Deco BE65 BE9300 Whole Home Mesh WiFi 7 System

I live in the UK, and I am an EE customer on their top package, (guaranteed 1.8gbps) at all times, but often goes over 2gbps. I ditched the EE provided router as it wasnt that great for IoT and their provided Wifi Extenders were pretty rubbish and limited to WiFi 5 only. I instead replaced it with TP-Link Deco BE9300, which has been brilliant. I get great WiFi in all areas of my home, and I get solid 2gbps when hard wired, the addition of WiFi 6 allows me to use that on supported devices and its noticeable. In terms of the infrastructure so far, its pretty good, and I'm happy with my setup. However, the Deco's above have limited features in regards to traffic management and QoS. There is a QoS option but its basically you add a device, and thats about it, and from my testing it really doesnt do anything, making me think its not actually prgrammed very well and instead is just a tick box in the app to say it "has QoS" when in reality it is literally just a tick box. I need QoS mostly for gaming, as I live in a heavy useage internet household, and I most game these days through streaming services (GeForce NOW being the primary). I plan to buy a router, to do the routing for the house, and put the Deco's into AP mode hard wired to a new router. When i search "best gaming routers" there are a few key ones to choose from but most are £700+ it seems like a lot of money, and when I look at it, its because they all come with super robust features and a strong WiFi offering (which I wont be using, as my chosen router will end up with its WiFI off, opting to use the Deco as my WiFi solution.) I literally want recommendations on cost effective routers, that wil manage all the routing DHCP etc, but comes with solid QoS for gaming and supporting the gaming side. Also ideally a minimum of 2.5gbps ports. There are some solid routers around £100 - £150 like the Netgear XR500 (i used one of these years ago) but its limited to 1gbps on the ethernet. Does anyone know of any solid options that are cost effective?

I’ve been testing a BE65 over the last week. Have packed it up and sending it back. For my setup and devices, too many devices dropping off the WiFi network regularly. Had exactly the same with XE75. Have reverted to my trusty old Eero 6+, no drops at all

I went from Deco’s that had devices drop off regularly to Eeros supplied by my ISP. It’s like night and day. Eeros are rock solid and work perfectly with my Apple Home setup. I intended to go down the Unifi route until I realised just how reliable and well performing the Eero’s were. They are ‘plug and play’ and you can’t change much, but are pretty much ‘set up and forget’. Just my own experience and it may be different for someone else.

I had a couple Alien routers with the primary routers 2.4 radio died. I had to replace them quickly, I went with a trio of Deco 65's. I am amazed at how much better they are. No wired downhauls on the 2 mesh units. Ended up with 3 nets, SSID\_MLO, SSID, and SSID\_IoT. I can reserve and isolate devices. Perhaps not cheap but I expected to need a 3 unit mesh system for the size of my home. Homebase is ok, I wish all my cameras could just use my wi-fi as it is much stronger.

If you already have ethernet in the home, why not? Deco BE65 twin pack is $300, which is the same as Dream router 7 after their "memory surcharge" If you can place 1 in the front 1st floor, and another in the rear 2nd floor you'll have great speeds/coverage everywhere.

Your best bet is going to be move the AT&T gateway towards the center of the home. You can get a 50-75ft fiber on Amazon for about $20. Another good setup is keep the gear where it is, disable wifi on AT&T gateway connect Deco, run ethernet into the walk in closet for the 2nd Deco unit. If you're really set on not doing that tri-band 6E is a decent choice, but you really don't need 3, start with 2. YSisable wifi on the AT&T gateway and place one there, as high off the ground as possible. Then try to place one towards the opposite side of the living room.

Totally agree that mesh is the way to go. One thing to keep in mind with the brick veneer mentioned earlier: if Node 1 is in the garage, the signal has to punch through an external brick wall just to get to the rest of the house. In that specific layout, the extra cash for WiFi 7 (like the Deco BE85 or BE65) actually makes sense. It uses MLO (Multi-Link Operation), which lets the nodes talk to each other across multiple bands at the same time. It’s way better at 'punching' through that first brick wall and the floor to reach the upstairs node without the speeds dropping off a cliff. WiFi 6E is great, but WiFi 7 is built for exactly this kind of 'obstacle course' layout.