Have the 6e tri band units but be returning them and switching to the 7 dual band ones. I have ethernet runs going from my basement to the living room and each bedoom so all the deco units and everything else that can be connected via wire will be. So I'll only need the 5ghz band for phones and laptops. All the iot stuff will be on the 2.4. I really just rather have the 2.5gb ports.
If you are relying mostly on wifi then the tri band is better.
Gotcha. Being that you're in an apt and rely on more on wifi I'd still go with the 6e tri band. You'd have a much more reliable connections and will probably see higher sustained speeds than the wifi 7 dual band, especially if you have a lot of devices hooked up to it. Unless you want to future proof yourself and spring out extra $$ for the wifi 7 tri band system.
>I didn’t want to have to put one port into a switch just to send it back to another deco
Why not? Switches are pretty cheap. This is how I have mine set up
ISP router (in IP passthrough mode) > main deco > switch > deco 2 > switch > deco 3
You can have the deco's in AP mode and just let your ISP router do the routing if you want but I just find that you lose features like being able to isolate certain devices from your main network and set up a custom DNS (if your ISP router doesn't allow you to do it like mine).
I have xe70 pros which is the same as these. They're fine as a mesh but the CPU inside can't handle heavy traffic when wired backhaul (2 core CPU) I had to buy a separate router and turned on AP mode. All's well now.
XE70 pro would work very well it’s priced very well and while the XE75 is a good system the XE70 seems to be a tad faster loading pages and so on atleast in my experience it was a tad faster especially wirelessly which it should be the opposite but the XE70 pro is rock solid
I agree. I have the 6e deco pods. 6ghz works great in the same room, but I get better speeds on 5ghz once a wall is between me and the pod.
And just regular, north American wood walls with drywall from the 70s, not some fancy cement or brick walls.
I woiod avoid wireless backhaul at all costs (I use MoCA), but it's unlikely 6ghz would work well as a backhaul.
I use deco pods. Super easy to set up.
I'd recommend wiring in every access point. Mesh systems tend to lower total available bandwith, since things need to get broadcast more than one.
For your situation, I'd recommend the **WiFi 6E tri-band system** (XE70 Pro). Here's why:
**The dedicated 6GHz band wins for mesh:**
The tri-band setup with 6GHz is ideal for mesh systems because you can dedicate that entire clean, uncongested 6GHz band for backhaul between your mesh nodes. This means your devices on 2.4GHz and 5GHz aren't competing with the mesh traffic, leading to much more consistent performance throughout your home.
**Regarding your MLO/security concern:**
MLO will work fine with mixed WPA2/WPA3 security modes - modern routers handle this without issues. Your WPA2-only IoT devices will simply connect to 2.4GHz normally without using MLO (they couldn't anyway). Devices that support WPA3 and MLO can take advantage of it. You don't need to worry about this affecting functionality.
**Practical considerations:**
- Very few devices support WiFi 7 yet, so you won't benefit from it immediately
- Even fewer devices have 6GHz radios, but that dedicated backhaul band benefits your entire network regardless
- 6GHz has significantly less interference since it's a newer, less crowded spectrum
- The tri-band architecture is proven and reliable for mesh systems
**When WiFi 7 would make sense:**
If you had ethernet backhaul available (so you wouldn't need wireless backhaul) OR if most of your devices already supported WiFi 7, then the BE5000 could be worth considering for future-proofing. But for a pure mesh setup today, that dedicated 6GHz backhaul is more valuable than WiFi 7's features.
The XE70 Pro should give you better, more stable mesh performance in real-world use.
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Easy, reliable, smart home ready; but paid features.
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