#Google nest router ethernet ports pro

It's something I was surprised Google hadn't added to the original Google Wifi, but how useful it is depends on where you place your individual mesh nodes. Then there's Nest Wifi as a smart speaker. Running an Ookla speed-test from the basement on both the Galaxy Fold and the iPhone, I saw on average a 55 Mbps internet speed that was about a third of the actual bandwidth recorded at the modem. It's worth noting that the speed between your device and the nearest mesh node isn't the only factor worth considering: when it comes to how fast an internet connection will be, there's the fact that your nearest node has to communicate back to the main router too. Not bad at all, given they were each connected to the Nest Wifi point a level up.

#Google nest router ethernet ports pro

In the same location, connected to Nest Wifi, the MacBook Pro came in with an average around 221 Mbps, but the iPhone and Galaxy Fold again hit the '250+ Mbps' maximum. Some vendors will have a multipack made up of Nest Wifi routers alone, for those who really want an ethernet port on each unit, and Google plans to keep selling the Google Wifi – which Nest Wifi is backwards-compatible with – as a single unit too, alongside the individual $149 Nest Wifi point. Only 5-6 percent of Google Wifi owners have been a wired ethernet device with the system, and so it seemed relatively safe to drop it. The data supports its omission, Google says. There's no provision for plugging in a networked device via a cable.

Unlike the old Google Wifi units – or the newest Eero Mesh units, for that matter – however, each Nest Wifi point is wireless-only. The Nest Wifi router has two ethernet ports, one to link to your modem and the other for a wired device, or an ethernet switch if you have multiple things you want to connect. Then there's ethernet, or more accurately its absence. To really juice the allure is each Nest Wifi point acting as a Google Home-style smart speaker. So, Nest Wifi gets even easier on the eyes, and the Wifi point is being offered in a choice of three colors: Snow White, Mist Blue, or Sand Pink. Sure enough, the company says that it saw up to 50-percent better WiFi signals simply because owners were leaving their Google Wifi units out. Google figured that making better-looking routers would encourage users to leave them out rather than hide them in cabinets or under the stairs, and in the process benefit from better wireless performance. The softened, curvaceous design – more like a Muji aroma diffuser than a piece of computer hardware – is proof in point. Now, with evidence in hand, Nest Wifi is doubling-down on where it matters – and cutting out what users simply weren't interested in.

As its first mesh wireless system, Google Wifi was in many ways an experiment. Nest Wifi is a textbook example of how Google taps into real-world usage data to iterate on products. That has a speaker and a microphone array on the top, so that it can act as a smart speaker for interacting with the Google Assistant. Each node – which spreads further coverage around your house – is known as a Nest Wifi point.