Name: Amazon Eero Pro 6
Brand: Eero

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Amazon’s ever-expanding technology selection reaches even to your networking solutions. It does make sense with their smart home solutions already being sold, so why not integrate it all into one? Amazon bought out the company in 2019 whose focus is on extending your network to your whole household with simple designs and quick integrations with a good range of mesh routers. So now we test how well they perform with our review of the Eero Pro 6 lineup.

This range is a bit more outdated but still allows for an easy time in setting up a whole network as they opt for the WiFi 6 standard, which still keeps you limited to the two older frequencies but misses out on having a 6GHz channel that you can find in WiFi 6E routers like in the newer model now available. However, that’s still a relatively new tech without much support, so let’s see what it still has to offer.

Amazon Eero Pro 6

3.5 /5

Editor’s Rating

How We Review

Specifications

Standard: WiFi 6
Frequency band: 2.4GHz, 5GHz
Max speed: 4200Mbps
LAN ports: 2 x 1 Gbps

WAN: Same as LAN
CPU: 1.4 GHz quad-core processor
Memory: 1024MB RAM, 4GB flash storage
USB: N/A
Dimensions: 139 x 139 x 52.6 mm (5.5 x 5.5 x 2.1 inch)
Weight:

What We Think

The Amazon Eero Pro 6 is a simple and easy-to-use mesh router. With a good range out of even one, it is a good solution for coverage. Along with the ease of use of the app and the ability to use integrated Zigbee and Matter smart hubs it a great solution. However, the limitation in IO and plenty of features locked behind a paywall make the price of the router a rather steep one.

Reasons to Buy

Easy to install and setup – although lacks wall mount options
Built-in Zigbee and Matter smart home hubs
Far-reaching and strong signal even on the one device
Small and clean build and design to fit in nicely
Expanding network mesh coverage easy to do

Reasons to Avoid

Lots of features are locked behind a subscription paywall
Lacks a lot of IO, very much a wireless-focused device
Lacks IoT and the ability to separate out channels
Expensive for the limited features on the routers

Design

The Amazon Eero Pro 6 is a more basic and looking router, nothing stands out from it including no external antennae. It’s just a bumped slope of a squished cube. Plus it’s not all too big as the white box comes in a size of 139 x 139 x 52.6 mm, it certainly allows for easy placement into any environment or decoration style as it’s rather minimalistic. However for some reason doesn’t include any mounting holes nor do they sell any hardware to do it, so it does have to stick to being placed on a solid surface.

Sleek and inconspicuous all over there’s really nothing to catch the eye, especially as there are no cooling vents to find anywhere and there are not many ports to find around. Only the top features the logo, with the sides being a blank white canvas, with the rear sporting the power USB C port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports (LAN and WAN compatible), with the underside only showing the information sticker and a well-hidden reset button.

Running WiFi 6 on board, the router is capable of providing 2.4GHz, along with 5GHz Hi and Lo channels with automatic frequency changes and connecting between the different nodes. However, that does limit the ability to pick and choose your ability to connect to a specific channel. This does kind of limit the setup you have especially sharing traffic, although there is a Guest network you can enable even though it also has this limitation. Whilst for ethernet, there are two ports on each rated at 1Gbps that are shared LAN and WAN.

The Amazon Eero Pro 6 is a simple and easy-to-use mesh router

Other features

One of the key features for integrating it into your Smart Home Hub is the Zigbee features so that Amazon integration works well as it enables frustration-free setup with Alexa and low Energy Bluetooth 5.0. It also comes in rather simple and easy packaging with the box presenting the range of nodes on top straight forward while having the necessary reading needed, and cables underneath and that’s all.

For the hardware inside there’s nothing too massive with a setup of a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor, 1024MB RAM, and 4GB flash storage. That is a fairly good amount of hardware inside, not quite reaching the levels of some of the fastest gaming routers out there. So it is slightly surprising to see the lack of cooling anyway but it might not be too necessary and might have plenty of passive cooling to make it a nonissue.

Installation was fairly simple once you have installed the Eero app. Finding the router once it is on and ready will connect it up and take you through it quite quickly to set up your network. The app is rather handy and has a lot of control and insight, especially into the devices connected and being able to scan and block certain things. However, it also locks a lot of features behind Eero plus their subscription. So deeper protection, parental controls, VPN, and more insights are limited which makes it frustrating and something you can find on other routers that this falls behind.

Pricing

The pricing varies for the product, on eero you can find the three-pack for $399.99 which might have been the price on the release of the WiFi 6 device but now it’s a lot less. Whilst at Best Buy the same pack costs $199.99 which is what a singular one usually costs, especially as you can’t find it on Amazon anymore it is an ok price now a lot better now for the three-pack. Compared to the ROG Rapture GT6 we reviewed is more than that for a singular one, although comes with way more features. So all in all, it still might be a lot for the limited features you get although the three-pack mesh does make up for it somewhat.

Performance

To test the Amazon router we set it up on our network and how it performed in our tests. Our office network is limited to around 280Mbps whilst traffic and obstacles also vary between tests. Then we run WiFiman and Speed Test on our Samsung S21 FE to test it, which connects up to the WiFi 6 but due to the router settings could only test 5GHz since we could not separate and connect up to the 2.4GHz due to the automatic connection. Then we had four markers of distance to measure the network at 10 ft/3 m, 30 ft/9 m, 60ft/18m with a wall in between, and lastly a far point of 90ft/27m with four walls from two rooms in between.

Signal strength

Starting off with the signal strength we see how well the device and router communicate and how well the signal is between them. For the Eero 6 Pro, we see an average performance at 5GHz up to 60ft and even surprisingly manages to keep connected at 90ft even though it has a rather low signal strength falling to -86dbm. Compared to the range of -36, -51, and -69dbm between 10/30/60ft.

Speed test and latency

Next, we look at the speeds it can achieve. Starting off with the PHY (physical) speeds, which relates to the connection between phone and router without an internet need. That means we see the potential of the router without broadband variations. Here we see the Eero Pro 6 perform very well as it reaches high peaks of 1200-8Mbps in downloads and uploads ranging 1080-34Mbps, which is not as performant as other models we’ve tested.

As for the actual internet speed we achieved over wireless, it performs at the top amongst the best routers. With the download ranging from 260 to 2Mbps with the uploads going between 288 to 0Mbps. There is also the latency to consider sop the time it takes for your data to reach and come back to your device. For the Eero, it’s fairly average across the board with a spike at the farthest point as it ranges 8-49ms.

Lastly, we check the LAN speed to see if the LAN is working as it should on connected devices. There we use the Speed Test to see how it does and the Eero does fairly well and manages to range a 268Mbps upload and 284Mbps download. So it’s great but you might need additional hardware to get more devices running on the limited ports. We usually also test storage speed but without USB we didn’t do one for this router.

Conclusion

Overall the Amazon Eero Pro 6 is an OK router, made for mesh networking and covering every inch of your home making it a good option for a simple and quick solution. However, the limitations in features and locking away key controls do bring it down a lot. Although it performs well on its own and does well in connecting up to each other and acting as a hub for your devices. But there are now improved and more modern models to go for or competitors that provide you with a lot more, including dedicated hardware networks and more. But if you enjoy simplicity it can be a good option.