mesh wi-fi technology is that you get about half to two thirds of the speed at the main router.
Finally I have full home Wi-Fi with no need to reconnect as you move room to room- a godsend when you have preteens with little patience!! The set up could be made clearer, the app doesn’t exactly guide you step by step and I basically figured out how to do it myself- quitting the set up and adding the discs manually. Overall good value for money and good app controls for family
Setup is straightforward with the app (if something seems wrong, double check your phone hasn’t connected back to your original WiFi network partway through setup) and with 4 discs (which are great value when the 99 offer is on) you can cover 1 home over 3 floors, or 2 neighbouring properties, with minimal loss of speed from the main router!
I’m operating both sets at the reasonable limit of their operating range, and they have been nothing but reliable – unlike virtually every other form of WiFi extender I’ve seen or tried over the years. So I’d 100% recommend these.
One last thing to note: I did get a dud power supply for 1 disc, but it’s a very standard variety / connector so I had spares knocking about from 10+ year old tech that was no longer in use – thus not deducting any stars.
Having tried a couple of other solutions to extend the broadband wifi signal which were far less than satisfactory, this rather neatly sorted out my problems. A little bit of juggling the discs about the place to get them in ideal places, and then I had smooth fast wifi throughout the house.
They are reasonably small, so unobtrusive; but cleanly designed so don’t look too bad when you do see them.
Easy enough to set up, they do require restarting once a week to keep them running smoothly (very easy from the app on my ‘phone)
Caveats: three bed victorian house. Not running internet above 50mbps, so cannot speak as to how the discs would deal with that.
This system is easily set up and provides excellent coverage within a medium sized home. The walls in my house significantly attenuate the wi-fi signal. Now I have solid 5GHz wi-fi everywhere in my home, whereas previously only 2.4GHz was available, but was often unreliable. The discs can move between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ status back to the base disc, however they continue to work well. The supplied app. provides easy control and monitoring of the system.
My only criticism is that the shape of the power supply makes sharing of mains sockets with two/three way adapters impossible. They are not overly big, but extend well beyond the earth pin. Sole socket use or an extension lead is needed. Extending the other way, beyond the live and neutral pins would be a far better design.
If like me you live in an older house with thick brick/stone walls you know how the wi-fi signal drops off even just one room away.
I had previously bought 2 different wi-fi extenders and whilst they both worked the results were still not impressive, with my WFH son always complaining about his work, and more importantly to him games, being laggy.
After considering getting a new router, I found that the speed from the wall or router itself wasn’t really the problem. It was, of course, getting the wi-fi signal up to the 1st and 2nd floors where many of our electronics were. Not up to drilling holes everywhere and routing Ethernet cable all over the place for a network switch, I looked up mesh systems and found the “old” BT stuff was not only still fairly competitive for less demanding applications, but also really cheap right now with all the sales going on, this special edition 4-pack actually being cheaper than the regular 3-pack! I didn’t even use the last disc and am now wondering whether or not to put it in the basement for decent signal to the downstairs loo!
Fast delivery, even at Christmas thanks to Prime, and a doddle to set up. It has made life much more convenient, and meant that for the first time we can ALL use the wi-fi at the same time! I am now considering the next step up, since this kit is “only” 1200ac and already seems quite fast so what would really fast mesh give us…
I am usually on the fence about BT products, but can highly recommend this kit as a low cost way to distributing your wi-fi all over your property, if you’re not too demanding on outright speed.
I’ve lived at the same house for the last 15 years and always had problems with WiFi signal in a few places in the house. I have tried plug in WiFi extenders and increasing the broadband speed without any or little success. Just as I was about to upgrade my package again to see if it would help I came across these. Easy to install, if not a little time consuming, but once you are up and ready there’s no need to manually switch between signals like I had with the WiFi extenders and the signal stays strong everywhere in the house!! In fact, in the room where I had to Ethernet the laptop to get anything done online, it was that bad, the WiFi is now reading speeds slightly higher than my package is supposed to be providing!!!
