Eero Pro 6E review: Superb Wi-Fi 6E comes at a cost

Eero is a mesh system that replaces a single Wi-Fi router (usually mailed out by your broadband provider and tucked away in a cupboard or haphazardly placed on a piece of furniture in the hallway) with a couple of different nodes dotted around your house.

Working together, these Eero devices blanket your entire home with strong Wi-Fi, eliminating any deadzones in your coverage. If you’re unable to work from home in certain rooms of your home due to patchy Wi-Fi signal, or have to switch from Wi-Fi to 4G on your phone whenever you head out into the garden …a mesh system should solve these issues.

As you walk around your home, the clever Eero system will switch your device to the closest Eero node (or the one with the fewest connections) so you always get the fastest possible speeds. Eero also doubles up as a Zigbee network, saving you from plugging a number of dedicated hubs into your router for certain smart home gadgets (Philips Hue, older Sonos systems, etc).

A single Eero Pro 6E node is capable of providing a strong Wi-Fi signal to 190m², which should be more than enough for most small homes or flats. If you’re still struggling to get a strong Wi-Fi signal in every room, Eero allows you to steadily add more nodes over time as and when you need them. This is also handy if you move house.

If you already own one or two Eero devices, it’s possible to incorporate a brand-new Eero Pro 6E into your existing system.

Eero has designed its system so that disparate generations of its devices can communicate with one another, which makes any Eero purchase pretty future-proof. Of course, you won’t benefit from the extra bandwidth afforded by Eero Pro 6E in the portion of your home covered by the older Eero 6, but it’s nice that the company ensure older devices are obsolete with the arrival of each new generation.

Setting up an Eero system is incredibly easy. The company provides detailed instructions with the best way to pair its mesh system with every major UK broadband provider, including BT, TalkTalk, Sky, and Virgin Media. Compared with signing up for a new broadband contract, where a router arrives almost without explanation in the post… you’ll feel in good hands with the incredibly slick Eero app (available on iPhone, iPad, and Android) that guides you through the process of setting up a new network.

For the most part, Eero recommends plugging one of its devices into the back of your existing Wi-Fi router. You can then disable your original Wi-Fi network (it’s not ideal to have two gadgets side-by-side beaming out Wi-Fi, that could lead to some interference or sluggish speeds) and start using the Wi-Fi supplied by Eero.

Honestly, the most arduous part of the process is logging into your brand-new Wi-Fi network from each device dotted around your home. Phones, tablets, laptops, video doorbells, smart speakers, smart lightbulbs, games consoles, Kindles, televisions …everything will need to be switched to your new mesh system.

You’ll need to use the brilliant Eero app to add a new Eero to expand the reach of your network, replace an existing node with a new model, as well as categorise and name each new device that connects to your Wi-Fi. Yes, one of the best features about the Eero system is the way that it divvies up all of the devices connected to your network.

By default, it will categorise gadgets on your network under banners like Computers & Personal, Home, and Entertainment. Eero also adds small pictograms to denote different devices, so even if you haven’t spent any time triaging the gadgets connected to your home Wi-Fi, you should easily be able to find what you’re looking for in a few seconds.

However, if you do want to put some time into tidying up the Eero app, there are a few options. Eero lets you customise the name of each device on your network too – this only appears within the Eero app, so you can be as specific as you like using names like “Work iPhone” and “My iPhone”, for example. And you can also create individual profiles for every household member and divide up the devices between their owners. This might sound like a chore, but it’s really worth the hassle.

With every gadget on your Wi-Fi network assigned to a person, the Eero app will allow you to track the total broadband usage of each person at home. Not only that, but Eero lets you schedule downtime when individual family members’ devices won’t be able to connect to the internet, so you can ensure dinner is always phone-free, or stop younger children from logging into Snapchat and Twitch.tv in the wee small hours when everyone else is asleep.

Eero lets you set content filters for all devices associated with a single profile or, if you want more granular control, you can customise the type of content blocked on each individual device. Eero offers preset content filters based on age, with “Pre-School 0-5 years” offering the most restrictive experience online, “Pre-Teen 6-12 years” blocking all social media and adult content, and “Teenager 13-18 years” still filtering all adult, illegal and violent content.

There’s also an “Adult” option, which allows you to restrict one or more categories of content, like social media, gaming, shopping, chat and messaging, social media, streaming, and adult. This could be useful for anyone who find the preset categories above a little too restrictive, or who wants to restrict certain content for themselves, like social media or Netflix during work hours. For even more control, Eero lets you list specific sites or services that you’d like banned for any users.

A separate Activity tab within the Eero app lets you track your network speeds over time. This is incredibly useful if you’ve been having trouble with your broadband package and need to send a screenshot to your Internet Service Provider to prove how patchy your speeds have been over the last few months. By default, Eero will run a speed test in the background at around 5am, so you’ll know before you login to start work whether your connection is running as expected.

Eero will also send a weekly report, with the latest statistics about your network speed, including fastest download and upload speeds recorded in the last seven days, the total amount of data downloaded over your network, and more. If you’re not on an unlimited plan — this could save you from a nasty surprise bill at the end of the month. If you’ve taken the time to set-up individual profiles, you’ll also be able to find out who is downloading the most gigabytes across their devices.

