Tenda MW6 Gigabit Dual Band Mesh WiFi System (3-Pack
Tenda MW6 Gigabit Dual Band Mesh WiFi System (3-Pack) for Whole Home (WiFi Router and Repeater Replacement), 500m² Wi-Fi Coverage
| Weight: | 1.22 kg |
| Dimensions: | 10 x 10 x 10 cm; 1.22 Kilograms |
| Brand: | Tenda |
| Model: | Tenda MA6 3 |
| Colour: | White |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Aerials, Satellites and Cables Ltd |
| Dimensions: | 10 x 10 x 10 cm; 1.22 Kilograms |
eeded to wifi my garden office 60m from house. Out-house half way between. used Out-house as jumping point and works just fine. Took a little time to settle so thought at first it wasn’t working but left for an hour or so and everything kicked in and is working fine. Had for a week and only once had to do a quick re-boot as it lost signal but no issues since. Will keep and eye on it. It likes being high up for some reason. building made from wood so don’t know if brick walls would hinder the outcome. Hope this helps.
This system works. The boxes are incredibly easy to install. We have just moved house. In our previous property, an old farmhouse, I had nine tenda boxes Which gave a very good internet signal throughout the property and all the barns and sheds. In our downsized new home I thought three would be enough. I am now up to 7 The house is on the side of a very steep hill. I have a garden room. Quite a distant from the house but tenda copes well. I have no experience of any other system but this has been reliable and the app ensures that you can keep an eye on all the boxes to make sure everything is functioning. They are expensive but they work and that probably is what matters.
my house was built in 1850s the walls are really thick and we have always struggled with wi-fi ,we are on virgin so get good speed but getting that around the 3 floors of the house was not possible until I bought these they are easy to install and I,v had strong wi-fi everywhere they,v worked flawless for the last few months , inserdently wi-fi strengh jumped even higher when I turned of my routers wi-fi must have been interference, my son bought same set-up and now enjoys zoom calls from his pigola 20ft at the bottom of his garden at the price you cant beat these I,m so pleased I got them
Solved all my Wi-Fi problems- I had had an engineer out twice to set up my Wi-Fi trying to use individual boosters( didn’t know what to look for) and was driving me crazy. Thick walled but smallish Victorian house and only only place to put router. It works out of the box. Very happy, good price.
So, read the reviews. Good they said. Easy to set up they said. And they were right. Even in a big old house with thick walls. Reached the parts that Virgin Media extenders could not, so chuffed!
First the good points. The WiFi range out of just one of these boxes is phenomenal. In hindsight I could of got away with less boxes.
I get my full 100mbps internet in every room, I get WiFi coverage in every inch of the garden and half way down the road.
I am using one of the boxes to connect my gaming pc. The ping is lower than my power line adapters. And I get my full internet speed.
Now to some niggles. I have issues with devices hoping to the closest access point. When I turn fast roaming on some iOS devices fail to connect.
Another contributing factor could be that I get great WiFi signal from just one box so there is no need for the device to change over.
The app works fine. But you are limited in some advance features. But as a consumer product this is all fine and it just works.
I’m happy with the product but would recommend the two box kit for most homes.
Not as straightforward in setting up the 3rd node, but overall very pleased with speed and no dead zones. Would recommend anyone wanting this to buy the twin pack and see how you get on with that first as you can always add to it.
I installed the Nova MW6 3 node solution this weekend and I must say I am very impressed so far. In a large house the signal is now strong and fast everywhere. I have up to now used WiFi boosters with varying degrees of success. mostly the problem was keeping the WiFi stable. So this time rather than buy yet another booster I decided to go for a MESH.
But this week, Monday, Tuesday and today Wednesday, the network has dropped about 6 or 7 times within the space of about 10 minutes. The odd thing is that this is occurring at roughly the same time every day — just after 9am. After about 10 minutes everything stabilises and the network is 100% solid again.
Has anyone seen the same issue? Its very odd I know. It is not the internet as my LAN is also down. So it is related to the Nova nodes.
Other than that as I said, i’m very impressed. I don’t think this would be an issue normally. But currently as we are in isolation and I am working from home, this is very frustrating.