I’ve had these installed for the last couple of months and I’m already forgetting the ongoing battle I’ve had for the last 15 years trying to get a strong and stable WiFi signal in most places in the house. It’s just not a problem anymore and I don’t have to fork out for any expensive broadband upgrades!
I haven’t used all the features yet though it is useful to have the threat of cutting the preteens Wi-Fi off I’m hoping I might never actually need to use it!
When I bought this package they were charging over 120 for 3 and 95 for 4 so that was a no brainer. I live in a end terrace that has 4 bedrooms with loft conversion and side room extension and the 4 discs are enough to get the signal everywhere. I will have saved money against the alternative of upgrading my package within a couple of months so I was happy to spend the money, after all, if it didn’t work I could have just sent them back.
Purchased a set of three and separately one extra (our apartment has ridiculously thick reinforced walls). On the plus side, we now have decent coverage throughout our property. On the negative, it was truly frustrating to get it installed. Got the first three going after two hours. But took another three hours (literally) to connect the 4th. My advice is to largely ignore the ‘ideal location’ tool in the app when positioning the satellites. I ended up choosing ‘poor’ locations but found that the system meshed together. The other sticking point relates to having one password on the set of three and a different password on the lone satellite. I think the turning point was renaming the network and changing the new network password. But it’s all a bit of a frustrating blur to be honest. So good result but questionable whether a quicker and as effective result might have been achieved with a different model/system. Hope that helps
I have had lots of issues with wifi in my large 5 bed 120 year old house. Mainly because the phone line enters at the back of the house, leaving the wifi to try and get trough two thick walls before it’s into the house proper. I have used multiple wifi extenders with poor success, so I finally decided I would invest in a mesh system. Was going to spend up to 200 and then saw these with 4 units for under 100, so I thought, why not try. I was extremely sceptical, but set up was really easy. The app is super helpful with where to place each unit and 4 easily cover my house (about 220 square meters). I don’t think 3 units would have managed it so it’s such a deal to get 4 for under 100. Genuinely couldn’t be more happy as I now have stable wifi even in my loft office.
I ordered 4 of these discs just over a month ago. The problem I had was that because my wifi router is located in the lounge, the signal upstairs is poor, especially on the side of the house away from the router. This is where my office is located. I had tried repeaters – these gave little improvement with problems of their own! Lately I have had an Ethernet cable running from the router up the stairs to my office to give me good wifi. Anyway, I thought if these discs don’t work, i’ll just return them. The setup was what I would call ‘a bit of a fiddle’ and the app is not the best. However, after getting all 4 discs to link up I now have full speed upstairs and in the office! Yippee! Problem solved at long last 🙂
Well, that was easy to set up and instant usable WiFi! (my house is 15M long, router at far end and now have a good signal in my shed the opposite end)
I’ve had so many plug in extenders that have had decent reviews but plugged in at a low level socket just don’t work.
These are plugged in but via a lead so they can be sited higher up.
You plug the 1st dish into your main hub and then follow the instructions.
The 4th dish needed to be plugged in close to the 1st dish to gain connection which was simple then just unplug it and re-site at the furthest point of the chain.
Anyone that says that BT wholehome isn’t good or doesn’t work probably live in a mansion.
(also have to mention you can add more dishes)
Setup was easy with the app, arguably easier than my Nest WiFi. The locator tool was useful and easy to use.
WiFi speeds are as expected, and signal stays strong but dips through steel and other walls, as would be expected on a mesh network. Speed is around 150mbps and no WiFi 6. 2.4ghz and 5ghz is supported which is good, again though I wouldn’t expect the latest technologies at this price.
You get what you pay for. Not the latest features or the appeal or reliability you get with more expensive setups but it works, and it works well with no complaints on my end. Although if you’re thinking long term, you should probably invest more into other systems.
