Router Pro - First Impressions

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Hey All,

I just upgraded this past weekend to the Wyze Router Pro. I have 4 of them in the house, spread out to the main areas that devices connect. They are replacing a 5-node Google Wifi network. I am not a novice user.

In general, the basic setup was easy. Pairing the devices, getting the basics going all went well. I was able to add the additional satellite nodes and get them working with my Wired backhaul very easily. Throughput is great, especially with the 6E card that I added to my main gaming desktop just recently.

Observations:

  • Some units get hotter than others. Not sure if that’s environmental or usage based.

  • The organization of the UI in the Wyze app is…interesting. The overall structure of the menus could use some work. Some settings are clearly labelled and make sense, others do not. Here are a few of my suggestions:

  • Rather than name the “device” on the Main Wyze device list after the root router, name it after the WiFi network or something else. This isn’t really important to me, just an odd observation.

  • Combine the settings for the Root router and the overall WiFi network into a single area since they’re so closely linked, especially the IP Address settings.

  • The LAN IP Section of the overall settings, Advanced Settings, IP Address doesn’t actually manage the LAN IP as that has to be done on the root router, as mentioned above. It has more to do with the overall network and should receive a new label and/or have the root router’s ip address configuration integrated. In addition:

  • Put a note below “Automatic DHCP Server” that states the range for the automatic server.

  • Change “Manual DHCP IP” to “Manual DHCP Range”

  • The Manual DNS could use some description. I think it has to do with what DNS server is given out to DHCP clients, but that could be clarified. I would typically expect manual DNS settings to be on the WAN page (even if you’re using DHCP externally) in order to direct the router to forward DNS requests to those servers outside the network and continue to have DHCP clients receive the root router’s IP as their local DNS resolution.

  • I would like to see better labelling as to which changes require a restart (20 minutes!) and which do not. Based on the overall firmware, I think some changes could simply have a service restarted versus restarting the whole router. Being a network dork, I embarked last night on some configuration that I believe standard users wouldn’t do (configuring static IP Addresses for my satellite routers so that I know exactly where they are in my network, resetting local logins) and my network got into some sort of unhealthy state where I had high packet loss and latency, forcing me to hard power cycle all 4 points. I appreciate the exercise, but didn’t feel like I was making any changes that should have created that sort of instability.

  • Overall response in the App is a bit slower than I would expect. I’m not sure if the App is using bluetooth, local network or cloud to load/save settings but having several seconds between updates is a bit slow. This may be a dead horse and I know that this product is relatively new, so I’m giving early feedback and know what I signed up for.

  • It would be nice to have an option to buy one router that has 2x 2.5Gbps ports. For those of us blessed with wiring for backhaul, having our main router forced to use 1Gbps for the LAN port prevents me from really taking advantage of internet beyond gigabit. I admit, I may need to do some testing to see if I trust the wireless mesh more than my wiring, which could potentially alleviate this bandwidth restriction. A part of me still trusts the low latency and guaranteed bandwidth of a wire and it would be nice to throw a 2.5Gbps switch into my network to up the overall throughput to match.

All that being said, the core features appear to be working and stable and I’m getting blazing fast speeds (900Mbps+ on Wifi6E, 700mbps+ on Wifi6). I’ve really enjoyed seeing Wyze expand beyond cameras and have begun migrating most of my smart devices over to Wyze to embrace the capitalist behavior of voting with my dollar. Excited to see the team unlock the full capabilities of these routers as you refine the UI and services.

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Thank you for the review, I have forwarded your observations and recommendations on to the team.

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That was an excellent observation reference what is necessary for a restart and what would be “okay” with just a service restart. I hope they seriously consider that.
I don’t use Wyze routers, so:
Question: Do you get a count or even better, a list of what devices are on each node? I understand the max device count on each router is 75? Accurate?

I’ve had a device count problem for a while. Had to move to a type that supported more. More would best be served with not a limit on each router, but on the entire mesh system. What I have been finding is no tool available for “moving” a device to another router to insure we don’t exceed the count. So, what I have done, is adding one more less capable router of same architecture to my two node system. But placement distance wise is the trick. I’ve been moving said lesser router between root and satellite to find a place where devices leave the root and move away from the root, sometimes to the new one other times the devices moves to the further node, just to keep the max on the root from not being just too much. I’m not seeing a performance decline with most devices on the root, but I’ve lived with this limit and being annoyed for too long to keep taking it for granted. So, I “exercise some ideas”.

