AmpliFi - Alien WiFi 6 Mesh Router

I recently moved to a new condo, and for the first time I had access to fiber internet, so my little eero 6 was not going to cut it. Now, everyone should know by now that true gigabit internet speeds on Wi-Fi are harder to obtain the more devices and more nearby interference exists. This is a 14 unit complex, and I have 25+ devices active at any given moment, so I need a router that is strong and powerful. I tried so many different routers of all kinds: eero 6+, eero pro 6E, Nest WiFi Pro, TP-Link Archer AX3000, Linksys E8450, Netgear RAX70, and the Asus RT-AX58U, and so far the Alien has been by far the best. Previously, the best performance I was getting was through an eero 6 Pro, which would hit about 450-500 up and down at BEST on my desktop computer with an Intel AX210 6E WiFi radio. This was also unreliable and it could regularly drop to ~200Mbps. With my Alien, I’ve reached up to 750Mbps up and down on my desktop, and I’ve consistently hit 600+ Mbps up and down on my WiFi 6 devices, such as my iPhone. While I have not done any speed tests on my WiFi 5 devices, I have noticed my devices in general all have lower latency and more stability. During setup/the first 48 hours, I did have two minor issues. The first issue was that after setup, all of the Wi-Fi networks disabled, though Ethernet devices were connecting just fine. A reboot of the device and it was perfectly fine. The second issue was that my video doorbell, the Wyze Doorbell would not properly connect to the dedicated 2.4GHz network for IOT devices. Rebooting the router and resetting the camera and connecting it to the main network solved the issue (the unit supports band steering). The AmpliFi app is great if you’re an intermediate user who likes knowing network stats and tracking devices, but doesn’t want to get overwhelmed by too many technical details, you’ll love the app. No dark mode, sadly, and an account is required, but navigating the app and customizing it is very easy. The Alien itself a pretty unique device. It’ll blend into any environment, but I recommend disabling the screen and LED. Having a screen is kind of cool, but every data point it has is available in the app, and the screen is too small to really be that valuable in my opinion, but some may like it.

I'll keep this short and sweet. I bought 2 of these around 2 years ago when I bought my first house. My house is about 1700 sqft and was built in 1960's (I live in SF Bay Area, so houses are rather old). It has super thick walls and construction, so just 1 router wasn't going to cut it. Fast forward to today, I have about 45 devices connected to these (most of them wirelessly). I have smart light switches, smart plugs, 12 Ring cameras, Google Assistants, Alexas, a home theater PC, a DIY NAS, a network printer, you name it. These have been ROCK SOLID from day 1. I have to restart them maybe once every 3 months, most times because my cable model goes haywire and I lose internet connectivity. These pack all the essential features you'll need. An integrated ad blocker, the ability to define multiple SSIDs on different radios, and the "Teleport" feature which let's you VPN into your home and get access to all your local services remotely (I often use it for grabbing files from my NAS). The mobile app is very user friendly and exposes almost all these features to you (except the ad blocker). Also, I love the fact that I can see my home IP address in a matter of seconds when I'm not home. I recently bought my second home (a townhouse) and this is literally the first thing I bought. If you want the top-of-the-line routers that "just work" and are tired of dealing with all the crap that Netgear and other off-the-shelf manufacturers make, get the Amplifi Alien.

Not a bad router, but not it’s great either. I bought it to replace the eero device that Frontier gave me when I signed up for their gigabit service. Using it with Apple Home kit is kind of hit or miss - one of my smart plugs keeps dropping the connection, even though it’s within line of site to the router. Pretty annoying when you tell Siri to turn off the lights and one tends to stay on. Final fix was to assign Channel 6 to my 2.4 network. Coverage is average but nothing spectacular. I will say that it is pretty fast - the Apple TV tops out at 750 Mbps download speed at 35 feet.