Setting up and managing a Wi-Fi network using the Eero app is a complete joy. The Eero app is staggeringly well-made, with a friendly interface that won’t intimidate novices, explanations in plain English for some of the more technical functionality, and best of all, it’s very stable. In the weeks that we’ve been adding devices, running speed tests, and categorising every device in our home …the Eero app has never crashed or faltered. That’s incredibly reassuring given that making any changes to your Wi-Fi relies on the software.

Our only criticism of the Eero app is that it locks some functionality hidden behind a monthly subscription fee. Eero offers two subscription plans: Eero Secure and Eero Secure+.

Eero Secure costs £2.99 per month or £29 per year and unlocks the content filters, ad blocking across your network, VIP priority customer service, a weekly email report about your network activity, and the ability to trawl through historical data on your download speed and usage. Without a subscription, you’ll only be able to see statistics about your network usage from the last seven days – and that latter feels intentionally designed to force all Eero owners to cough up for the subscription plan.

Rival mesh systems – like Google Nest Wifi, and BT Whole Home – allow you to trawl back through all previous speed tests without handing over any extra cash. Eero is clearly tracking the data, but it’s simply hiding it until you pay up. Likewise, Google doesn’t lock parental controls behind a payment plan either.

Eero Secure does bundle improved threat prevention – stopping malware, phishing attacks, and other nasty surprises from stealing your data or damaging your devices. Since these security measures take place at a network level, it will block the threat before it even reaches your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

This is different to anti-virus software, which has to be installed on each device individually to offer any level of protection. Google doesn’t offer threat protection for free with its Nest Wifi system and as a result, this adds much more value to the £2.99 per month subscription tier.

In comparison to Secure, the pricier Eero Secure+ subscription is a really compelling proposition.

It includes all of the features listed above, but also bundles a subscription to the superb 1Password password manager (£2.99 per month), Encrypt.me VPN (£3 per month), Malwarebytes anti-virus subscription (£29.99 per year), and DDNS. This costs £9.99 per month, or you can save by paying £99 for the year.

Despite being bought by Amazon back in February 2019, Eero still feels like an independent company. That said, there are hints here and there. You can use an Amazon account to sign-in to the Eero app and you can use Alexa-powered smart home gadgets to put individual profiles in timeout, switch off the LED indicator lights, and pause Wi-Fi for all owners using “Alexa, tell Eero it’s dinner time”.

In stark contrast to Google, which combined the functionality of its hands-free Google Nest smart speakers with each Wi-Fi extending nodes with the latest hardware refresh, Eero isn’t trying to sneak Echo Dot speakers around your home.

As mentioned above, Eero isn’t even controlled by the Alexa app – which controls almost all of Amazon’s other smart home efforts.

Eero Pro 6E launched in March 2022 and is available to buy from a number of high street and online sellers right now, including Amazon UK. As the flagship mesh node available from Eero – and the first to arrive with the cutting-edge new 6Ghz wireless standard – it’s not cheap. A single Eero Pro 6E will set you back £349, while the triple-pack clocks in at £799.

Like the rest of the Eero lineup, the Pro 6E blankets your home with Wi-Fi signal so you can watch boxsets without buffering, enjoy uninterrupted video calls, and stream music from anywhere. The Amazon-owned company’s clever TrueMesh system cleverly juggles your devices, so you’re always connected to the nearest Eero for a strong signal.

With the Eero Pro 6E, the company will future-proof your network – unleashing an entirely new 6GHz motorway for devices that support the new standard.

As it stands, there probably aren’t that many gadgets in your collection capable of taking advantage of this cutting-edge wireless technology, so the Eero Pro 6E will only become more useful over time. With two ethernet ports on every unit, you’ll be able to enjoy 1Gbps wired speeds for multiple devices from each node. Of course, you’ll need to have the latest full-fibre speeds coming into your home to really take advantage of the advances in this stunning Eero kit …something that only Virgin Media and BT-owned Openreach can help with, not Eero.

The excellent Eero app still provides our favourite way to manage a Wi-Fi network. The Android and iOS app makes it easy to categorise devices, assign gadgets to individual profiles, and enable features like WPA3 and IPv6. Eero can also automatically prioritise bandwidth for specific activities, like online gaming and video calls, with a single tap.

The frustration-free way that Eero lets you suspend Wi-Fi access for certain people or devices, set strict content filters to safeguard younger household members, block adverts and malware across the entire network, and receive weekly reports about the speed of your network and overall broadband usage is superb.

Unfortunately, most of these features are locked away behind a £2.99 per month subscription fee. For those who want to tap into the full potential of the Eero kit, you’ll need to pay that subscription …or upgrade to the pricier Eero Secure+ plan.

This is Eero’s ultimate mesh system – it’s future-proofed with support for the latest 6GHz standard, provides a ludicrously stable Wi-Fi network for hundreds of your gadgets, offers 1Gbps downloads via ethernet, and boasts a rock-solid Wi-Fi signal across 560m². It’s a seriously impressive piece of kit.

Just make sure you really need to be on the bleeding edge of Wi-Fi technology as Eero has a number of excellent mesh systems powered by the same phenomenally stable TrueMesh wireless technology and managed by the same expertly-designed phone app. Check out our Eero 6 review to see whether that would suit your needs.

Regardless of which Eero device you settle on, you’ll be able to set-up the mesh Wi-Fi system in minutes …and then all about it, safe in the knowledge that it will prioritise important video calls and juggle dozens of smart home devices, block malware threats to your devices, and can even reduce your children’s screen-time when you’re away from home.

All of those impressive features really start to make you think that Wi-Fi router bundled for free from your broadband provider isn’t working hard enough, right?