Like any mesh network, this isn’t a magic bullet or a replacement for powerline systems. You should check that a WiFi mesh network is appropriate for your house prior to purchase.
Conflict of interest disclosure: I am one of the tens of thousands of people in the UK that works for BT however I did not receive any payment, discount or any other benefit. This is purely my own opinion and I’m not speaking for them.
Purchased to get a working WiFi signal to a home office at the bottom of our garden these mini discs have increased speeds from Down Load (DL) 8 and Up Load (UL) 5 to DL 37 – 50 and UL 10. Disc 1 is connected directly to the router, Disc 2 is on a window sill overlooking the garden and Disc 3 is in the office approx 15 metres away from the house. All three discs show a blue ‘good connection’ light – this can be turned off using the app.
All three also have the same SSID and password as the main Router allowing true ‘mesh’ capability. All our phones, tablets etc connect seamlessly as we move from one place to another.
Very easy to set up using the app, including adding an extra disc that wasn’t in the original pack. We have a very long house with the broadband entering at one end, and this has for the first time brought good connection speed to the other end of the house. Connecting with an ethernet cable provides way better speed that connecting via wifi on the disc that is furthest from the router. Overall it does the job well, was easy to set up and the app makes it very easy to monitor and adjust things.
Living in a large house, I’d tried various ways in the past to get WiFi access everywhere; mains data plugs only worked occasionally and traditional range extenders meant having to continually reconnect devices as you moved around (and were pretty slow).
Mesh networks looked the way to go but they were expensive and I wasn’t sure they’d work with my broadband setup. Well, the price barrier was knocked on the head when these 3 disc packs came in at just over 100.
Reading the reviews, I was still worried how easy it would be to install. Well, I needn’t have worried, the BT App led me through the process from start to finish and it worked flawlessly. I spent a couple of days moving around one of the discs to get TV streaming working properly and now I have access everywhere in the house and devices switch automatically to the strongest signal.
The only negative for some people might be that you cannot change the channel the WiFi operates on. Not an issue for me, but it might be for you if you have a dense WiFi neighbourhood.
I am pleased to report that this indeed an excellent way to circumvent WiFi problems. After installing this, the weekly reboots to fix the WiFi have gone away and I have perfect reception around my entire house – and into the front/back gardens – to boot. I am very happy.
The units themselves are about as easy to install as you could wish. Install the app on your phone and follow the instructions it gives which are basically to plug one disc directly into your router via the supplied ethernet cable and then plug a second and third disc into power in other rooms of your house, forming a ‘mesh WiFi network’. The discs themselves are very discrete and pretty small, you aren’t go to have problems with them being obvious and you can turn off the small LED on the front of the unit via the app if you find it annoying.
Once the system is working it’s best to turn off the WiFi that your old hub provides and use the discs for all WiFi. You can give the mesh network the same SSID and password as your old WiFi network so your old devices should auto-reconnect. I found it best to power cycle all the WiFi devices to ensure a completely ‘clean’ connection when I moved them to the mesh however.
Performance is as good as I need – the specs say up to 877mbit/s on 5GHz and 300mbit/s on 2.4Ghz but in reality it will probably not hit that speed. I only need them to match my 75mbit/s internet download though, which they do perfectly. A friend who bought a set on my recommendation gets 200mbit/s on his higher speed link with no issues. Very few people are likely to find that their performance is a limitation on internet speeds.
A nice bonus of the system is that since it merely acts as a replacement wireless access point (AP) you can swap out to a different router or different ISP and just plug the discs into the new box and continue as normal, no need to do any WiFi reconfiguration again. A very flexible solution.
Definitely a great solution for an average 3-bed home. Larger houses or properties with very thick stone walls may require either more discs or a different solution though.
Seller delivered well within expected delivery dates.
The product units were smaller than expected (a little bit taller than a mug) which made them easy to place discretely. Really nice little product.
Our fibre internet router is in an upstairs window.
We have a small stone built house with a garden office about 30m from the house, in line of site of the router’s window.