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Hey Sam_Bam,

There is an overall device count on the main Network Overview screen. It does not give a per-router breakdown, however you can look at individual devices and see which router they belong to. The screens for the individual routers do not have a breakdown. If this is really a broadly desired feature, maybe the team can look at it. Oddly, there is a clickable menu item for “Root Router” or “Satellite Router” that just says “No Data” when clicked, so maybe that’s a stub where such information could be displayed in the future. @WyzeJasonJ maybe that’s another item for the feature roadmap of the App UI if it isn’t already. From a product management view, advertising a “per-router device count” capability but not giving a way to view that in the app is a gap, although not the most important for sure.

My challenge has been more about getting signal to all parts of my house versus managing devices per AP, so I haven’t put much effort into that frankly. I’ve got about 75 devices total (and always growing) and have 4 APs to ensure that signal is everywhere I need it. The number of potential high bandwidth devices I have (computers, streaming devices, phones) is lower, around 15, and the majority are other devices that have very low overall throughput or connection requirements. The number of devices per AP is an estimate that is calculated based on frequency characteristics and spreading devices across the various frequencies and radios. with the Router Pro, most use cases will only have a handful of 6E capable devices and most will be focused on the various 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz connection.

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Thanks, that IS useful info. I appreciate the breakdown.

I’ve got 144 devices. Seventy-five % are for fun and and making life easier, not critical devices. I wallowed in this device count h*** several times, - as my net grew and I forgot each time to pay attention. I’d buy a router I liked, find it efficient, forget it got a body count limit and learn it the hard way when devices sit offline with no explanation. Now, I pay attention.

I ditched an eer 6e 3 node system because though it was a 75 device per node, when it reached 75, it didn’t self manage and push anything to a near empty/open sister node. Playing with its location helped some, but didn’t solve the problem. Working with a ASUS 200 device system 6e and see it bog down a little, (even when not much traffic is occurring), so started tweaking settings to push devices to other node. Tweaking had opposite effect. Everything had connection issues. Added a WiFi 6 node to use as a teeter-totter so speak, to see what would happen. It’s backhaul being 6 vice 6e, didn’t help like I wanted, but still it “stole” some of the devices from the root, which is some what interesting to see.

I am not running a high traffic net. That means, no real useful info is going to come out of my pool of stuff. But this device body count issue is going to jump up and bite us one day, since we are excited to grow our nets with new tools and not pay attention if smart home/pool is getting full of active kids and their toys. With matter on the horizon and making it easier for folks to add to their net/device pool, that old ceiling is going to come important sooner. With no means to distribute where the connect, home networks are going to be in chaos - mainly because we are not accustomed to thinking about it - I am afraid.

Daily here, I see people reporting devices offline. And I wonder, (sometimes I speak out to them), their issue may be a device body count limited issue. I offer some ways to tests, and no one replies or comments. So, I stopped helping with that suggestion.

I’ve just ordered a Nest WiFi Pro 6e to play around with its connection to my Starlink. I want to know what happens when regular cable goes down, and I can turn off my ASUS, and bring the Starklink/Nest Pro 6e us with same name and password, and see what connects. Something to do when the grid is down and waiting - (house is on batteries.)

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Ah I see. One other piece I forgot to mention is that I technically have two WiFi systems. The device count in my Wyze system includes both since it is the “master” and runs DHCP, etc. Wired into each of the 4 Wyze Nodes I have an Airport Extreme that is running a 2.4Ghz only network for smart devices bridged into the wired network. Since replacing my Google WiFi system with the Wyze Router Pros, I intend to load the old Google APs with OpenWRT and replace the Airport Extremes with the Google Wifi pucks for the 2.4Ghz needs and relocate the extremes to wired only in my basement for Time Machine backups. A similar setup could help in your situation as well,

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Yep. Could. Just like it only different, eh? Sounds like fun.