Smart Hub Pro: Hands On - The good, the bad and the ugly

[ChicChoco]

Hi all

Just going to summarise my early findings after receiving the new Smart Hub Pro and Smart WiFi Pro kit today. It’s been an awkward and frustrating journey and I’m sure some user error along the way… But I might now finally be seeing the brilliance of it. It’s here to stay but could be so much better.

Placement:

Smart Hub Pro - Front door entrance

Smart WiFi Plus - Two stories up (Town House)

The good:

After finally getting both devices running and doing some tests, my WiFi 6 speeds are much better than on the SH+ with my iPhone 14 Pro Max and Rog Ally (WiFi 6E) which for the first time hit 930mbps over WiFi with this new kit.

Now for the magic, I tested WiFi 7. I don’t currently have a native WiFi 7 device so my test case was using a laptop via Ethernet cable into the Smart WiFi Pro (as this is a WiFi 7 device right, so I thought let’s test the raw speed available over the mesh) and to be fair it’s quite a distance from the Hub. 10ms ping. 940mbps/110mbps - on fibre essentials 900. It maxed the connection over the wireless bridge with minimal latency. This is brilliant stuff and now my priority is WiFi 7 card upgrades. Not losing any speed what so ever, so impressed!

The admin panel now includes DDNS which is a welcome addition.

The kit is well designed and build quality is good, again the packaging is eco-friendly and well presented.

The bad:

It’s disappointing that the included Ethernet cables are still 5e and are actually thinner [wire] than the included cables with the SH+ (26awg on the SH+ vs 28awg on the Pro). I feel as it’s a premium product it should come with a decent network cable (at least the same thicker wire from the SH+ generation or a cat 6). Feels like a cost saving measure that just ruins the overall setup, the cable is noticeably thinner in your hand.

The admin / advanced web settings is still heavily locked down and provides little customisation for more advanced users. Would really like to be able to set custom DNS servers, and have a better UI which is quicker. If you refresh the page in advanced settings it asks for the admin password everytime which is frustrating, don’t even think this happened with the SH+? Just needs to save a cookie / auth properly. It would be nice as the setup is app-first, for the web advanced settings to be more technical like other third party consumer grade network devices.

The ugly:

The app setup process and UI is poor. It fails and has bugs which are obvious. As a software developer by day, the QA is shocking.

1) Smart WiFi Pro pairing process failed 2-3 times requiring resetting the device. App just froze saying pairing can take 7 minutes but often would say “we couldn’t pair your device”.

2) This may be user error but I disabled 2ghz band on the main wifi opting to use the compatible network for 2ghz only. This then breaks the Smart WiFi Plus from connecting (the above point was after I realised this point was also causing issues).

3) Smart Hub WiFi reports as “no signal” in the EE app but the device light is aqua and if I click into it, I can see clients connected (and my 940mbps speed test via Ethernet through the device that has no signal).

4) Web advanced settings - My network is missing connected devices, in fact, my Rog ally that connects via 6ghz isn’t even listed as connected here, not sure if this affects all 6ghz devices?

5) Smart Hub Pro update process - after pairing the hub in the app it said updating firmware, this may take up to 10 minutes. It was stuck on this screen for ages (45+ mins) and nothing happened, technical log reports no updates were applied.

6) Web advanced settings - broadband - the “connection status” shows as connnected despite the wan cable being unplugged and the front light flashing orange. This is a bug with the SH+ too; and I don’t understand how something like that can be missed?

Summary

Fantastic bit of kit delivering great speeds over WiFi 7 plus 2.5g wan/lan ports for 1.6g tier users but getting it setup is a bit clunky right now in the app today the least. Now I’ve seen that result over WiFi 7, for me, it’s well worth the price (as £10 extra) and definitely adds value to the more expensive 1.6g packages. It really just needs a UI polish up to be great.

