Linksys Velop AC2200 Router (Renewed)

For the price these are amazing! Had 3 identical nodes I had purchased back in 2020 for an apartment. I now use them to provide WiFi coverage to the entire acre lot. The new nodes paired easily enough and helped remove a dead zone I had in a particular area of my house.

I was an early adopter to mesh technology as I wrestled with an exceptionally difficult home over 200 feet long, steel-framed, a couple of concrete walls and the Internet connection wired to one side of the house. I needed a whole home solution, encompassing the home, backyard pool controller, and a large garage where I have an Internet TV for exercising diversion. The Velop WHW03 TrI-Band mesh network with a parent and two nodes worked OK but I had drops and restarts 1-2/month. That was installed January 2017. So I decided to try another Linksys node to see what would happen but didn’t want to spend much for it. So I surfed the eBay and found comparable notes selling there. But then I also checked out Amazon and came upon this “renewed” one. More expensive, but “Certified by Linksys.” So sprung for the $25 more and ordered it up. Came overnight. Wow. Sealed box (not the original) with the Linksys seal of certification. All parts there and “like new.” Adding it as an additional node was easy using the Linksys app. I noted that the software was current on the node and didn’t even need an update. I have 47 devices connected to the mesh. My download speeds are in the 600-700Mbps range, 35Mbps uploads. I have 1 Gbps Internet service coming in to the house. So far seems more stable. I’m very happy with the “renewed” Amazon service and price and would order renewed again. Not afraid of “renewed” by Amazon any more.

The instructions to add it as a child node to an existing Linksys mesh network aren't as easy to find and not as easy to setup. Once I had used AI to ask how to set it up as a child node, I got a compliation of instructions it gathered from the web and then I had no problem setting it up.

So, I am completely amazed with how these devices work. I have used wired/wifi devices for years. Went from Linksys Wired (only), to Linksys E2500 which really covered nothing in my little house but I really only needed it for the basement. Was not trying to cover the whole house. I then bought a Linksys AC1200. Still not much coverage but I did have an Extender which covered part of the house. THEN came the Linksys EA7300, which really held its own along with 3 extenders but was still too weak to reach the backyard. It was still weak in my bedroom which I have a Roku setup. But it did what I needed for the time.I finally broke down and bought USED Linksys Atlas Pro 6 AX4200. Regular price $227.99 before the discounted price. I bought it used for $69 from Walmart. Works GREAT by itself. Covered more of the house then most other routers, I used.BUT to add to this, I bought Linksys Velop WHW0103 AC-3900 Dual-Band Wi-Fi 3 Pack Mesh System (Renewed) for $54.99. I bought them to be used as Child Nodes. Let me tell you something. With the collaboration of the AX4200 and the AC-3900, I have the best coverage ever. Yes, I can even get full connection in my backyard. Best investment in a long time.

Short version--with the same service provider (Comcast Xfinity) and same upstream equipment our experiences with home wifi systems have been:Apple Airport: rock solidLinksys Velop: nothing but problemsNetgear Orbi: rock solidWe recommend that you stay as far away from Linksys as possible in order to avoid a living hell.Long version--when Apple discontinued their Airport wifi equipment we decided to replace it with a mesh system and narrowed our choice down to the Velop and Orbi systems based on rather extensive research. They seemed to be pretty equal at that point, and our decision to go with Velop over Orbi was based exclusively on the fact that Linksys explicitly and unambiguously stated on their website that parental controls were fully implemented and available on the Velop, while Orbi only stated that parental controls were still being developed. After setting up the Velop system, which was much more difficult than anything we had ever experienced with our Apple equipment, we could not get the parental controls to work, so we made the first of what would turn into many interminable support calls with hard-to-understand non-native English speakers. After resetting the system, including restarting the Comcast router, and each Velop node in turn (a 30-minute process that we discovered was the first troubleshooting step for ANY problem) the parental controls were still missing, so we were passed along to the next level of support, where we were told that parental controls were simply not yet available on the Velop system! When we explained that we had only chosen Velop over Orbi because of the availability of parental controls, we were merely told that the feature would be coming soon. Our objection that this was outright lying and consumer fraud was met with a non-chalant, "oh, that's just marketing." Parental controls did not arrive until six months later, and then only partially, but the entire time the website boldly claimed "granular parental controls" as a current feature.But then the real hardware problems started. We experienced regular dropouts in service and often one or more nodes would just spontaneously go offline. Each time we called in we had to go through the same 30-minute reset procedure before anything else, and that was usually followed by checking and updating the firmware in each node in turn (another 30 minutes). At some point (our personal record was a 2 hour and 20 minute support call) the system would usually come back online and work for a week or so before the same problems returned. And the whole time we were being told that adding additional nodes would certainly solve the problems. It did not--this is simply another dishonest up-sell in order for someone in the marketing department to earn a commission.Finally, in order to maintain our remaining sanity, we pulled out the Velop system (no they would not issue a refund for any reason) and got the Orbi. We have had no problems since. We will never again purchase any product from Linksys (nor for that matter from Belkin, their parent company), and can only recommend that everyone else follow the same advice.

My problem has always been the distance from my modem on one end of my house to the other end of the house. The kitchen with all the electrical interference was in the middle. I tried signal boosters and they split the signal into 2 bands, so we had to setup each band on a device. It was like having 3 networks in the house. These gave me the same signal with one network from the modem across the length of the house. It was easy to set up and works flawlessly.