Review of WiFi 7 Pro Router & 1.6Gb Service - Mixed Feelings.

[CarbonStar]

Hi Everyone!

Please see my review below, 

1). Engineer Appointment was 8am-1pm and the gentleman arrived around 9:15am and gave a courtesy call 10 mins before too!

2). Swapped the little ONT box within 5 minutes, just took off and added new one - turned everything on and started working!

3). Gave the Hub Pro a few minutes and was hitting max speed!

4). My iPhone 16 Pro Max is able to get around 1.4Gb download max from the hub, up from 840Mb from my Eero 6E router (TalkTalk).

5). PC is almost at 1.7Gb Down with Ethernet.

6). Disappointing to see you cannot hide your SSID / not Broadcast Your Wifi Signal - but it is what it is I guess.

7). Not sure if I need to opt out of "EE WiFi" which makes you a public WiFi hotspot? - can anyone advise on this please?

8). Overall, higher latency on EE than TalkTalk but much faster speeds - not sure if I'll keep or switch back as Latency is more important than Speed to me. Disappointed in this - EE has 2-4x more latency than TalkTalk - I will see if this will settle over next 24-48 hours.

9). Furthest Room in my home (3-storey) gets 600 - 700Mb which is excellent. The same spot with Virgin Media (1Gb) would get 150 - 300Mb using their router and wifi booster in the same location as EE's Pro Hub and Extender. I appre you don't need such fast speeds however for battery life, the quicker load times and stronger signal I'm hoping will help!

I think that's everything, so conclude,

Great Speeds, Easy Set Up.

Higher Latency - most important for me - so I will most likely cancel this and go back to TalkTalk.

[JordanTA]

Hi @CarbonStar 

Thanks for your posts on this, very helpful. I've passed this onto our product team to review. 

Hope the latency settles and you stay with us, but we do appreciate the post. 

Cheers

[CarbonStar]

Thank you, I’ll provide some results too for comparison:

 EE

 
TalkTalk

5ms ping compared to 16ms ping. 

On PC via Ethernet:

TalkTalk = 2ms ping to “bbc.co.uk” using Windows cmd

EE = 8ms ping to “bbc.co.uk”

Yes they’re all really low numbers anyway - however EE as stated is 2-4x higher nonetheless and sometimes I game on USA East Coast Servers where naturally, the lower, the better because it’s such a big distance. 

But I really appreciate yourself passing this on for me !

[bobpullen]

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@CarbonStar wrote:

6). Disappointing to see you cannot hide your SSID / not Broadcast Your Wifi Signal - but it is what it is I guess.

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Why would you want to do this? 'Security through obscurity' is pretty pointless really; if somebody is going out of their way to look for your Wi-Fi network, then hiding the SSID broadcast is unlikely to hinder them.

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7). Not sure if I need to opt out of "EE WiFi" which makes you a public WiFi hotspot? - can anyone advise on this please?

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I didn't think the newer EE hubs were broadcasting EE WiFi. Are you seeing an 'EE WiFi' SSID coming from the Smart hub Pro?

Does this help?

Higher Latency - most important for me - so I will most likely cancel this and go back to TalkTalk.

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Really? 8ms to BBC is exceptional! Granted, you saw lower with TalkTalk (I wonder if that was also on the Openreach network?) but are you really going to pass a Pepsi Cola test over six thousandths of a second? 🤔

Edit: can't see your pics yet but I note there's also a 5ms versus 16ms comparison. That's a bit more of a difference but 16ms is still superb.

[SJPetter]

I found changing location to London changed the ping to 5-6ms for me. I routinely get 6ms on call of duty PC wired.

[XRaySpeX]

Don't worry, the images were awaiting approval. I have now done so & they should appear soon.

[CarbonStar]

1). It’s just a preference to hide the WiFi Network. I’d rather not someone keep pinging the router if needs be nor have it constantly be scanned by neighbouring devices. I know it’s a minuscule amount of data but I like to completely isolate the network, I appreciate security might not increase much but anyway, it’s just a preference.

2). That’s great to hear, I don’t see “EE WiFi” being broadcast so hopefully that confirms that. I know Virgin Media have also discounted theirs. 

3). As stated, I do play over long distances at times so this will only amplify the difference. 

2ms vs 8ms isn’t noticeable but 20ms to 80ms is easily and very noticeable, for example. 

TalkTalk used the same connection ONT for the service. 

Im not sure if a newer ONT has changed things or if the 1.6Gb service has more “noise” or runs through different paths which led to the increase in latency. 

The only things that got changed was:

- New ONT box 

-EE Pro Router

[CarbonStar]

Location from where?

As shown, it’s the same server I’m connecting to and there’s a difference. 

[SJPetter]

I live in Manchester almost, my ping is lower to London and Dublin compared to Manchester by a magnitude of 50%

[bobpullen]

@CarbonStar - I doubt the hub is contributing to the difference. If you run a traceroute to an external site then you can check the latency of the first hop to confirm/deny this.

If TalkTalk was on Openreach too, then the delta is probably due to differences in the architecture of the two ISP networks e.g. EE use PPPoE whereas I think TalkTalk use DHCP, and there are slightly higher overheads associated with the former (unsure if this actually has any impact on latency though).