Will post some photos next but auto marked as spam so waiting for mods to review 🙃

[JimM11]

@jon_1103 You are correct, the only thing that is in EE favour is just plug it in and it should work fine. As prices come way down that may be few months away, black friday coming up shortly, and prime day in October for sure. Do wonder how many will push to get 3 extenders for free though. 

[jon_1103]

@JimM11 Totally agree, the EE set up is plug and play essentially, good point I forgot that you can get more extenders.

[Deadlyhifi]

It does do wired backhaul. I’ve got it set up that way. I also get a warning saying it’s too close to the primary hub….

I’ve found the app configuration to be somewhere close to awful. The web app fortunately is better.

I can support the OP position that some devices simply do not show up on device list

The overall speeds seem strong. 

I’ve tried setting up DDNS but it shows ‘connecting’ endlessly. Will continue to figure out the detail of why 

[JimM11]

@Deadlyhifi Thanks for posting your found info up to the forum, at least the web as you say is little bit better than the app, so does seem consistent with both routers, and the web interface not getting device info, good luck with getting your DDNS to function, just hope they don't mess with the FW and take it away like they did on the EE Smarthub+. Does the backhaul speed seem to be up close to the max, mesh can be hard to truly get accuracy.👍

[Colesey]

@Deadlyhifi 

mine also says it’s too close to hub (wired backhaul too.) I have another extender over wireless backhaul that gets my full 1Gb connection despite being 2 floors up. Strangely I get much higher speeds when connected to the wireless backhaul extender than the wired one….havent worked that one out yet.

Yep I have so many devices missing on the network, I checked last night and it said I had only 6 devices connected, when I had at least 10 things in my room connected.

Agreed the speeds are strong, I’m able to get my full gigabit connection over WiFi in all areas of my house I  spend most of my time. So very pleased with that. 

Haven't and probably won’t bother with DDNS.

[Daisyt90]

Got my smart WiFi pro yesterday. But when go on app to set up. It shows my old one and have to set it up with that. Is that normal? 

[Deadlyhifi]

I may have spoken too soon. Further observations 🙂

The speed over Ethernet is all over the place when using switches. I have a set up which has 3 ports leaving the Main hub going to 2.5gb switches with a number of Ethernet connected appliances. This appears to have broken the routers minds a little. They seem to struggle massively. To the point where this morning my original high speeds at dropped to 85mbps. 

Performed a service test and EE believes there is n issue outside my home. I was dubious just because I dont trust new kit being introduced is not a problem. Plugged my ASUS kit back in and everything is perfectly fine again. 

Another observation - the WiFi is not particularly powerful. A laptop in a room (on a the compatibility network) was getting intermittent disconnections and speeds of around 10mbps. After putting my old router back in I’m seeing over 300mbps. 

So right now.. I think I’ll stick with ASUS. I have over 60 devices connected at any one time and combined with the heavy Ethernet connectivity and switches I wonder if this new Hub isn’t up to it? 

[JimM11]

@Deadlyhifi What are you comparing each other against, mesh - mesh, wifi7 - wifi7, and do you not have the time to diagnose any further, sometimes new equipment will fail during its burn in period.

[Deadlyhifi]

On reflection it would be great if there was an active break fix forum with the devs to work through some of these things. EE know this is ‘new tech’ especially on the next gen fibre - I think it could be mutually valuable. 
Phoning EE for support is a challenge as not many are currently trained or aware of all the moving parts and it becomes a frustration for all. 

I think there could be an opportunity if EE were open to it to drive some close collaboration with us. 

[Deadlyhifi]

Hey Jim - mesh to mesh in exact same locations. The ASUS is 6e v EE 7. 

if it wasn’t for the fact we had to work today I would have spent some time doing more investigating. I suspect a router reset may get it back to where it needs to be. 
I also think it will require more satellites than my current setup due to lower power. Which ironically is likely to return in the error of ‘too close’. 

when it comes to the switches I was planning to try a few trace routes to see where things were bouncing around but not had time.