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 🙃

[Nik_s]

That's my plan, to be fair EE do actually document the process unlike BT who just say it's not supported even though it's possible.

[XRaySpeX]

@Nik_s : EE TV & DV require that the EE router be connected to the ONT. If you have either you cannot take up my suggestion of connecting the TP-Link to the ONT.

[Nik_s]

Wow, that's a really **bleep**ty implementation, if true, I'll be getting ride of EE TV then.

[Nik_s]

Apparently it requires the router to support multicast/IGMP, the good news is that my DECO S7 mesh does support multicast/IGMP, so I maybe OK. Will have to try when I get back from holiday

[bobpullen]

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@Nik_s wrote:

Apparently it requires the router to support multicast/IGMP, the good news is that my DECO S7 mesh does support multicast/IGMP, so I maybe OK. Will have to try when I get back from holiday

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This is correct, EETV subscription channels require the hub to support BT's multicasting implementation. Note that not every router vendor is particularly good at this and I've personally seen mixed results. I wouldn't assume that the simple presence of IGMP support will get you there (hopefully it does though).

Why the need for a 'bridge mode'? Can't you use the Deco kit in access point mode instead, or is there some feature other than Wi-Fi on the Deco that you're wanting to use?

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@Nik_s wrote:

1. The four Ethernet ports are on a hub, not a switch

or

2. The EE Hub lacks the processing power necessary to maintain the Internet connection when a large volume of Internal Ethernet traffic is passing through the hub.

Fortunately I was able to rearrange the connections so that the file server is on a separate switch. But such poor performance makes it likely that anyone generating significant traffic on their internal network needs to isolate the traffic so that it doesn't pass through the EE Hub. Next job is to replace the PoS hub with my TP-link Deco mesh.

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I don't think either of these things are true. The ports will almost certainly be switched (it would be insanity for them not to be IMO). If somebody were bored, I imagine you could determine this fairly easily with a packet capture or two.

On the processing power front, there's also definitely enough grunt. According to this, it's using a quad-core 2.2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM!

I don't tend to transfer large files across the wire in a traditional sense but I do routinely stream multi-gig video content across my LAN without issue.

[cliffy37]

I see Sky have launched there WIFI 7 router, arguably seems to have better spoecs then EE offering although i personal would not use either. More interesting is them launching 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps Symetric speeds for £70 and £80 respectively.  Its a shame EE are so far behind the curve, i would definately pay £80 for a symetric 5Gpbps amd seems much better value then reported prices for EEs up coming 1 Gbps symetric package at £120+ per month. Shoclking price really

[JimM11]

@cliffy37 You also have to be on CF fibre connected circuit to do any off it!

[cliffy37]

@JimM11  - That is kind of irrelevant, it just demonstartes that there are UK providers considerably ahead of EE in teh services provided, prices being charged and foreard planning being carried out. EE/BT had teh resources to do this at least a couple years back but they just seem to have the inability to plan for the future or wiloingness to

[Nik_s]

I also doubt that the ports aren't switched which is why I think that it's a performance problem with the hub. Large file transfers easily hit 80+MB/s sec across the LAN, and that kills the Internet connection, even though not one byte is going in/out over the Internet connection so there's no reason why it should kill the Internet connection unless there's something else impacting performance.

[JimM11]

@Nik_s Little confused by what you are trying to say that is network specific! Are you saying that when you have a high speed internal network transfer, that the Internet connection is not serviced what so ever during the period!