Devolo Magic 2 WiFi Mesh
www.devolo.co.uk
£269.99

After the adaptions that businesses had to make during lockdown, many employers are continuing to give their employees the option of working from home. If you are working from home, or are considering it, then one factor has probably sprung to mind – the WiFi. If your home WiFi isn’t quite up to the demands of your workload, or your preferred office space falls out of good performance range of the router, then what are your options? You can trail ethernet cables all through your home (which we did, and it really isn’t a cute or fun time), you can fork out for better WiFi, or, if you can’t afford that or live in an area where no matter what you pay, the signal always struggles, then it sounds like you need to give your WiFi a boost. If your WiFi isn’t functional at all, then your provider should send you a device to boost it, but if you don’t fall within that category, then the chances are they’ve left you to fend for yourself. That’s where the Devolo Magic WiFi Mesh comes in.

Whether you’re working from home, have a personal office or need better WiFi in your gaming room, this product offers a boost to your WiFi in the rooms that usually struggle. The kit we received comes with two boosters, along with a device to attach to your router. The two booster units are then placed in the two rooms you’d like to boost your WiFi to. It’s extremely easy to set up – you don’t need to be a broadband engineer!

Using this kit, you can achieve transfer rates of up to 2400 Mbps across a distance of up to 300 meters. We’re going through a bit of a gaming kick in our house, and with one person on the Playstation downstairs and two people on computers upstairs, you can battle for each other’s WiFi. Or, even worse, when the member of our house who’s working from home is trying to process things for their office, and the furloughed member of the house is gaming downstairs, there can be a bit of a bandwidth war. Little boosts are always welcome, and being able to remove the ethernet cables that were forming trip hazards and dog chewing temptations was a big plus! (Though not to worry – the access points all have LAN connections if you need them!)

The ‘mesh’ of access points can support a total of 100 end devices at maximum performance, with every device automatically connecting to whichever access point is the strongest for it. Aka, you don’t need to pick which of the three devices you’re attached to – they all work together, and all you need to do it log onto the WiFi as normal. You can even buy more Devolo Magic adapters and expand your mesh later, and they’ll all slot into the same system.

A detail that I appreciated is that these access points also have a mains socket on them, meaning that even though you might plug them into the wall or an extension, they don’t fully take up a slot – you can plug something else into the same slot as well! That said, be cautious not to overload any of your sockets with too many plugs all in one place.

This product made a huge difference to our WiFi situation. If you’re sick of having rooms in the house that are WiFi slow or dead zones, then this set could change the situation for you. With this current move towards working at home in particular, this is a brilliant product to know about.

5/5

Pros:
Boosts WiFi throughout the home
Two boost access points
2400 Mbps across a distance of up to 300 meters
All WiFi access points on the same system
Devices automatically connect to strongest point
Can seamlessly expand with more ports
LAN and WiFi
Mains socket on device