Story continues What's Good About the Deal?įor consumers, Amazon owning Eero could make it easier to set up and manage the wide range of wireless devices in their homes. Amazon also owns Ring, a smart doorbell company. Over the past five years, Amazon’s Echo devices and Alexa digital voice assistant have helped popularized home automation. The Eero three-pack, $500, is one of the highest-ranked wireless routers in our ratings, with our testers noting strong performance (depending on the wireless network range), easy-to-use controls, and automatic firmware updates, which helps keep you and your data safe from hackers.Īmazon and Eero revealed few details of their plans, but in a press release posted on Amazon’s site, Eero CEO Nick Weaver says “we’re excited to learn from and work closely with a team that is defining the future of the home.” “With mesh, you’re getting increased range, a stronger signal, and probably better performance,” says Richard Fisco, who leads electronic testing at Consumer Reports. The goal of a mesh network is to eliminate connectivity problems and stop devices from dropping their WiFi connections as users move from room to room in their homes. These are WiFi networks that combine a base station with multiple satellite units, or nodes, to uniformly spread WiFi signals throughout the home. And because Thread uses the same radio technology as the popular ZigBee protocol, existing smart home products with enough storage and memory could add support with just a software update.The deal will see Amazon absorb the company that helped popularize the concept of mesh networks. He notes that some devices, such as Nest products, have dormant Thread radios already that they could turn on in future updates. With an anchor product in place, Erickson is optimistic that other device makers will follow, and expects between 20 and 50 Thread-enabled devices by the end of the year. (There’s also a personal connection, in that Chris Boross, Eero’s product manager, previously served as Thread’s president.)Įero will be first to market with a Thread-certified “border router,” meaning that it can connect Thread devices to Wi-Fi networks and the internet, says Grant Erickson, Thread’s current president. “It’s really the future of low-power connectivity in the home,” he says. So why is Eero going all-in? Weaver argues that Thread is the best option due to its low power consumption, encryption by default, and ability to scale up to work with dozens of smart home devices. In that sense, Eero’s filter is similar to some free tools that already exist, such as OpenDNS Family Shield, but with easier setup. Since Eero isn’t picking through individual data packets, it can’t stop your kid from watching, say, R-rated Netflix movies, or receiving graphic text messages. The idea is that users will stay protected even if device makers fail to patch their own security holes.Įero is also throwing in a content filter aimed at families with children that can block illegal, violent, or sexually explicit websites, and can force the use of Google SafeSearch, though Weaver notes that this only works with web browsers. This applies not just to PCs and phones, but to smart TVs, security cameras, smart door locks, and anything else that’s connected to the network. The Eero Plus service costs $10 per month or $100 per year, and acts like a bouncer for malware, botnets, and phishing attempts at the network level. “Our view is, over the last year and a half, we’ve pushed out these software updates that have done things like improve network performance, but we’ve also used that to lay the groundwork to build a whole-home operating system where you can put applications on it,” Weaver says.
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