The BT Home Mini worked really well at boosting Wifi signals both within the house and to the garden office.
It boosted the Wifi to max within the house, confirming an Excellent signal.
The Mini stated that it had a poor signal in the garden office, but still quadrupled the speed of the internet coverage to almost circa 75MB.
Absolutely brilliant.
I well recommend both the seller and the produc
Virgin Broadband customers will know how poor the Virgin Superhub WiFi coverage is. To combat this, I invested in a couple of powerline plugs. This worked reasonably well with equipment that could use ethernet cables, but didn’t really help WiFi coverage. Having researched options, I decided to invest in these BT discs on the strength of reviews. I didn’t expect much.
Set-up is not the most straightforward. I downloaded the app and followed the instructions for installation but they weren’t the clearest. Still, it didn’t take long to understand what was required. Be aware that each disk requires a spare electrical socket to power it. Each disk also has one ethernet socket. One disk is required to plug into your router via ethernet. The rest can be placed around your house. The app helps you find optimal placement for each disk.
After naming the new network created, and changing the default password, I tested speeds and coverage using well known testing websites and apps. Both the coverage and speed of the WiFi was very impressive. Achieving 100 megabits per second 2 rooms away from my router was amazing.
I’ve had the system for a few months now, and I’d recommend it as the first solution most people should try if they have speed and/or coverage problems. It’s worked pretty much flawlessly, so far.
2 things to be aware of:
1. I’ve found that the WiFi signal can drop out for a second when moving from room to room. This seems due to the device (tablet, smartphone etc) locking on to the nearest disc for the strongest signal.
2. I’ve recently had SkyQ installed. It interferes with the discs. The signal drops off hugely. This seems to be caused by both sets of equipment using the 5GHz frequency. The solution seems to be to plug the Sky Q box directly into a disc using an ethernet cable. This prevents the Sky box taking all the bandwidth.
All in all, this is a great solution to WiFi issues.
I had wifi coverage all over my house but our phones seemed incapable of picking the best signal in every room and resulted in a lot of cursing. I bought this BT Wifi net as it seemed a very cost effective solution – if it worked. Set up requires some patience to find the best spots in your house for the mesh to work. I found positioning them near the middle of the floors of our two storey house best. The result is superb. I can walk everywhere, even outside (although range is obviously limited) and get a great signal and you would never notice the jumps between the wifi devices. They look quite reasonable and even passed the wife’s critical eye. The app is pretty good as well. I am very pleasantly surprised that this great value product works so well.
Review of BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi 3-disc set bought for 70. I used to switch broadband suppliers every year in the hope that Internet speed and reliability would improve. But having gone through EE/BT/OPEN REACH and everyone piggybacking off them and VIRGIN it never did. I installed this product connecting each unit to PlusNet (current provider) router by network RJ45 CAT6 cable and turned off router WiFi. One disc located next to router in living room. One in first floor bedroom and one in loft. And… WiFi is best its ever been. Speed in every room of our 1970’s mid terrace is now same as cable connection… and so is speed on front and back gardens. App works great on IOS and Android as well. I now realise that my problem wasn’t broadband signal, it was the RUBBISH WIFI ROUTER SUPPLIED BY EVERY BROADBAND SUPPLIER!
I was having lots of issues with Wi-Fi connectivity and my work laptop. After trying a wired connection, which was successful, my employer wanted nothing to do with the problem despite the laptop being the only device that was affected in the entire house.
As the home work is a permanent fixture I did a bit of research and found mesh systems were much better than boosters and a booster may not fix the issue.
One of the IT guys at work recommended BT products as well made, so I went with that recommendation. I chose the four disc mini set as being appropriate for our house.
The discs arrived quickly and were a cinch to install after I’d downloaded the app. Since switching them on I have had no Wi-Fi issues from any device, work laptop or otherwise. Highly recommend. It’s been a good few weeks now and am very happy with them.