I was torn between a few different products, but went for this one based on screenshots of the app, the price, and the aesthetics.
I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and have had zero issues. It worked straight out of the box, with very little setup required. It was simple to install, and even easier to use. My devices all connect and I’ve had massive wifi speed boosts since using it. No drop outs on my mobile when on wi-fi – previously facebook and youtube buffered, even though I have fibre broadband! No problems with Netflix via the Fire Stick either. Previously I had a minute or two of low quality video until it buffered, but with this setup, it’s HD/4K straight from the off!
Would not hesitate in recommending this mesh product to anyone.
Has solved all our connectivity problems in our thick walled house. Was struggling to get any signal from our router location in the room below, never mind anywhere else. The Tenda has obliterated any dead spots and I now get signal at the bottom of our garden! It happily handles Netflix, two phones, an Ipad and a laptop going at the same time too. I was a bit put off by the price, but the difference it has made has made it completely worthwhile.
Not really one to review stufff I buy but felt these are so good I had to let others know.
I purchased these as I like many others had poor WiFi performance using the EE supplied super hub due to the design of my house.
We have a 5 bedroom new build and the signal at the back of the house was intermittent when streaming on smart TVs ect.
After setting up the 3 cubes in a mesh, one by the router plugged directly to the EE hub, 1 in the back middle bedroom and 1 in the Lounge we have full strength WiFi in every room and the Garden.
Our broadband speed is 78mb and we get 25-30mb on WiFi in every room.
I found turning the WiFi on the EE hub off completely but remaining the Mesh network the same name and using the same password worked great as i f a guest wants to join our WiFi the code on the router is the actual WiFi password. I use the mesh network in bridge mode.
One of the other great features is each cube has an Ethernet output. This increases the download speed massively. I have a Plex server running on my Mac plugged directly into the router.
My Apple TV 4K in the lounge is then hardwired into the MW6’s ethernet port with the speed test reporting 67-69mbs download.
The big win was my full blu ray and uncompressed 60gb 4K rips now stream to the living room
(I do only rip a 5.1 AC3 sound track not Atmos or HD sound due to limitations of my Sonos system)
So happy with this 18months after purchase and they are still doing an amazing job.
Forget home plugs and WiFi extenders and pay the money for the mesh system. I have recommend to several friends and relatives who have bought them and are as happy as I am.
We have tried many different ways to boost the wifi signal in our three storey house and this system is by far and way superior to every other we have come across. Most systems attempt to boost the existing wifi signal which is provided by your existing home hub, but this system creates its own wifi system and replicates that signal across the other Tenda units in the building. We now ahve really strong wifi signal all over teh house and in the garden near to eth house – it is almost unbelievable how good thsi system is – I wish I had come across it ages ago. The primary Tenda unit is connected to the home hub with one ethernet cable but the others just need a standard power socket somewhere in the house. Take it from somneone who has searched high and low – this is a fantastic way to ensure a strong wifi signal across your entire building. I can recommend this system without reservation.
I bought these as our home wifi coverage was dismal, much more than 20 foot from the router was unusable. We have a bog standard 60’s era brick and block semi, so it’s not like we live in a castle with solid stone walls.
We have a strange setup in that half the equipment in the house is physically wired to the router with ethernet connections, while any mobile or portable relies on wifi.
Installing the Tenda wifi mesh units was very simple, I turned off the wifi on our EE brightbox router, downloaded the Tenda app on my phone, plugged the first unit into the ethernet switch we use and that was it. The light went blue in seconds, far quicker than it took to plug the next Tenda unit in in the next room, then the third by the back door. Once all three were in place, we now have in excess of 35mb wifi from the front of the house to the back garden, even the garage has 24mb. The only issue I had was with our Sonos speakers, they went off the original EE brightbox ethernet port, the way round it was to plug all ethernet devices (our ethernet switch) into the ethernet Out port on the first Tenda unit so now the whole house is on either the Tenda wifi or the Tenda ethernet port. Everything works very well, and I am more than happy with this purchase.
Very good value compared to similar products.
Very quick and easy to setup – have used to boost the wi-fi signal to two ends of a building and works as expected.
Best to experiment with positioning – I achieved the best results from having the main unit which connects to the router quite high and ensured the router wi-fi was disabled.
