The Wyze Mesh Router arrives soon, with the Mesh Router Pro due early next year
Poor or inconsistent Wi-Fi signal strength is the bane of modern living spaces. Upcoming technologies like Wi-Fi 7 promise to help, but it will be time before they’re commercially available. In the meantime, upgrading your older hardware can certainly help, and our favorite mesh routers offer plenty of options for helping to eliminate Wi-Fi dead zones. Today we’re learning about a couple new offerings, as Wyze gets into the router game with two affordably priced mesh routers of its own.
The base Wyze Mesh Router supports speeds of up to 3Gbps, or up to 1Gbps across 50+ devices (per router). Each router purchased individually for $94 covers up to 1,500 square feet, but you can get a two-pack for $174 to start taking advantage of its mesh capabilities if you struggle with Wi-Fi dead spots. This model is available for purchase now, and units will ship to customers later this month.
The Wyze Mesh Router Pro is coming a little later, but you can reserve one now ahead of sales beginning in January 2023. The Wi-Fi 6E tri-band router boasts a higher 5.4Gbps maximum capacity per router, and supports up to 2.5Gbps for 75+ devices with its support for the 6GHz band. The Pro model also covers a larger 2,000 square foot area. Individual units are priced at $174, while a two-pack will set you back $274.
Both mesh router models offer two LAN ports per unit for connection to wired Ethernet devices, including an option to use as wired backhaul — that should help for applications where additional latency is best avoided, like gaming. One of those is a 2.5Gbps port, while the other is a regular Gigabit Ethernet port. The Wyze Mesh Router uses 5GHz for backhaul while the Pro model will use the 5GHz or 6GHz band, depending on whichever one has better signal when installed. The Pro model even has a USB port on the back for “possible future features,” but somewhat frustratingly uses barrel jacks for power instead of the relatively future-proof USB-C standard.
It’s great to see a new mesh option out there, but especially if you live in a smaller space, there are plenty of situations where a single router usually suffices. If you don’t need to set up a mesh, there are tons of great Wi-Fi 6 routers on the market.
