WiFi Mesh vs. WiFi repeater: Which works better in eliminating dead spots at home?

Team Out of Town Blog Hub (Outoftownblog.com) – More than providing reliable connectivity, PLDT Home’s WiFi Mesh devices also have your quality family moments covered.

Social media management firm Hootsuite has recorded 76 million internet users in the Philippines this year, as more people go for a hybrid setup for school or work. That is why a speedy and steady internet connection remains a must for every household.

However, there may be times when your internet connection weakens or slows down at the expense of your activities. It’s mostly due to the distance of your devices from the router or the thick walls interfering with the passage of signal from the router, which may result to dead spots.

To improve your WiFi connection at home, a quick Google search may lead you to using WiFi enhancers — but with another dilemma: between a WiFi Mesh and a WiFi Repeater, which one will work better for your needs?

But first… what are WiFi dead spots?

Before deciding on a purchase, it’s important to identify the exact WiFi issue you’re experiencing at home. It’s one thing to experience some slowdown given the too many devices connecting and using up the bandwidth all at once. It’s another to lose internet signal altogether just by moving to an area at home farthest from the router.

The latter makes an example of a WiFi dead spot, or a place where your home internet connection is at its weakest. The common cause is the router placement, especially with thick walls and floors reducing the ability of your WiFi signal to pass through.

WiFi Mesh System vs. WiFi Repeater

Both WiFi Mesh and WiFi Repeater can help increase the WiFi area coverage at home and get rid of dead spots. The way one does the magic, however, differs from the other.

A WiFi Repeater extends your router’s signal by creating a separate WiFi network that then wirelessly grabs the incoming data from the original network. While it does the job at a rather budget-friendly rate (a basic repeater unit can go as low as under Php 1,000), there are a couple of downsides to it.

First, since a repeater merely grabs the data and rebroadcasts the wireless signal, you don’t get as much bandwidth. Hence, expect the internet connection on your devices to get slower.

Then, there’s also the hassle of having to set up each individual repeater and its respective wireless network. You’ll also have to manually connect each device to every secondary network closest to…