App is handy to check the strength of the signal although the LED’s on the units are a good guide – as mentioned the main purpose was to extend the signal which this achieved.
Very impressive piece of kit. I was having range issues with my outdoor security cameras. Signal strength went from 10% dropping to zero to 75% after installation. Also, I only required 2 for a large detached 4 bed house, but you might need 3 if you have stone walls. Couldn’t recommend enough.
I was pleased at how easy this was to set up. I had fully expected to devote a whole evening but it was much quicker than that.
The Wi-Fi coverage is much improved from the extenders we were using before.
I slightly resent having to pay anything to make the Wi-Fi go round the house and think the cable supplier should provide a router that is capable of doing this. If you do need something more then this seems to work for us and hopefully will carry on doing so for a considerable time to come.
These are great value and generally I’m very happy. They extend the network to a ridiculous distance and cover every corner of the property BUT they don’t allow devices that operate only on 2.4Ghz to connect very easily and a few devices including my Epson WiFi printer I had to abandon connecting to the Tenda and keep the original router WiFi running too. Would be great if they sort that out.
They just work. Rock solid in terms of signal strength and couldn’t be easier to set up – just plug one into your router and deploy the others around the house.
I live in a 4 story town house in a very wifi congested area of London and these just punch through all the noise and deliver solid signals on 5gh and 2.4gh everywhere including the garden and half way up the street.
Being dual-band as opposed to tri-band you are limited to 100mbs or so once you are away from the unit which is plugged into your router (I get around 300 mbs from this one as on Virgin fast connection) but 100 mbs is going to be more than most people need I am guessing so no big deal.
However, if want to take things to the next level there are limitations which are not obvious until you start to use them such as:
VPN: I wanted to connect to the internet via a VPN to increase security and block adverts. Despite what it says in the spec, these boxes don’t appear to be able to do this unless you are the Russian firmware version installed. I’ve tried emailing tech support to see if this feature can be opened up on the English version but no reply.
DHCP: The internal DHCP server works just fine but although you can define the IP address range – eg. 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.5.1 you can’t define scopes with the range. I like to have some boxes with hard-wired static ip addresses outside the DHCP scope for resilience in case the DHCP server fails.
Unless you can define scopes, there is a risk of an address clash. You also have no way of tying a specific MAC address to a specific IP for address reservation. You simply allow the DHCP server to assign addresses and then make them reserved as part of the port forwarding process below.
Port Forwarding: Port forwarding is easy. Just select the device from the app and add a port forward and the DHCP server will make that a reserved address and the forward will be added.
NOTE: YOU CAN ONLY ADD A MAXIMUM OF 8 PORT FORWARDS.
This is why I sent the boxes back. I have many devices such as security cameras and servers which require remote access each of which require a static internal ip address and a port forward and so 8 won’t cut it for me.
PROS
+ Cheap as chips, work brilliantly and are dead simple to set up.
+ Solid signal on both bands
+ Look nice
Cons
– Setup app is a bit flaky
– No VPN
– Max speed of 100mbs or so due to dual-band
– Limited advanced features
This should be a walk in park, and it was initially and had one unit up and running in less than 5 mins. I wanted it to act as in ‘bridge’ mode but I never saved it as such.
Changed to name a password to match my VM router as I have many Alexa devices, Hue bulbs and smart plugs so thought it would make sense. This then went wrong as I said I did not save it in bridge mode. The node then took over and killed my internet connection and everything that was connected to it so all I had was some pretty nodes with a light on top and not much else. Anyway after many reboots and resetting the nodes I managed to get my connection back. I must say that I also have a NAS and many reserved IP’s so didn’t want to upset them and left the SH3 to handle them.
So I started again but making sure I put it in bridge mode immediately. Then set up the other nodes and it all worked. In between this I must say that the app was very flaky and would tell me often that there were no nodes at all so had to set them up again, very annoying.
I have renamed them, connected only out ipads and iphones to it, and ignored the VM wifi. All we wanted was a signal in the garden and in the bedroom, now we have both so I’m ok with that.