We live in a bungalow and it was a problem to get a decent signal in rooms furthest away from the router. After trying different signal boosters etc we went for these mini by disk’s a pack of 3 plus one extra . Followed the instructions after installing the Bt app. On my phone. Room by room our bungalow came to life with the best wi-fi signal we have ever had. Following the instructions this By package was very easy to set up and a week later everything is still working perfectly. I have removed one star because I think the power cable was too short.
The WiFi signal in my house has struggled to cover the whole house whatever isp router I use. It’s an upside down house 3 bedrooms. There’s two rooms in the house {one bedroom and living room} that have 4k tvs, these tvs were only able to stream 4k by using powerline adapters with ethernet cables. The WiFi signal and speed was terrible in these two rooms, usually one bar WiFi and speed below 5Mbps. I wasn’t hoping for miracles from the BT Whole Home Mini, I was spectical if they would even work at all. I now have WiFi in every room of the house, full bars and running WiFi at 40 Mbps. I have 3 discs over the whole house. If your like me and was very undecided whether to buy or not, go for it they are the best thing I’ve bought from Amazon ever.
Dramatically improved the Broadband signal across my house but can be a bit temperamental. Discs often drop signal (despite there being a blue light on to show good connection) and have to effectively be restarted via the app. Would also be good if you could select the discs that you want your devices to connect to (doesn’t always seem logical why your device has connected to a disc that’s 2 floors above you vs. the one in the room you’re in). That all said, When it works, it works well.
Overall, brilliant. Wish we had bought this years ago. Completely stable, plenty of capacity. There is nothing the fancier, more expensive versions could be doing that would benefit us in the real world.
My expectations were not that high due to the price and that its the most basic version. We have a really large square house with block internal walls and a concrete beam first floor, and run a lot of simultaneous streaming from 3 or 4 devices at a time. I expected to need one disc per room, (expected to need to add on up to the 6 disc max) but 4 covered the whole house comfortably (3 did it at a stretch). They get decent range through the block walls but not through the concrete floor (luckily the modem/router is under the stairs so signal gets upstairs via the wooden staircase).
Set up was really easy, when it worked and when I followed the simple instructions PRECISELY, but one of the discs didnt synch first time and I had to try several times, and on the 4th (add on) disc I stupidly misread the simple but subtly different instructions and had a torrid time until I corrected myself. Most places now get 28-33 Mbps versus our hardwired maximum of 34. A couple of distant never used corners drop to 5-10 Mbps, but thats still plenty.
We have left our old Wifi operating so that we dont need to bother linking our multitude of IoT gadgets to the Bt discs, and linked our mobile devices incl laptops only to the BT discs as they benefit from the seamless network as you move around. BT discs are also running our TV, that is only used for streaming, as that was previously in a not spot.
I have a three storey house and the router is on the ground floor. This caused some issues with wifi signal on the top floor. This is very easy to install and extends the wifi over the entire house. The 4 star ratin is based on the fact that I was not aware that you need to connect one of the extenders directly into the LAN of your router so it is then right next to the router and means you only have two that can be used to extend the signal. I wanted three around the house. Minor gripe as it works great but something to consider if you did want to extend your wifi over a significant distance.
Overall for the discounted price I paid I am very pleased with the purchase. If you have a very big or thick walled house or want big garden coverage I’d spend a bit more. Biggest hassle was the app, but it worked in the end with no technical tweaks from me. The discs are small and unobtrusive.
Purchased these without reading all the negative reviews then decided to cancel the order based on everyone seeming to have difficulty setting up along with poor coverage. As the order had shipped I was told by the seller to refuse the delivery, but in the end I took them and glad I did.
Set up was painless, the app (which comes in for a lot of criticism) worked fine on a Pixel 2, no crashing or freezing and the whole lot was set up in under 10 minutes including renaming the guest network to the old 2.4ghz SSID / network name so all my smart plugs and lights connected without issue. Signal is strong, providing the full 63Mbit on all disks that the router outputted. No issues there at all.
