I had the opportunity to try both of the current wi-fi home mesh systems this month. On August 5th, I received a Luma home system, consisting of a three-pack and a single device. I have an older three level home, so I thought four devices would best serve my purposes, and since they were significantly less expensive than the eero devices, I took a chance on a pre-order.

To make a long story short, I was constantly emailing their technical support team with problems, including inconsistent connectivity to the Internet to include dropouts of a few hours at night (yes, I checked the app settings to be sure it wasn't set to shut off the Internet at night), sporadic performance and frequent buffering of streaming media. My son even offered the observation that his 4G LTE connection on his smartphone was faster than our wireless connection. The technical support folks were quick to respond and offered numerous suggestions, but after none of their recommended fixes worked, I requested a return label and a refund and I dropped off the return package this morning.

Yesterday, my eero three-pack arrived, and I set it up with minimal difficulty, other than the app's insistence that my 10-number passphrase be reconfigured as a phone number, and having to reenter all my passphrases as (###) ###-####, complete with parentheses, a space, and a dash! Once I figured out that little quirk, everything worked smoothly, the eero devices pulled down and installed the latest update, and the network is very fast and reliable - so far. I've heard no complaints and everything just works, which is all I want my network to do. I've only got a one-day sample set, but given that the Luma network was problematic from the start, I'm quite hopeful about this one.

There is a pronounced difference, at least thus far, in consistency and performance between the two. If my eero network continues to work as it is, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a whole-home wi-fi solution.