Testing the signal in the bedroom, I now get 75mb down whereas before it was less than 5 if lucky and was unusable. The node is in the bedroom next door. Going into another bedroom I get 30mb, still ok for browsing though. The bedroom with the node hits about 290mb which you would expect being on top of it. . I also have VM’s 350mb speed so that helps of course
In the garden outside the room that the main node it in I can achieve 150mb move to the other corner of the patio some 3 mtrs away and it drops to 100mb and as you expect as you go up the garden it drops off until I get about 20mtrs away then it’s about 10mb.
In the lounge it was always ok anyway as that is where the SH3 is but I have an node in there as well.
So if you plan to use them in bridge mode as AP’s then save it straightaway, this is what I found anyway.
I will say that they are all connected via lan cables as the whole house including the bedrooms have network sockets so I assume that the ‘backhaul’ feature is doing its stuff
They work great for what I want them to do and that is to be able to sit in bed or in the garden in the summer reading the news or streaming.
I wouldn’t mind trying maybe TP link or another brand though to make a comparison as I have nothing to go on apart from my experience with these.
For the price they are good value for money though so overall I would recommend them.
I am quite literally speechless with how good this is so far!!! I have virgin 200mb broadband and I would say the best WiFi I get is around 40mbps with a fair wind, near the router downstairs. Upstairs in the bedroom, more like 20 at best and it’s not a huge house
Anyway, got this early this morning, tested my WiFi in bedroom and I was get 12.9, set this up and put one node downstairs connected to router and one in the bedroom, straight away it was at 175!!!!!!! And 202 downstairs, unbelievable!! Still have to put 3rd node in basement, this is incredible
OK, there may be quicker, more robust & controllable solutions out there… but I’ve used this mesh system to replace a mish mash of wifi from router, and range extender, supported by powerline ethernet. the previous solution was great when it worked but Netflix was particularly susceptible to powerline drop out.
I’d been looking at mesh solutions for sometime but was put off by the price. In the end the 5GHz radio in my router packed in and rather than buy a new router I just bought the mesh system. I really wish I had done this sooner. The three unit MW6 provides robust coverage with no drop outs. Previously used to get 35Mbit/s in back room over powerline now 72ish. No Netflix drop outs due to flakey powerline. Absolutely excellent solution for a house with real brick walls. Limited control over the devices as they are only accessible via a phone app but it’s a cheap mesh solution that works. Recommended.
Bought the M6 (3 units), unfortunately one adapter plug was faulty. Tenda replaced this without any problem dealing with their Amazon rep who kept in contact via email until everything was sorted. The system itself is very easy to set up and has fantastic coverage in 4000 sq ft house. The walls in the house are old and thick so we did wonder how well it would work. There are in excess of 20 devices using the internet and there is no drop of speed unlike our original router! The entire house is very well covered with 3 units. Would definitely recommend this product.
Worked well and easy to setup. App said the server was offline dor several days and then came back again. Occasionally my iPad would lose internet connection had to turn Wi-fi on and off on it and it returned not a big issue for me as it connects straight away I assume is it being stuck between which box it should connect to.
Bought this to replace a couple of Apple airport extremes that I was using in a 3000 sq ft home. I wanted a mesh so that roaming between ssids would be seamless and to have consistent wifi throughout the home.
Setup was simple basically just plug it in and download an app to setup ssid name and optionally setup parental control. The only thing I’m not keen on was that registration (email address) was required which seems a bit over the top just for basic configuration.
Performance is good. Roaming between the different units is seamless. The range of each unit is way stronger than the apple airport extreme – I can get strong signal as far as 30m and a weak signal at 50m. We typically have 10-20 devices on the network (all those Echos, smartphones and tablets add up) and have had no problems.
I have a virgin media hub3 it’s given me good service but is limited in range despite virgins assurances! The Tenda MW6 I bought I’ve had for a few months now and I’ve only had to reset it once when our neighbourhood lost all power! One of the satellite Tenda didn’t automatically reset. They have increased reliability and range I have no problems anywhere in the house or the garden which is 30 m long and my Wi-Fi download speed is almost tripled Throughout the home compared with the virgin hub. For the price I am extremely happy.