The only problem was a google home speaker which needed to be factory reset to connect to the new network, took 5 mins to identify the problem and 2 minutes to fix. No biggie. Everything else connects fine and all disks report excellent connection in my 2 bedroom apartment, with a signal much stronger than the BT hub could manage into my home office (was Bedroom 2 … don’t get me started on home working ‘sigh’).
So in my case with a large apartment and 3 disks these work superbly well and a bargain at 75 for the 3 disk kit. I appreciate a lot of people are having issues but mine work brilliantly and were a doddle to set up. Very happy with them 🙂
I had read mixed reviews on these but I’ve found them to be absolutely spot on!
Installation pretty straightforward. I had a little difficulty with the standalone unit (you get a 3-pack and a single). You start with installing the 3-pack and install the standalone separately but join it to the already ‘pre-assigned’ 3-pack. It just took a couple of tries but all was relatively trouble free. Installed in about 30 minutes total.
I’m on Plusnet. Essentially you use the existing box simply as a modem (you go into the admin panel through your computer browser and disable the router) and the discs act as the Wi-Fi router.
I now have solid Wi-Fi throughout the home, no dead spots or poor signal areas and even get full strength Wi-Fi about 20m down the garden!
For less than 100 I now have seamless signal throughout my home and even extending into the garden and shed.
Discreetly sized discs that are small enough to be tucked behind furniture and hidden from sight if desired or are inoffensive enough to be left in view.
Plugs into your existing router from any manufacturer and compatible with all broadband providers, set up through the app is a little clunky especially if using more than 3 discs but relatively straightforward.
I used to have to reset my router every few days but since installing the mesh system I haven’t had to do it once. Speeds to various devices are comparable with the WiFi from my existing router which you can disable if required as you would be using the new BT network.
I would recommend this product to anyone wishing to improve their WiFi for a relatively low price and minimal work.
I got the deal of 3+1 units as I reckoned, correctly, that I would need 4. (3-bed brick semi). (One of the units is basically tethered by cable to the hub/router anyway).
Cheaper via Amazon than from BT and arrived promptly.
Pros:
1) does what it says and even extended the signal into the garden.
2) unobtrusive design.
3) adding the 4th unit was easy.
Cons:
1) It wouldn’t set up at first with the app until I deleted and reinstalled the app. (At which point, and only then, did it ask for admin password).
2) power cords too short to reach the top of a bookcase, which would have been a nice position.
I am a newcomer to mesh networks and this is the first such product I have ever bought. Although my Vodafone router is ok, it is not powerful enough to reach all corners of the house with decent signal strength.
The first thing to note is that BT Mini Wholehome is really competitively priced. I paid 99 for 4 discs. I think it’s the cheapest system you can buy that does the job.
The system seems to be derived from the larger BT Wholehome discs that have been out for much longer, but there is reduced bandwidth for communication between the discs, and one suspects, lower power for each disc.
Setup and maintenance of the system uses an app. The app is quite buggy (BT please take note) but forcing the app to restart usually solves problems. I would say the app underperforms the system itself.
During setup you first plug one disc into your router, then one by one choose locations for the others. The app tells you whether the location is suitable. Each disc has to be close enough to another to communicate properly, and with this system they have to be quite close together. However, the logic is a little screwy. I have one disc that the app tells me should be relocated. It consistently delivers very high internet speeds when devices are connected to it! Am I moving it? No.
You will see other comments about mesh systems talk about ‘backhaul’. In this context this means the communications between the discs, and ultimately back to your router. If you have any wired Ethernet in your house you can connect an Ethernet cable to more than just one disc, and this improves system performance hugely. I have two discs wired to the router out of 4. The most fancy and expensive mesh systems have a dedicated third frequency band to improve ‘backhaul’.
The firmware of the system seems to work well. Devices flick between discs quickly when you move about the house. This is seamless, you can only tell by checking on the system app which disc you are connected to. The other big function of the firmware, which is to route the ‘backhaul’ between discs in the optimum way is impossible to look into. You just have to trust that it’s doing it’s best!
