Is it worth upgrading my full fibre 900 from Whole Home Wifi to Whole Home WiFi Premium (Wifi 6)?

[oddjones]

So I've got full fibre 900 with a blistering fast connection (1.1gbit at the hub according to fast.com) - which is connected to a smarthub 2 and whole home wifi - I get about 250mbps from each disc - which seems to me to be a "waste of 700mbits" - maybe I'm being dense, but surely there must be a way to improve this? (I've done the whole "move the router, move the discs" dance many times)

Trouble is there are so many products out there - none of which are cheap, which claim to offer "gigabit" wifi - but when you read the reviews don't even come close to thast - and in many cases may not even offer a significant speed bump over my Whole Home WiFi setup.

I've investigated Eero, Various flavours of Netgear Orbi and now seen BT's own Premium offering (which I can't seem to get anybody at BT to tell me what speed it actually offers) - my question is - Is it worth me upgrading? and if so, to what? 

I don't do a lot of gaming - we use our broadband for streaming, teleconferencing, working from home (I'm a developer so do a lot of downloading of large files) - so the speed would be a help - but at what cost?

is a Netgear Orbi 753 (at the best part of £500 today on Prime Day) going to offer me 700Mbit plus over wifi to my M1 macbook pro? Would I notice the difference between that and a base eero (or even my current WHW)

Am I going to get numbers close to a wired connection? I feel like I should be getting 700mbit plus into my devices or why am I paying for a 900mbit connection?

It all seems like a big gamble - with the only way to find out to shill out a lot of money - which I'm jusrt not prepared to do.

Can anybody help?

[Forthay]

The Wi-Fi speeds will depend on several factors including whether the clients support Wi-Fi 6, the band connection, interference etc. I’ve RBK53s in access point mode connected to a UDM and happily achieve all around 500Mb around the house. I tried the RBK853 but I didn’t see a huge jump in speed so went back to the RBK53s which were about £230 a big saving on the RBK853s. If it were me I’d be looking to see if any Orbis are in the Amazon warehouse and have the 20% discount.

[oddjones]

Hmm - RBK 753's are the same price as RBK 53s on Amazon today ?!! - Also- what's a UDM? Ubiquity Dream machine? - if so, doesn't that put the total price in RBK 753 territory anyway? (£439 today on Amazon)

[gosforth]

FF900 is worth only on wired connection, when with CAT5e or CAT6 cables you will get most from it, typically up to full speed you are able to get, 900 Mbps to 1.1 Gbps down, 110-120 Mbps up, and somewhere around 6-8 ms as ping….

Wifi is on another end, very problematic area, with Smart Hub 2, and black disks, expect nothing more then up to 350 Mbps on SH2 and up to 150-250-300 Mbps on disks itself, while you will still be on contested area of WiFi 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz lower band, where most of you’re neighbours will be… 

it’s very site specific, and very unpredictable without more examination, how WiFi looks at you concrete place…

My AX TP-Link router, placed behind SH2 giving me up to 650 Mbps on third higher band (channel 120 or 124) and up to 500 Mbps on channel 48, which is out of typical broadband provider routers…

Still less then FF900 is able to provide, but probably maximum without willing spend hundreds for WiFi6 router, which most likely don’t give me extra more…

If you have android phone by hand, try to look “what’s going on” around you with some WiFi Analyzer app first… if you will be able to get self on Ch48 (means away from others) and even on WiFi6 is not so much neighbor’s activity, you MIGHT get better results…

For me, personally, three band WiFi5 AX router was way to go… For Yourself, might be not…

[User12345]

@oddjones

I understood the BT Whole Home Wifi discs were capped at 100mbps speed; so unless you're wired in, there is no benefit to upgrading. This is as per a question I put here previously.

Be very interested in your reply.

Thanks

[gosforth]

I shall not agree with "capped" part when talking about Whole Home disks (black ones)...

See screenshot with lower speed, it's my Oppo phone connected via Black disk, which ks wirelessly connected to SH2 (if connected to hard wired - another - disk, speed will be up to 350 Mbps)...

However, screenshot with much better speed it's from very same spot, same phone, but connected to my TP-Link AX router on channel 124 (a.k.a third band)...

 

 

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[licquorice]

Whole home discs are the white ones that can be used with any router, the black discs are Complete WiFi which can only be used with the BT SH2

[Forthay]

Prices fluctuate. Right now the 53s seem unusually high. If prices are comparable then I’d of course go with the 753s. Technically you don’t need the UDM that’s just my setup 😉

[Meadster]

Sorry to hijack this but I have exactly the same issues with mine although I'm on the 500 mb download.

When I was on the 15 mb, everything working perfectly, on wifi would get a straight 140/ 150 mb download speed. Now, it fluctuates between 140 - 230 if I'm lucky. My Galaxy S21 says the connection speed is 866mbps so although not as high as your connection, not sure or understand why I don't receive higher speeds. Taking into account all the variables of wifi signal, If I'm sitting within a few meters of a disk, I'd expect to get the minimum guaranteed speed of 425 mb and not the full 500 mb.

I'm wondering if it is the disks that are the issue. Mine are the white whole home wifi disks connected to a SH2 and getting really cheesed off with this pony.

Was looking at the Orbi WiFi 6 system with 3 'disks' but that's nearly a grand to find out whether there will be an improvement or not. Or, even the Asus Zen system.