I watched a couple of YouTbe videos about setting this up before I bought it. Having seen them I thought it looked straightforward. I wanted my desk computer still Ethernet connect so the biggest restriction was about location of the box that had a wired connection to the modem which also needed to feed a cable back to myiMac. That was a piece of cake thought. Once connected working through the setup was easy with the app downloaded on my iPad. The satellite boxes just needed plugging in. My chosen locations were fine and they pretty much did It themselves. I guess if you have a more complicated layout moving a box slightly closer to the wired box might prove awkward if there is not an appropriately located plug in point but I guess that would be a rare occurrence. It is pretty easy to set up but if you are not confident do check out setup clips on YouTube and you should be reassured that it is quite simple.
It is not cheap but it is one of the cheapest mesh systems I have seen and the performance is very good, reviews I have seen say that it performs as well as more expensive rivals. I can now watch stuff on my iPad (iPlayer etc,) with my cup of tea in the morning without outages, reboots, the frustration of the programme restarting quite a bit before it stopped and being a ious about trying to skip it forward in case it stops again.
The cubes look good and the signal indicator light is just a muted blue. My previous attempt at a wi fi extender had almost constantly flashing blue light. It was like having Christmas light on all night in the bedroom. This is nothing like that, very discreet.
One standard access point was not able to provide coverage for my 4-bed house, so I went for the Tenda MW6 system with 3 nodes. It was easy to set up , and overall has performed pretty well, however it’s not perfect.
PROS
– Great value, much cheaper than the competition
– Great signal strength in every room of the house
– Easy setup from iOS app
– Small and unobtrusive devices
CONS
– I wanted to connect all nodes by wired Ethernet for best performance (Ethernet backhaul), however this simply does not work. As soon as more than one node is connected to the Ethernet network (or connected by Ethernet to another node), all nodes go offline and stop working. Other users have reported that this is possible, but I have not found this to be the case, and there is no official info from Tenda about this (I’m using the system in bridge mode – the situation may be different in NAT mode).
– Zero support from Tenda. No reply in three weeks to 2 emails about this Ethernet issue.
– Some minor glitches in the app (was showing the wrong info for the wrong node – fixed by physically swapping the nodes).
So although the Ethernet issue and lack of support is annoying, I have to begrudgingly give the system 4 stars, because it does actually work rather well.
I bought this instead of the “Google Mesh” setup, and I haven’t made a mistake in doing so. The nodes stay online and also serve the bandwidth to three 4K streams at a time and mobile phones and laptops etc… every day without any issues. Both 2.4ghz and 5ghz are stable… Although I do have the settings set to reboot at 6AM every morning to clear the cache.
The application that you use to control these devices is great, nothing to complain about here. It just works and that’s all there is to say about it.
It’s a great product, and I was lucky to find it before I shelled out a ridiculous price for the Google Mesh System. The company is constantly sending out updates on both the Google Play store and Firmware updates for the devices every two or more months adding more features and what not..
regards
I needed to upgrade the Wi-fi signal pushed out by my BT Homehub 6 to get full coverage across my 4 bedroom house. I have located them equally across the ground floor and now get a full signal in all areas, including upstairs and the garden. They are very easy to setup. I have left a separate 2.4Hz SSID active on my BT Hub as some older Wi-fi devices struggle to connect to a bundled signal where 2.4 and 5 share a single SSID as with these units. With a separate switch connected to the primary unit for all my centralised cable/RJ45 devices, if my BT Hub fails, it will now be easier to replace as this is the only device now plugged into it. I chose tonstill use the DHCP server on the BT Hub but you can use DHCP on these devices if you need to.
Firstly Set up: as promised by other reviewers, it really is a 20 minute job. Plug the first node into the router with the included Ethernet cable and download the app. Set up is self explanatory and easy. Then, simply plug in the other 2 nodes wherever is convenient in the house and they sort themselves out, appearing green on the diagram on the app within a few minutes.
The outcome: amazing seamless WiFi through the whole house and even garden. I can’t believe we didn’t do this sooner. If you have any doubts about the price of this mesh compared to others, don’t. Just buy it. Works really well, Simple set up. What more is there to want.