Overall I am sure that if you pay a lot more money you get a better mesh system than this. But for 99, which is less than some routers cost, you get a good product here provided the buggy app doesn’t irritate you. The only thing I would say is that anyone who thinks mesh is a fire and forget panacea is kidding themselves. Mesh is much more complicated than having a single router and a bit of understanding of how the system works and a willingness to tinker a bit at first may be necessary to get the best out of the system.
A bit of a fiddle to set up initially. But once it’s working it does a stellar job of extending your WiFi to cover the whole house. Also easy to roam around the house whilst using it – it’s a really nice bit of a kit for the money. it IS a little cut-back as I have the mini versions, but for the price it’s pretty impressive. The lack of complexity will appeal to people who just want it to work. Which, it does.
One thing that isn’t made plain in the instructions is that you can use these with ethernet cables or power line adaptors to reach rooms outside of the range of the other disks. All you need to do is set them up and then plug the disk into the Ethernet cable & reboot it. When it comes back up it’ll start using ethernet for backhaul, so it doesn’t rely on being able to “see” other disks to work and will still steer users to the correct disk. I found that this provided some pretty impressive performance increases compared to using WiFi for Backhaul.
Alternatively you can also use the disk as a wireless bridge by plugging a device or switch into the ethernet port. So even devices without WiFi can join your whole home wifi network. This was really useful for our aging satellite TV box, for example.
Previously we had a tp link system utilising the electricity supply wiring which was nearly useless. Continually dropped out needing rebooting with poor speeds in most rooms. My ISP here in Ireland recommended the by system so I gave it a try with 6 discs covering a 2 storey house with a footprint of 150 m2. The set up was not easy because the app is terrible so it took me nearly 5 hours to get everything working despite being generally tech savvy. However we now have coverage over the whole house with speeds in excess of 80meg everywhere. Very pleased with the outcome. Just a pity that bt have no technical specialists capable of producing an effective app.
Does exactly what it says on the tin. The range of each disc isn’t great, so you need one in each room vertically (i.e for 3 storey house, one per floor and more to spread then Wi-fi signal around. My BT router is in the front room, where the 1st disc is, so I had to install one disc on the kitchen, another on the 1st floor and another on the 2nd floor where my study is. There are 2 more discs leasing the signal to the end of my garden.
2 pack of 3 works out at 25 per disc – cheaper than one pack of 5!
Installation was a bit tricky because the app keeps crashing. OK in the end, though.
The installation started well enough; load up the app, selected 3-disc bundle and then follow instructions for first disc; plug in to router, switch on, use your phone to scan QR code to connect to the ‘whole home’ network, type in the in admin password and done. Easy. Then the frustration begins.
To setup the second disc, you go to where you think is a good spot for it and the app will do a scan to see if it’s suitable. My Wi-Fi coverage is actually very good around the house, but the reason for getting these discs is that I want that coverage to extend in to the garden or even just the patio area would be good enough. So I went to the edge of the conservatory (which still gets good signal) but the app says poor signal — it might as well have blurted out ‘Computer says no’ just to run rub it in. So, rather begrudgingly I go to the furthest point away from the main router that will give a ‘good’ signal but this is only 5 meters away from the hub (halfway to edge of conservatory). I’m less confident that this is going to suit my needs but nonetheless disc 2 gets connected easy enough so on to the next. Now things get REALLY annoying.
Like other reviews I’ve read, it now fails to find a good spot for the disc even when I’m literally next to the router. I check my phone connection and it turns out that my phone has decided to connect to the old Wi-Fi network. A little tip if you do get these; turn off the ‘auto-connect’ option for your existing Wi-Fi. Despite now being on the correct network, the app still can’t see the main disc (turned off and on and checked connections etc.) and so I restart the app. Now it thinks I’ve finished setup and starts downloading firmware.
