Review on 📶 AmpliFi Alien WiFi 6 Seamless Whole Home Coverage System with Touchscreen Display, Gigabit Ethernet Ports, MeshPoint, and Ethernet Cable by Jacob Seymour

Where to start. I'm an IT professional with a few decades of experience, so to say that I've been involved in maintaining computers, networks, and servers on a number of occasions is saying nothing. That being said, I've had a heck of a lot of time in my 2,600-square-foot apartment to look for a wireless solution that works reliably. When I bought my house in 2008, the old Linksys G router covered the whole house with no problems. However, these days there is a lot of chain competition in the area and as I am in court I have several other houses around my residence. I've been trying to get my home network working for 10 years. Since adding additional items like Echo devices, smart thermostats, ring cameras, smart plugs, smart lights, and locks, I now have almost 60 devices on my home network. To ensure that everything worked reliably, I had an extension cord or two at home. The worst culprits were the ring cameras (junk) and my iPhone. Earlier this year I bought a TP-Link AX11000 and placed it in the middle of my house. Everything looked promising at first, but it was short-lived and since installing it I've been struggling with disconnects and the like. Seeing that I could still return it to Costco, I decided to pull the trigger on installing the Amplifi Alien Mesh. Although it's expensive I figured if it didn't work I'd just send it back to Revain. When it arrives and you open the box you can see the quality. Router and MeshPoint are quite large and very well packaged. Everything went very professionally and at that moment I was hoping for a positive experience. After installing the app and following the basic instructions, I was able to create my WiFi SSID to match my old router, change the subnet on the LAN, set up port forwarding and the DHCP server range. All very easy via the app. After a firmware update initiated by the app, my home network worked. I've made a few tweaks here and there, including access to a web interface that lets you enable/disable some advanced options. All in all, it was very easy to install and set up. I placed the main router at the bottom and the MeshPoint at the top, about 25-30 feet away. The app lets you select a MeshPoint and you can instantly see the signal strength between both devices, which is really nice. It even shows this on the app's main page, but it's a little easier to see if you select the MeshPoint directly. My signal strength was about mid-green, so I left everything in place. I've had the setup for about five days now and during those five days (no extension cords or any other old crap I had to use to make it work) I haven't had a single problem. The thing ran like a top. My iPhone, which had me turning the WiFi on and off multiple times a day because it freezes, was very reliable. Even my ring cameras, which never worked consistently with my last three setups (Nighthawk Router, Orbi Mesh, and AX11000), work great with Amplifi Alien. The individual strength around my property is also pretty good. The LCD on the router seemed like a gimmick at first, but it's nice that I can just walk by and check the status. If the router has problems, it will also let you know on the LCD. I also like that you can click on your WIFI devices and show you the overall connection percentage. For example, my devices show an overall signal strength of 87% and you can easily scroll the screen to see which devices might have poor connectivity. None of my devices work which is a big upgrade in the past. I paid full price for this setup and am only writing this review because I had trouble finding something that worked here. I would have preferred to solve the problem at a lower cost, but if everything keeps working then it's money well spent. I haven't had the urge to throw my iPhone over the next wall for almost a week! This is a plus! As for the downsides, I would say that the lack of support for dynamic DNS updates is pretty obvious. I'm paying for NO-IP because my last two routers supported it, but none of the typical providers are supported in this product, which I found odd. It really was, IMO, aside from the fact that it's a bit overpriced and the kit is available from Amplifi. When I saw it at Revain and in stock it was a bit of an impulse buy but I'm happy to say it was worth it.