How does the BT Premium Home Wifi fare?

[JamesBand]

When it comes to distributing Ultrafast Fibre Broadband throughout the home, what's the best way to do that? I've heard excellent things about the BT Home Wifi discs, so am curious about the BT Premium Home Wifi offering? In the context of sharing the BT Ultrafast Fibre 900 product (with download speeds into the home of 910Mbps) across the home.

As in, the discs below:

https://shop.bt.com/products/bt-premium-whole-home-wi-fi-three-discs-093593-F7BX.html

I cannot seem to find any tech reviews of the Premium discs though. Whilst the Home discs have received positive reviews, as I understand it the Premium ones have a dedicated triband backhaul band for communication between the discs. So theoretically, the full channel for both the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands should be available to clients, thus giving you a higher speed. 

However, I've noticed a few customer reviews that mention problems with the Premium discs and losing connection. Whereas I've seen nothing but praise for the regular Home discs in most customer and professional technology reviews (which will be slower though) which seem to in some cases beat the competition from other Mesh systems like Google's Nest, or TP-Link's offering. 

1. How would the BT Premium Home Wifi Mesh system fare to broadcast the Ultrafast 900 product throughout the home?

2. For a large property, would one require 6 discs?

3. Is there an issue with the Premium discs that requires constant reseting, or is that something that will be resolved soon? They seem fairly future proof, but given the high price, one would hope they work and are super user friendly!

4. How does the BT Premium Mesh system compare to the likes of the new ASUS ZenWifi AX Mesh nodes which came out recently? The latter also has Wifi 6 for clients, but seems to be user friendly with high speeds for Wifi 5 clients also in real life tests through home walls etc according to reviews?

5. Any chance the BT Premium Wifi can beat the Amplifi Alien to deliver the full might of the BT Ultrafast 900 speeds throughout the home?

6. Would the regular BT Home discs not be able to broadcast the full 900Mbps speed of the Ultrafast product given they lack a backhaul connection?

It is not practical to lay out cabling for a wired backhaul, so I am enquiring purely about setting up a wireless mesh to take full advantage of the new Ultrafast product that is becoming available! My internet connection would come into the property at one end, so I need to get fast Wifi the whole way through to the opposite end, where a lot more devices are located.

I hope everyone is staying safe during this COVID crisis and thank you for any advice and thoughts you can provide.

[Sircoynie]

DO NOT BUT THIS PRODUCT IN ITS CURRENT STATE:

WH = BT WholeHome

WHP = BT WholeHome Premium

So I thought I would upgrade from my existing WH kit to this.......WHAT A LET DOWN!

The speeds advertised can only be roughly achieved in absolute ideal situations, and when placing my discs in the same locations as my old WH system I actually found the old WH to be quicker and more reliable (yes both are on the latest firmware)

Comparison (Note I have Full900, my speed is around 960/130), I have tested this the following way and I'm getting the following results:

FTTP Full900 -> Smart Hub 2 (All wifi disabled) ----Ethernet---> Both BT Mesh systems connected ---- Wi-Fi Backhaul to a single (all others turned off) Slave Disc*--->Ethernet----->MacBook Pro with 1Gbps USB C Ethernet Adapter

Results

*Range ~0.5M (No walls): WHP = 550/120 WH = 350/120

*Range ~2M (No walls): WHP = 400/120 WH = 350/120

*Range ~5M (1 wall): WHP = 300/120 WH = 350/120

*Range ~7.5 (2 walls): WHP = 290/120 WH = 320/120 (Note both systems stated the slave disc as having only a GOOD connection, not excellent like in all other tests) 

All results are approximations from testing using and systems were left for around 30mins each before testing:

https://fast.com

https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest

https://www.speedtest.net

I have no idea why it is actually SLOWER than the older model, but for me it has a more rapid drop off when placed further away from the master disk than the original WH. Luckily I have a return window via amazon until the 31st May. If no updates come out to address this before then I will be returning all 5 disks and staying with WH whilst looking at alternative brands.

This product is a joke!

[JamesBand]

Crikey. Surely the BT Whole Home Premium (WHP) would give you a higher speed though given the dedicated "backhaul" channel?

From what I could see the BT Whole Home (WH) discs would get limited because they could only reach half the stated speed without a triband backhaul band. Given they often seemed to get near maximum in reviews (on connections that were 300Mbps or less), you'd have thought the WHP discs could get virtually as close to the Full 900 speed as possible?

So you have Full 900? How do we get a Mesh system to take full advantage of it?

Any thoughts on my set of questions in the original post above please?

[Sircoynie]

Yep, on top of all this I am now having discs drop connections every hour or so. The system is broke, going back to WH for now and looking elsewhere (left me know if you find anything better).

[Sircoynie]

Note: I have been told by @Dan-O to email their support regarding all my issues as there is apparently an update around the corner (Like every taxi driver who is late).

Not holding my breath and will still return by the end of the month if nothing changes as previously stated.

[GaryMo]

I was told of an update within two weeks, that was over two weeks ago. Still frustrated with daily disconnects. Really wish I’d have done my homework and spent my £300 elsewhere. 

[JamesBand]

Oh gosh. The specifications sounded good. Theoretically could it achieve the 900 speed on Wifi if the discs stop disconnecting?

How can one achieve speeds close to the full might of the BT FTTP 900 product and a Mesh system for a property?

Wonder if the ASUS Zen AX might do it. So is the BT Premium Home Wifi issue with disconnections, or speed also? It's odd, because the Whole Home discs seem reliable, but their speed is limited by having no backhaul band.

[JamesBand]

GaryMo, that sounds frustrating. Any thoughts on the questions in my original post above?

How can one distribute the Full Fibre 900 speed around a property then?

Sounds like the BT Home Premium Wifi system doesn't have stability. Does it have the speed? To be fair the specifications sound fairly decent

[GaryMo]

I can’t overly comment on speed, sorry.

All I can say is Speedtesting gives 108 off our VM 100 which isn’t helpful for your question. 

[JamesBand]

GaryMo, I see. But it does appear to get you your full speed when it works.

It's going to be interesting to see if the Premium Wifi can distribute the Fibre 900 product.