Update 2/23/16: After a year of development and additional funding, Eero is about to ship out pre-order devices. The Eero will also be made available to the general public, although no specific timeline was stated for that release. The Eero team has now grown to over 70 employees, with investments coming from a number of major firms.
The company behind the Eero router has announced it will begin taking orders on its brand new product that promises to rid the world of dropped WiFi connections, confusing router setup configurations, and outdated vulnerable firmware.
Before, the best way to solve the problem of Wi-Fi deadzones, slow connections, and delayed buffering was to install both a router and a network extender separately at two central points throughout the home.
Eero is the first to get around this issue by merging the two concepts, and creating a series of linked devices that serve both as wireless routers and network extenders in one. Billing itself as the “router made for streaming,” the company is betting all its chips on increasing need for bandwidth as 4K streaming continues to gain in popularity.
Some of the features that Eero leans on for its claim to fame include increased Wi-Fi range, a realtime security monitoring service with automatic updates, and faster speeds for all your different devices.
The boxes will even use a companion smartphone app to help you decide exactly where the best locations will be to place the included extenders, giving you the greatest amount of coverage possible while simultaneously reducing the number of dropped connections overall.
You’ll also get automatic alerts on your smartphone if anything is wrong with the network or its streaming speeds, and the Eero will immediately attempt to remedy the problem on its own: no unplugging or resets required.
Regardless of what we may or may not actually see make it to the final product, at least the box has the benefit of being drop dead gorgeous. The eero sports a sleek and unintrusive white housing that would be welcome in any home, and looks just good enough to continue to bolster the legacy of its designer Fred Bould (of Nest and Roku fame).
