PoE 7

I have not had range issues in my mid-sized house with the AP7 and gold to date (2 months in), but I am adding two ceiling mounts to make sure I don't (as I read that others have had issues too) in the barn and office. I love all the details the AP7 gives me, so much better than the erro 7 system it replaced. I upgraded to a decent switch that helped the 10gb WAN as I'm running a cable modem with a failover to Starlink.

In my research it seems the POE 7 and Pro 7 have about the same performance and specs, with the POE 7 being able to power with POE they can be mixed and matched. If I was in your situation I would use the POE 7’s in the locations that are mounted and needing to be powered with POE and in any location that would work for not needing mounted using a Max 7 for the benefit of the extra output and extra antennas.

The best case is to get the Max 7s and then run Ethernet between them where you can, but that is optional and you can use mesh. The only thing the PoE stuff adds is a different way to power it and form factor. Technically you could run only power over PoE and it would just mesh, but that would be a waste of ethernet. The only PoE ones I use are the outdoor ones because I don’t have an issue placing eeros around and I like the flexibility of not requiring PoE. Another use case is you can have an eero that connects to the network over mesh, but you can Ethernet devices to them and the devices will use the eero as a wifi bridge. This means any device connected to a Eero 7 Max via Ethernet and using the mesh does get the full benefit of the extra radios. I like this option because the less devices you have connected to WiFi the more free the airwaves are for devices that must use WiFi.

Sure. The Deco does not have nearly as much engineering put into it as the Eero does. Eero has a bunch of unique (patented) technologies that make it work better in certain environments.

This won't work. If your modem is also a router and you have the eeros in bypass it will work, but not well. Modem -> Eero -> Switch -> Eero is the correct way. If your concern is the lack of multi gig ports on the Eero or the need to home run to a place where there is no need for an Eero, pick up a POE gateway.

If you’re going to buy eero, get either Pro 7 or Max 7 access points. That size house might take 3 of them. As people are saying, hardwired backhaul is better than wireless, but the wireless with eero is pretty darn good.

Eero 7 line if you want set and forget, otherwise Ubiquiti POE Unifi Pros are on sale for today only left if you are tech savvy

My Google wifi got stuck at about 20-30 mbps on a 500 mbps connection. Tossed it and replaced with Eeros 7 and it's amazing! Easy to set up, awesome interface and fast! Only downside was having to use their app and create an account (feee), not a big deal to me.

I would absolutely agree with you there, budget allowing. Currently I run two eero 6+ devices (going back in a few days; they belong to my ISP and I'm leaving their area) along with two eero Pro 6 devices (mine, purchased before I switched to my current ISP, which provided the 6+ eeros at no monthly charge). They've all been great devices to run. However, if I were buying today (whether for replacement or just supplementing), I would only look at the various eero 7 options. I probably should have mentioned that, even though it sounded like OP might be looking to spend less!

It should help a lot, if they're positioned right! If you keep the existing eero at one end of your home and put the new one at the other end, you won't get good results, though; just a heads up! Your additional eero needs to be placed in a spot where you still have strong WiFi or it'll be seriously hobbled. So space them out roughly equally if you can. But play around with it as needed. They might need to be closer together, depending on your situation (area, interior wall construction, other sources of interference, etc.). You might also consider going with an eero 7 device of some sort instead (as u/opticspipe said) if budget isn't a huge concern. Probably something you'll be glad you spent the extra money on down the road.

I have an Eero system with one WiFi 7 unit and the rest 6E. They work flawlessly for me. I love that you can mix and match devices. No problem 

I haven’t used the max but have used the 0to 7s on a fiber connection at a gigabit and works great, much better then previous meh system

I think eero makes the best "mesh" system, especially if you need wireless backhaul. OTOH if you have ethernet runs to your your APs so you can use wired backhaul I feel other brands are just as good and give you more control with fewer features behind a paywall. I do miss the technical deep-dives from roybatty we used to get with different FW releases... and I still think the original Eero 6 Pros were bullet proof after the first 3 or so months after they were released. Way ahead of their time and great wireless range... Not sure if the 6Ghz band in 6E/7 products overcomplicates things or if it was the comprise CPU relying on HW acceleration rather than raw CPU with the chip shortages from the pandemic... at least for the 6E Pro... the 7 line should be OK... I appreciate the 4 port 2x10G-2x2.5 switch in each... Only have two Wifi 7 devices (iphone and ipad pro)... The extra ports did allow me to hardwire many more things though.