The best mesh WiFi for Australian homes, picked by the house

When the NBN line is healthy and the WiFi still will not reach the back bedroom, the upstairs office or the granny flat, a mesh system is usually the fix. It puts two, three or more WiFi units through the house, working as one network. Which one is best depends far more on your house than on the badge, so before you buy, see where a WiFi technician puts the mesh units and why.

Our picks

We have grouped these by the house they suit: units and small homes, family homes, and big or solid-walled homes, with an outdoor unit for the yard. Every spec was checked on the maker’s own page, the Australian one where there is one, and we show no prices. Read the guide under the picks before you choose: how many units you need and how they link decide more than the model.

What is mesh WiFi?

A mesh WiFi system is a set of WiFi units that share one network name. The first unit plugs into your modem or NBN box, and the others sit through the house, passing the connection between them, so your phone moves from unit to unit as you walk around without you doing anything.

It is not a range extender. An extender repeats the router’s weak signal; a mesh builds a new WiFi network of its own, and you turn the old router’s WiFi off. Whether WiFi range extenders really work has its own page, and the short answer is that they rarely fix a whole house.

How many mesh units do you need?

Two units suit most units and small homes, three suit most single-storey and two-storey family homes, and four or more suit a big house, three levels, or solid brick and concrete. Most systems are sold as a three-pack, which is the sensible place to start, because a single unit can be added later if one room still misses out.

How many mesh units, by type of home

Your home	Units to start with	Where they go	What changes it
A unit or apartment	Two, or a three-pack	One at the modem, one at the far end	Concrete walls: add the third unit halfway
A single-storey house	Three	One at the modem, one halfway, one at the far end	A long house, or the modem in a front room or the garage
A two-storey house	Three or four	One at the modem, one near the stairs, one or two upstairs	Timber floors pass WiFi well; a concrete slab does not
Double brick, concrete or three levels	Four or more	At least one on each level, cabled where you can	Solid walls and slabs: a cable between units decides it

The count is only half of it. A two-storey house with timber floors can be covered by three units talking wirelessly, while the same house on a concrete slab may need a cable between the floors whatever the count. Brick and concrete inside the house mean more units for the same area, and positions matter as much as numbers: two units in the right places beat four in the wrong ones.

Pick a home

A unit or apartment Single storey Two storeys Double brick or concrete

NBN box Modem PlasterboardBrick wall through the floor Concrete wallPlasterboardTimber floorConcrete slab Plasterboard

• Mesh unit
• If you need it
• WiFi between units
• Cable between units

A unit or apartment

Two units, one at the modem and one at the far end. With concrete walls, add the third halfway.

Single storey

Three units: at the modem, halfway, and at the far end. A long house, or the modem in a front room or the garage, is why the third one matters.

Two storeys

Three or four units: at the modem, near the stairs, and one or two upstairs. Timber floors pass WiFi well; a concrete slab does not.

Double brick or concrete

Four or more, at least one on each level, cabled where you can. Through solid walls and slabs, the cable between the units decides it.

Wired or wireless backhaul: which decides it?

Backhaul, the link between the mesh units, decides how well a mesh works more than how many units you have. Every unit has to get its internet from another unit. Without a cable it does that over WiFi, sharing the air with your devices and losing strength through every wall and floor. With a network cable between them, called wired or Ethernet backhaul, the unit gets the full connection and keeps all of its WiFi for your devices.

That is why adding units to a struggling mesh often changes nothing. It is backhaul, not node count: one cable to the far unit does more than a fourth unit on the other side of a brick wall.

Most current systems let you mix the two. TP-Link says the Deco’s Ethernet backhaul switches on by itself once a cable joins two units, and that wired and wireless units can sit in the same network; eero, Google’s Nest Wifi Pro and ASUS’s AiMesh also let you cable their units together. The units stay one mesh with one network name, and the ones without a cable carry on wirelessly. Older systems vary, so check the instructions for your model before you wire it.

• If the house already has data points, use them. Plug a mesh unit into the data point in the far room, and that unit is wired. The other end of that cable has to reach the main mesh unit, or a switch plugged into it: TP-Link warns that a unit cabled back to the modem in front of the main unit makes a loop, unless the mesh is set to access point mode.
• If it has none, a data cable run to where the far unit needs to sit is often the best upgrade a mesh system can get, and the data cabling cost estimator gives a price range before anyone visits.
• If a cable truly cannot go, a tri-band system gives the units more room to talk to each other. It narrows the gap with a cable; it does not close it.

Where should you put the mesh units?

Put the first unit at the modem, the second about halfway to the area with poor WiFi, and the third where you need the WiFi, each one out in the open rather than in a cupboard.

