This does-it-all hub plays nice with Zigbee, Alexa and IFTTT
Mesh Wi-Fi systems and home hubs might not get you pumped but we’re here to tell you you’re wrong. Because the time you save not dealing with dead spots around the house and smart home ecosystem clashes can be spent going batshit crazy, I dunno, eating fire or injecting yourself with young people’s blood.
One such device to get pumped about is TP-Link’s new Deco M9 Plus which is a smart home hub and mesh Wi-Fi router rolled into one – like the recent Samsung SmartThings Wifi unit. It’s £349.99 for a pair of hubs to place around the house, so a bit more expensive than your usual mesh device – though not by a huge amount. The Deco M9 Plus is currently listed as « coming soon » on the TP-Link website.
It offers coverage for up to 4,500 sq. ft with its tri-band AC2200 Wi-Fi (across 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands) that can reportedly support over 100 smart home devices « lag free » around the house, with speeds of up to 867Mbps.
If you have a bigger house, you can add more Deco devices to ensure no weak signals in certain rooms. You can see the full list of compatible products here.
And as a home hub, it can be controlled via the Deco app for iOS and Android. It also acts as a Zigbee and Bluetooth hub with compatibility with Amazon’s Alexa and IFTTT home automation which covers most – if not all – bases. Also on board: a USB 2.0 port and two Gigabit Ethernet ports for extra connectivity plus TP-Link’s own HomeCare anti-virus and parental control software.
Now, your home networking is sorted, back to your life-sized Rube Goldberg machine.