Final point: there is the facility for wired “backhaul” with these units. It took me ages on the net to work out what this is. Basically, you set the nodes up wirelessly as above, but then you plug each one on to your router or switch via a single cable going from the tenda “wan port” to the router or switch. Ie 3 cables going though the house. This will speed up the WiFi to blistering rates by carrying back the way traffic from your device to the internet by the Ethernet cable, leaving the wireless channels to carry only outgoing traffic from the internet to your device. You certainly don’t need to do this. I haven’t, and I’m really happy with the speed. However I now have a project, and am going to run some Ethernet when I get a chance, to improve the system. It’s nice to have the option, not all mesh systems have this.
Very happy customer, recommend tenda!
Really easy to set up, 3 bar coverage over 3 floors of my house, no gaps at all. Some reviews criticise the lack of functionality, but the app is simple, and if all you want to do is have full wifi coverage in every corner of your house for tablets, phones and laptops then this is perfect. Connected it to a Virgin Media super hub (on which I switched off the wifi signal because it was feable anyway). Now several weeks in, this system has been totally reliable. Very good buy.
I live in a 4 bed detached house and run BT Home Hub. (the new one called Smart Hub) The Home Hub covered the house but at the extremities it could be a bit patchy and I couldn’t get wifi outside on my decking.
This comes nicely packaged for a ‘budget’ Chinese brand.
Installation was ridiculously easy. You plug one of the boxes (all identical so any) into the router LAN socket on the back of the current router (you should have a few) and the LED on the white Tenda box eventually goes blue. Then you open the App and it detects the broadband settings and gets you online (you also change network name and password).
Then you just plug the others in around the house and they auto connect to the first one. All worked seamlessly. In fact from what I have read they’ve beaten all the competition in ease of set up- fabulous for a budget brand.
Initially I was very impressed. Each box has two lan ports on it. On the box that connects into your modem (they are all identical as I say) one of the lans is taken up with the connection to the modem, so it has one left over. You can still use the lans on the modem you already have also. So I have a vpn router, and have this plugged into my home hub (which has 4 lan ports) nothing changed there- works as normal. I also have other items plugged directly int the Home Hub still.
The other boxes which are now ‘satellites’ to the main box have two lans. So I have one in my office with my Arlo home security system and my iMac plugged directly into it. I had one upstairs under the bed with my Sonos Bridge plugged into it, again worked seamlessly.
However, after a few days I noticed sometimes the wireless signal would drop off a cliff. I was getting wife and kid complaints- not good.
I put in Bridge Mode, you lose some functionality such as guest network option, but I read a review above that suggested doing this. I am not convinced it solved the problem.
I then thought about wireless network congestion, with this running, my BT Home Hub and my VPN router. So I went into the Home Hub and turned off the wireless for that. I think (think) this has resolved the problem as it doesn’t seem to have happened again in a few days, I will report back if it does.
I also note that sometimes the signal fluctuates. I believe this is because it sends the signal in the direction of the device and so it can start out slow, then drastically speed up as it channels the signal towards the device.
Despite us having a full strength connections on the Xbox my son was complaining of high pings. I observed this myself- the ping would fluctuate on Fortnite from say 30 to 800 then back down again- not good – he was complaining of lag. I am no networking expert and not sure why, particularly when this wasn’t happening when the Xbox was connected directly to the Home Hub with a much weaker signal on the Xbox wifi strength , but suspect it may be something to do with The Tenda not having a separate backhaul (separate channel to send the data between the units) and it slowing data transfer when other items are connected to the satellite- A guess though. Orbi has a separate backhaul channel, albeit I have seen people reporting higher pings on that also. So who knows. It may also be that the unit isn’t great at prioritising traffic and there is no manual setting you can do, again unlike some of the more expensive units.
We have resolved this by moving one of the satellites next to the Xbox from upstairs- and connecting in via Lan. The ping is now under 40 and often in the 20s so is fine. Fortunately the satellite positioning where the Xbox is seems to work well anyway for good wifi coverage throughout the house, so nothing lost. One to bear in mind though.
Now I can get two or three bars of wifi signal all over the house including decking and it often seems to max out my connection at 40 meg.
Also turn off the overnight reset. For some reason it is set up to reboot every night at 4am, you can adjust this or turn it off. I was finding all my devices disconnected overnight and logged onto my VPN router instead, so turned this function off. I also didn’t want it turning off every night, and rebooting as I am running an Arlo security system.
