PRICE 3-pack, £317 (£380 inc VAT) from store.google.com
You might have thought that Google had forgotten about its Nest Wifi home mesh system - it's fully three years since the second-generation update was released (see issue 309, p83). It was so long ago that the last release relied solely on the Wi-Fi 5 standard, or "802.11ac" as we were quaintly calling it at the time.
Now Google is getting with the times. The new Nest Wifi Pro leapfrogs Wi-Fi 6 entirely, jumping straight to the latest Wi-Fi 6E technology, with support for ultra-wide-bandwidth connections in the relatively interference-free 6GHz frequency range. And the price is alluring: the three-station kit costs a very reasonable £380 - a single unit is a distinctly less attractive £190 which is roughly the same as you'll pay for TP-Link's two-unit Deco XE75 system (see opposite).
It's a tentative implementation of Wi-Fi 6E, however. Google doesn't advertise the wireless speeds of the Nest Wifi Pro units, but a quick glance at Windows' networking diagnostics revealed connection rates of 1.2Gbits/sec on the 5GHz band and 2.4Gbits/sec over 6GHz not bad, but some way short of the 4.8Gbits/sec that the technology is capable of.
The Nest Wifi Pro units are also physically quite small, standing only 130mm tall.
That's great in terms of lifestyle chic, but it means the internal antennas are necessarily shorter than those in competing meshes. This has implications for signal strength - and therefore speed.
This story is from the February 2023 edition of PC Pro.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 2023 edition of PC Pro.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Key things to look for when buying a mini PC
Buying a mini PC isn't like buying a laptop or a fully fledged desktop PC, but a pitfall-laden experience that sits somewhere in between
BRANDS YOU CAN TRUST
Whenever you buy something in the coming year, why not draw on the experience of thousands of discerning buyers?
5 things we learned from Lenovo Tech World'24
In a landmark event where the CEOs of AMD, Intel and Nvidia all took to the stage, the theme of \"smarter AI for all\" was never far away, writes Tim Danton
The Darktrace leading to government
British security firm Darktrace has been mired in controversy. Now its former CEO is a government minister. Rois Ni Thuama and Barry Collins investigate
Microsoft is doing more harm to Arm than good, argues Jon Honeyball
You know that sinking feeling you get when something is not quite right? That nagging doubt that it shouldn't be like this? It was like that when I read that Qualcomm has cancelled its Snapdragon X developer kit, a desktop Mac mini-like box designed for developers to create and test apps for Windows on Arm (WoA).
How do we know how smart AI really is?
Maths questions. Silly word puzzles. Counting the letter \"r\" in a sentence. Nicole Kobie reveals how we're trying to work out exactly how intelligent AI is
Missed call Whatever happened to the Acorn Communicator?
When Acorn launched its 16-bit Communicator computer with a built-in modem, it struggled to get potential buyers to listen, as David Crookes explains
STEVE CASSIDY-"Getting workers to do simple jobs in the 16th century was not much different from the 21st"
Why 16th century \"networking\" legislation still has an impact, and why the term AI is confusing to punters as well as a waste of natural resources
JON HONEYBALL -"The more I have to do with UK telcos, the more broken their systems seem to be"
After being tempted by the iPhone 16 Pro Max - for professional reasons, honest - and the Watch 2 Ultra, Jon discovers not everything is perfect in Apple's new generation
Apple iPhone 16 Pro
A bigger display, borrowed 5x tetraprism zoom from the Max and no price hike make this the best iPhone
