Eero 7

Introduction

The early Wi-Fi 7 mesh systems were designed to showcase what the new technology could do, packed with wireless radios and super-fast Ethernet ports. While products like the Eero 7 Max are incredibly fast, it is incredibly expensive. The Eero 7 redresses that with a more entry-level price and far more modest specs.

Ditching the 6GHz band, the Eero 7 is a dual-band only product, which limits its throughput severely compared to other Wi-Fi 7 systems that I’ve tested.

One of the best apps in the business and backwards compatibility with all other Eero systems make this product stand out, but most people will either be better off spending more on a tri-band system or less on an existing Wi-Fi 6 product.

Versions

As with previous Eero systems, the Eero 7 is available in different pack sizes. You can buy a single product for £169.99/$169.99, the same as the Eero Pro 6E, which is a Wi-Fi 6E system with the 6GHz channel for very-vast throughputs. This is useful if you need one device to expand a network.

If you want to build a mesh system, then there’s a two-pack for £279.99/$279.99 and a three-pack for £349.99/$349.99. That makes a three-pack cheaper than a single Eero 7 Max, although there are good reasons for that, as I’ll explain in the full review below.

Design and Features

• Backwards compatible with all Eero systems
• Two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Powerful and simple app

The Eero 7 is the baby of Eero’s Wi-Fi 7 line-up. While the Pro 7 and Max 7 both have a new design for the satellites, the Eero 7 is significantly smaller, utilising the older design, where each satellite resembles a key plucked from a keyboard.

That makes the Eero 7 a little easier to place where you want it, and the satellites are far less conspicuous.

Part of the reason the Eero 7 is so much smaller is that it doesn’t support the 6GHz channel that the other products do, and is a dual-band only product, with a 2×2 2.4GHz network and a 2×2 5GHz network. On paper, that makes the Eero 7 seem similar to the older Eero 6+.

However, Wi-Fi 7 has advantages over Wi-Fi 6, including wider radio bands (up to 240MHz here, compared to 160MHz on the Eero 6+) and support for 4K-QAM, which effectively means a 20% data rate increase over Wi-Fi 6.

Losing the 6GHz band does cut down on potential performance, as this band supports faster transfer rates, and even wider channels. And, 6GHz is supported outside of Wi-Fi 7 devices by any Wi-Fi 6E device.

What is different with Wi-Fi 7 is that the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands can be used together with Wi-Fi 7 clients to improve performance. Overall, Eero says that the Eero 7 has a wireless throughput of 1.8Gbit/sec, compared to the 1.6Gbit/sec that the 6GHz-enabled Eero Pro 6E has, or the 1Gbit/sec that the Eero 6+ supports. These are under ideal conditions, mind.

I should point out that the Eeer Max 7, although much more expensive, has a maximum wireless throughput of 4.3Gbit/s, making it considerably faster.

Amazon has upgraded the Ethernet ports compared to the Eero 6+. With the Eero 7, there are two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, rather than Gigabit Ethernet ports. As 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet will run over the same network cables, that’s an automatic speed boost for clients.

There are multiple ways to use these Ethernet ports, depending on how the system is set up. I’ll start by looking at starting from scratch, building an Eero 7 mesh system. Here, one satellite must use a single Ethernet port for the internet connection, and this becomes the gateway device.

Additional Eero 7 devices can then be connected to the system using wireless, or you can use an Ethernet backhaul, which means that satellites are connected via an Ethernet cable.

Going for the latter has the advantage of placing satellites at a greater range, such as in an outbuilding or garden office. Secondly, using Ethernet means that all wireless bandwidth is made available for clients, potentially improving performance.

If you’re not starting from scratch, then you can add the Eero 7 satellites to any existing Eero system, backwards compatible to the first device. That kind of compatibility is incredible and something that no other company offers. Buy a new Netgear Orbi 770 Series, for example, and you can’t use any older device.

There are caveats to doing this. By joining the Eero 7 to an older system using an earlier version of Wi-Fi 7, you can degrade its performance and reduce the benefits of Wi-Fi 7, such as the wider channel widths.

Similarly, adding the Eero 7 to an Eero system, such as the Eero 7 Max, you can find reduced performance around this satellite as it doesn’t have the 6GHz channel.

I think you’re best using Eero devices of the same Wi-Fi version together. If mixing the Eero 7 with the Pro 7 or Max 7 satellites, I’d be tempted to hardwire the Eero 7 to reduce differences in wireless performance.

Set-up of the Eero 7 is easy via the Eero app, whether starting from scratch or adding to a new system. If you use a wired backhaul, the Eero system will detect it, otherwise it will join satellites via wireless.

I find the Eero app one of the best for usability. It’s incredibly easy to see what’s connected to your home network, and the status of each satellite.

I love the ability to create profiles for each person in your home, and schedule when they’re online or offline.

With an upgrade to Eero Secure+ (£99.99/$99.99 a year), profiles are updated with advanced parental controls, including web filtering and a simple way to block services, such as SnapChat, YouTube or Roblox.

Eero Secure+ also gets you a three-device edition of Malwarebyte, a five-user version of 1Password, network-level ad-blocking (supported over the entire connection, or on a per-profile basis), and the Ecrypt.me VPN.

And, you also get Eero Internet Backup, which allows the entire system to join another WI-Fi network if the main internet connection goes down, with the option to disable some devices from using this. For example, you might not want a bandwidth-hogging TV from streaming if your backup network is a 4G dongle; you can also make a back-up network a friendly neighbour’s Wi-Fi, which could work well.

Built-in Zigbee and Thread networks are there for device connection via Amazon Alexa, provided you link your accounts. Once again, the Alexa integration is a bit limited, and voice controls didn’t let me pause a named device or toggle the guest network, but I could pause a profile.

There’s not much in the way of advanced controls, though, with the Eero system picking things like the best network channels automatically. If you want full manual control over your network, this isn’t for you; if you’re happy to sit back and let Eero work everything out, it’s brilliant.

Performance

• Reliable connection
• Speeds drop over distance
• Not much faster than Wi-Fi 6 devices

I had a pair of Eero 7 devices, which I set up with one in the living room and one on the first floor of my house, connected wirelessly. I then ran speed tests using OpenSpeedTest, with an iPhone 16 Pro as the Wi-Fi 7 client and a MacBook Air connected via 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet as the server.

In the same room as the gateway Eero 7, I managed average throughputs of 600.05Mbit/s, which is relatively quick, but only a little ahead of the 561.75Mbit/sec that the Eero 6+ got, and a long way behind the Eero Max 7.

Although the Eero 7 uses Wi-Fi 7, both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands are relatively congested where I live, which restricts the maximum channel width and speed.

Moving to the first floor, the Eero 7 managed 361.45Mbit/sec, while the Eero 6+ was only just behind at 304.44Mbit/sec. On the first floor, I saw speeds of 218.70Mbit/s, with the speed dropping off a lot due to range and the relative weakness of the Wi-Fi signal produced. In all cases, thanks to the 6GHz band, the Eero Max 7 was consistently faster.

I then moved the gateway to my garden office, which sees less network congestion, as it’s at the back of the garden, backing into other gardens. Here, the Eero 7 managed a throughput of 1297.55Mbit/sec, where it was able to run at maximum speed.

Interference, then, would seem to play quite a large part in how fast this mesh system really is.

Should you buy it?