Edit, even with the Xbox connected to the Lan, Pings again went high. Thus I cannot recommend this for gaming. We had to put the Xbox on a homeplug. In other respects though it’s good. Tends need to sort out the ping issue when gaming.
So the good bits !:
1) the wifi range and penetration of these devices is spectacular! For background I live in a detached victorian Slate built house over 3 stories. Before I fetted the tenda I was having to use 3 APs and a further 3 range extenders and still had too many dead-spots around the house – and frankly t was becoming a bit of a nightmare reliability wise. As soon as I plugged in the 1st Tenda, I had about 80% coverage! I could probably get away with just two to cover the whole house to be honest – but Heck I bought 3 so I’ll use them all! I even have good coverage out into my garden and Garage.
2) Setup – absolutely a piece of cake! I defy anybody not to be able to set this up. Only downside is that you MUST use the Tenda App on an iOS or Android device to do this. There is no Web Console as yet.
3)PPPoE works out of the box – so if you have a separate modem and router you can just plug it into the modem and potentially ditch your existing router altogether – (though if you read on you might not want to …)For me that’s great because it means I don’t need to use the awful BT Home Hub – just plug into an openreach VDSL modem (you can pick them up for a tenner off ebay) and let te tenda do the rest.
4) Backhaul over Wifi or Cabled/powerline. Because all units are identical and have 2 x 1GB Etehernet ports you can backhaul between the units over a wired connection. This might be desirable as the units are dual-band only so no dedicated back-haul wifi channel. I’ve not trried this – but others say it works 🙂
5) It just works! I now have 50+Mb/s internet bandwidth anywhere in the house. LAN bandwidth I haven’t measured and if you look online it isn’t going to break any records here – but is certainly enough for me to have multiple HD streams running from my NAS to various Displays around the house – so practically it seems fine. If you have a lot of 4K content to chuck around your network though you might be better looking for tri-band units instead.
6)Configurable Device groups and scheduled access/parental controls seem good and easy to configure – though not personally tried this.
7) Remote management – if you sign up to an online account you can administer your settings remotely. This is alost too easy so is also a cause for concern
Bad Bits: Well you weren’t expecting perfection at this price were you ? Despite all of the above the units do have some hefty shortcomings. For some , some of these will be important, for others less so.
1) Firewall (or Lack of) – Now I’m not stating that these units Don’t have any firewalling – but if they do it’s not in evidence. There are no firewall settings available and I can’t find any documentation about any firewalling. This in itself should be enough to make most users want to stick this behind a more competent router – but that is going to run a horse and cart through the simplicity of setup and use of your home wifi – which is a shame.
UPDATE: having now run a number of port scans and pen tests I’m pretty satisfied that in the configuration I’ve used that the Tenda is pretty secure. The only open ports found are those specifically port forwarded. The only vulnerability found is a ping response , which isn’t great as does reveal that you do exist as a potential target.
https://www.grc.com
2) DHCP Server – it has one – but it is VERY basic – allowing you to choose your subnet and router address only. YOU CANNOT SPECIFY A RESTRICTED RANGE OF ADDRESSES. Unfortunately it doesn’t even seem to allocate addresses sequentially from bottom-up or top-down, just seemingly randomly scattering them throughout the subnet.This is a serious omission and I would hope it would be rectified in a firmware release. Because there is no ability to place reservations either this effectively means you can’t have any fixed IP devices on your home network.
3) DNS Settings – Good and bad here – I was pleased to find that it does act as a local DNS Proxy rather than passing on your ISPs (or other providers) DNS servers directly to clients – however there is no possibility to configure DDNS which is a massive shame. So the unit has port forwarding capabilities but unless you have a static External IP address its not going to be practically very useful without being able to update your DDNS provider.
So – all in all – these are great units for providing strong Wi-Fi coverage across a wide area and with great wall penetration, However – all the shortcomings listed above will mean that for most people you would still need a competent router to do the basics of DHCP, DNS, Firewalling etc.