1. 1

   Plug the first unit into the modem

   Run the short network cable from a yellow port on the modem, or from the NBN box on fibre, HFC and fibre to the curb, to the first mesh unit. This one runs the network.

2. 2

   Put the second unit halfway

   Halfway between the first unit and the area with poor WiFi, up off the floor and in the open: a shelf or a hall table, not behind the TV or inside a cabinet.

3. 3

   Put the third where you need it

   In the far room, at the top of the stairs, or at a back window facing the granny flat. Where the floors are concrete, put units at windows above each other, so the signal goes around the slab rather than through it.

4. 4

   Turn the modem's own WiFi off

   Set up one new network on the mesh and switch off the WiFi on the provider's modem. Two networks side by side cause dropouts and smart devices that will not connect.

5. 5

   Update it and walk the house

   Run the firmware update in the app, then walk through the house with a phone. The app shows each unit's link, so you can see which one is struggling and move it closer.

If a unit keeps dropping off after that, why mesh WiFi keeps disconnecting works through the causes in order, and how to boost a mesh WiFi signal goes further into placement in older brick houses.

Do you need a modem as well as a mesh system?

On fibre to the node and fibre to the building, yes. Those two have no NBN box: the line arrives on a phone socket, and only a VDSL2 modem can connect to it. A mesh unit has no port for the phone line, so keep your provider’s modem, plug the first mesh unit into one of its yellow ports, and turn the modem’s WiFi off.

The exception is a mesh unit with the modem built in, such as TP-Link’s Deco X50-DSL, which plugs into the phone socket itself and works with other Deco units. It sits with our modem and router picks for every type of NBN.

On fibre to the premises, HFC and fibre to the curb, there is an NBN box, and the first mesh unit can plug straight into it and do the router’s job. On fibre to the premises, the cable goes into the port marked UNI-D 1 unless your provider says otherwise.

WiFi 6, 6E or WiFi 7: which do you need?

WiFi 6 is the sensible minimum for a new mesh system, and it is plenty for most homes. WiFi 6E adds a third band, 6 GHz. WiFi 7 adds wider channels in that band and multi-link operation, which lets a device use more than one band at once.

Both newer standards only help the phones and laptops that support them. They pay off in a big, busy household on a fast fibre or HFC plan. In a unit on a modest plan, a good WiFi 6 system placed well is the better buy, and the money is better spent on a cable to the far unit.

What to look for in a mesh system

The features that matter are the ones that let the system be wired and grown later.

• A network port on every unit, so the units can be cabled together now or later, and a TV or computer can plug into the nearest one.
• Ethernet backhaul listed in the maker’s specs.
• Room to grow: single units of the same family you can add without replacing the set. Most systems only mesh with their own brand, and some only with their own generation.
• The right internet port: gigabit suits plans up to 1000 Mbps; for anything faster, look for a 2.5 gigabit port.
• An app that shows each unit’s link, and automatic updates you can leave on.
• An outdoor unit, if the WiFi has to cover the yard. An indoor unit pointed out of a window is not the same thing.

When does a cable beat any mesh?

A cable beats any mesh when the router starts in the wrong place, when the WiFi has to reach another building, and when something must not drop out. Mesh fixes most houses; a cable is the one thing that does better.

• The NBN box is in the garage or a front corner. Running a cable to move the router to the middle of the house fixes the cause, and the mesh then only has to cover what is left.
• Gaming, video calls and a home office. Anything that must not stutter belongs on a cable, plugged into a data point or a wired mesh unit.
• A concrete slab between floors. Units cannot talk through it reliably. Cabled, they work as if it were not there.
• A granny flat or studio across the yard. WiFi across a yard is the weak point. A cable to a unit out there, or an outdoor unit on a cable, is the dependable answer.

If what you really need is the internet in one room rather than WiFi everywhere, powerline adapters, mesh and a cable compared covers the other ways to get it there.

When to call a technician, and when you don’t need one

You do not need us to set up a mesh system. They are built to be set up from a phone app, and most take well under an hour: plug in the first unit, follow the app, place the others, run the update. If the WiFi is good everywhere after that, you are done.

Test before you buy anything, so you know the WiFi is the problem and not the line.

Check your speed first Run a test on your phone standing next to the modem, then in the room where the WiFi is poor. Close to your plan by the modem and poor in the far room: it is coverage, and a mesh fixes it. Poor next to the modem too: buy nothing yet.

Call a technician when the app shows a unit with a weak link that moving it does not fix, when the house has concrete floors or three levels, when you want the units cabled and a run has to go through the walls or the roof, or when the speed is poor even beside the modem. Our WiFi technician supplies and places the units, or tells you what to buy and where to put it, and a cable for the far unit is quoted as data cabling before anything is bought. If the kit is bought and you would rather not set it up yourself, home tech support covers the mesh and the devices on it.