When firmware is done, the only option to get the third disc installed is to use the ‘add disc feature’. This has to be done next to the first disc and router and still I get ‘disc not found’. After restarting, re-trying, and swearing for 10 minutes, I’m ready to pack it all up and send back, but then despite the app saying disc not found, I notice the blue light is on to indicate it is connected!? Sure enough, I restart the app and it’s found it. So I now move disc 3 up to the office (excellent location apparently) and all 3 discs are blue (means connected).
Looking at the app, it intermittently thinks one is offline, but it isn’t so I ignore what the app is saying and start to do speed tests.
Using my tablet, which only has Wi-Fi connection, I test on the existing network; 26mbps. I switch to the ‘whole home’ and it’s to 38. Good improvement but the real test is ‘does it work in the garden’. Current Wi-Fi doesn’t even get a signal, but with the ‘Whole Home’ I’m still getting 16mbps all the way down the bottom of the garden which is some 20m from the disc in the kitchen! I tried it out the front of the house and I still get signal 30m from where the disc in the office is.
If only the setup had worked better, this would have been a 5-star rating.
The BT app is rubbish and keeps crashing and if you want ethernet backhaul it appears a bit of a mystery. Mine does now work and seems stable but you have to almost let it bed in. In the end I set mine up via the web itnerface and largely ignored the app – even when it says it had failed it seemed to work etc. Configuring via the web interface is much easier.
The Wi-Fi signal is OK – it can’t be compared to having 4 “normal” routers – each signal is weaker than that so I would personally over-spec how many you have.
I have a couple of network switches in my house and for setup removed everything from the current router. If you do this remember to hook up your switches before connecting one of the devices via ethernet. If you don’t (as I didn’t) all the devices from the switch find the signal from this and route through it.
So overall fairly happy.
Couple of pointers
* there is a network cable included for connecting the first disc to your router, but it’s stored under the 3rd disc!!
* once connected your first disc, wait for the solid blue light. This happens after the purple light and blue flashing light – be patient!!
* if you scan the QR code, the phone/ mobile you are using to setup the system will ask for the Admin Password. This is the very small print code on the back of the disc. Don’t confuse it with the Wireless Password!!
* once you have completed the setup (sometimes it takes a couple of attempts to get the 2nd and 3rd disc to configure) the system will need to download an update. It will take a few minutes and again be patient with the discs coming back online.
* overall allow yourself an hour to complete the setup.
* remember to switch your phones, tablets, computers, smart TV etc to your new Wi-Fi!!
So initial setup was easy enough, download the app then plug one disc into router and go from there, I hit an initial snag that the app wanted to download a firmware update before I had set the disc up, I just left the app running while it did its stuff and within 5 mins the firmware of the discs had updated, it then asks to setup next disc which I did in bedroom, perfect signal then onto kitchen again perfect signal, I renamed the ssid to what I was using before on tp links and the password, and all my devices continued as if nothing had changed!
The best part is watching on the app as I move around the house I can physically see my phone iPad etc switching between the discs, going to buy an additional one for the lounge and that will get rid of my last tp link, excellent bit of kit.
Since my last review I was wondering if these could be used to run a network switch instead of my powerline extender, after a quick google search it seems others have been asking the same thing, the answer to that is no! As soon as you connect an Ethernet cable to the hub it goes into setup mode and disconnects the home mesh, so it looks like I will need to keep the powerline extender for my switch. However I have bought two more so my garden and lounge will have full WiFi coverage.
Remember that once these are set up in your home you should turn off your existing wifi network as you won’t be needing it any more.
Ie the app stuck on a few stages like naming the disc ( sub router ) and its not obvious how to get out of this stick. I ended up downloading the app on a second device, turning off the original iPad etc,. It also stuck on qr scanning stag . Also it’s not clear if and when you need to disconnect from the main router to work through this installation. Trial and error in the end, but the app does stick in places, also watch out for the difference between admin and login passwords .