I can see that it really hits the mark for quick, easy setup for those with simplistic needs – but just feels like each configuration page on the app needs an ‘advanced’ tab to configure extra settings for those who want a little more control over their home network.
Finally though – I must stress that at this pricepoint they do represent excellent value for money.
As others have said, seemed to set up easily……….but where is the documentation for the three year guarantee, which “swung it” for me? This was included inthe “in box ” description. I will not be offended if someone points out that I have missed something obvious as I am now classed as a geriatric!! Regards all, Harry Halliday
Update: 12 months on, still the best IT purchase I have made in recent years. Totally problem free. Love it!
Very easy to set up.
But the best bit is that I have downloaded more TV programmes in the 8 hours since it arrived than we had managed in the previous month.
Early days yet, but this could be the first bit of technology that makes on demand films a viable option in our house.
PS almost forgot to mention my main box in the lounge which is connected to the Virgin Homehub,in the lan output I bought a 6 TP Link Ethernet add on box to connect Sky Q,main TV and WD Mycloud with lan cables.
Installation along side my VM broadband was simple, I’ve only had to disable the existing WiFi networks. Device setup is about as PnP as you can get. All done (only using 2 of the 3 units currently) and working in less than 15min.
The only downside (minor) is that the app offers no visibility of the node to node connection speeds.
So far there’s been no negative points to mention. The app is easy and simple to use and WiFi end point performance is superb.
I did buy an 8port TPLink switch to compliment this for areas with wired requirements and against all went smoothly.
Brilliant bit of kit. Pushes wifi to the furtherest point of my 5 bedroom house and into the garage which is some way away. However a word of caution about security. There is very little control of this system in the Tenda app. I use is as a wifi bridge so all the security is based in my business router (a Draytek). If security is your thing (as it is mine) you might want to think about how best to use this system. But in bridge mode it’s fantastic – cheaper than the new router I’ve been buying every 18-24 months and much better as far as wifi is concerned.
I hate the idea of app only control panel, but actually it works well. I hated the idea of not having a dedicated backhaul channel, but to be honest I can’t tell, the reviews/comparison of mesh WiFi didn’t rate this has highly as other more expensive ones, but I’m glad I bought these.
I have also noticed another great thing, I have no cell phone signal as I live in a bit of a valley, I rely on WiFi calling through three network to get a signal, now I can walk round the house on a call as the signal seamlessly hands over to the best mesh router. Where as before, if my phone lost WiFi and reconnected to a repeater I would loose the call.
UPDATE —- Oct 2019 —- Still impressed
This has been used now for quite some time with very little fault.
3 WiFi Calling has been patchy, but I don’t think that down to the mesh system.
The past year I have only had to force a reboot a handful of times.
I have totally forgotten my many WiFi woes I had before these.
The system consists of three identical units, one of which you connect to your cable or fibre modem via an Ethernet cable (supplied) you then configure this unit via the app to get it online (at this point I couldn’t resist testing the wifi signal and it already blew away the original ISP supplied router in terms of coverage)
Once the first node is online you simply place the other two nodes in strategic points around the house, they connect back to the first node via wifi and to have a mesh network.
I have checked signal strength throughout the house and I get full signal pretty much everywhere (not the biggest house but a tricky shape with lots of internal walls and awkward corners), the signal also hands over pretty much seamlessly between nodes, I have tried a Skype video call and you can move from one end of the house to the other with no drop outs.
The old system of a router and a booster to fill the dead spots feels really agricultural compared to this system, devices never wanted to handover to the stronger signal, instead hanging on to the first signal they connected to, very frustrating.
The free Tenda app allows management of the system including set up of a guest network and blacklisting of devices, grouping of devices and timed access for parental control.
So far I am completely happy with the purchase and I have had zero complaints about wifi from the kids which I take as a huge thumbs up.
I cannot comment on reliability at this point due to the short time since install but so far so good
Quick test showed signal from single box is outstanding should easily cover my entire house with a signal once all three are connected . Doing full fit and setup tomorrow as I have sky q to deal with and hoping 5ghz network doesn’t interfere with sky booster box channels. – UPDATE works with sky Q and the coverage is full bars no matter where I am in the house connection speed is excellent been running almost a month and constant.connection no disconnections nothing bad to report yet.