Page 5 - Conclusion
Did Linksys' Velop mesh wireless system live up to its promise of total and complete coverage to every corner of your home seamlessly under one SSID? In a very basic sense, I would say so. Each node's sleek twisted tower design is thoroughly modern; its matte white plastic enclosure gives it an attractive contemporary appearance. Setting up the entire mesh system is also simple and fool-proof -- fire up the app on your smartphone, and follow the step-by-step instructions. If anything goes wrong in the process, the app will tell you how to fix it. I also like how each node has two Ethernet ports for wired backhaul support, and allows you to connect wired devices to your main network. If you already have an existing network, the Linksys Velop with the latest firmware can function in bridge mode too. At this point, if these were the only figures of merit, I must say the Linksys Velop is a brilliant system. But there is a key part we are missing: Performance. Simply put, I do not believe the Linksys Velop, even with three nodes, delivered performance according to my expectations. A lot of speed was sacrificed for looks. In fact, it was unable to outperform the company's own Linksys WRT3200ACM in any of our tests. And if you think propagating a bunch of nodes throughout your house will beat a single router, the issue really came down to the fact that the maximum distance to the nearest node using a wireless backhaul is not that much. There are cases where the Velop will be advantageous, like a linear multi-hop scenario discussed on Page 3 of this review, but a well-placed high performance router may outperform the Velop in a lot of cases. For $500 for a three-node pack at press time, Linksys is asking for a lot of money. Their own WRT3200ACM is less than half the price, and in a lot of ways, will deliver better performance -- with advanced features to roll, too.
Belkin provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Review Focus Summary:
6/10 means A product with its advantages, but drawbacks should not be ignored before purchasing.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 6.0/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
The Linksys Velop delivers seamless multi-node Wi-Fi coverage in a very good looking package that actually works, but the performance is lacking and the price may get you packing.
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Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Configuration and User Interface
4. Performance Tests
5. Conclusion
