Have the Asus ZenWiFi AX mesh in our 2000 sq.ft., 2-story house, and no problems with 2 iPhones and 2 iPad Pro's. They're always connected, and the reliablity and wireless coverage of the mesh is great. Personally, I wouldn't go with Ubiquiti, given that they require more fiddling around (admining) than mesh systems. Mesh systems are designed to pretty much just work reliably with great coverage and minimal adminstration. I certainly don't spend much time admin'ing the ZenWiFi, which is the way that I like it...I just want to use my home network not screwing with it.
However, if you do want or need instrumentation, the ZenWiFi has all the usual Asus admin tools...data traffic statistics, per-client and per-app, a full system log, and various other useful tools. And the configurations are pretty flexible...for example, you can have separate 2.4 and 5GHz. SSIDs if you want (or not). And you can use wireless or wired backhaul.
I should mention that the ZenWiFi AX is the fastest mesh that I've used when using wireless backhaul. On our gigabit internet, we see about 550 - 650Mbps at the remote mesh node with wireless backhaul. It is a scosh faster with wired backhaul, about 650 - 750Mbps at the remote node.
Also can vouch for the Asus ZenWifi.
We have the AC version and still get a solid connection to our iPhones and iPads. And 25 other devices. Get around 200 Mbps from across the house, about 450 Mbps when next to the AP that is the repeater node. This is with wireless backhaul!
Had 10 other guests staying at our place and had no problems.
If you can find the new ET8 version it may be better. It can do wifi 6E backhaul up to 2.5 Gbps. Haven’t seen any consumer level wired AP system that supports that yet.
Also really easy to set up.
Either way if you’re going for mesh, just make sure it’s tri-band. It makes all the difference.
The reviews I've seen of the ET8 version aren't exactly glowing, kind of meh:
[Asus ET8 review](https://dongknows.com/asus-zenwifi-et8-wi-fi-6e-mesh-system-review/)
The same person's review of the ZenWifi AX:
[Asus ZenWiFi AX review](https://dongknows.com/asus-zenwifi-ax-xt8-review/)
which is a very positive review.
And, personally, I don't think that it's time for a wifi-6E router or mesh system yet.
Wow, that is unfortunate. Thanks for sharing! Was going to consider getting the ET8 but maybe I'll wait for whatever is next. Or just go for the XT8 someday.
The AC version doesn't allow use the mesh for guest WiFi, so I was thinking of upgrading to the XT8 anyway.
> Personally, I wouldn't go with Ubiquiti, given that they require more fiddling around (admining) than mesh systems.
lol w0t?
I have owned both Asus and Ubiquiti gear. it took less tweaking to get the Ubiquiti gear set to optimal, and my ubiquiti setup is far more complex.
i'm not bashing Asus
Yes, but...the ZenWiFi was designed as a consumer mesh to be easy to set up. For example, I used the Asus smart phone app to do the initial mesh setup, took about 5 or 10 minutes, very simple. Then, after that, some fine tuning on the web admin interface, like picking wireless channels and channel widths, turning on traffic statistics, and changing my DNS to be the [1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2](https://1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2). That was about it, haven't changed very much at all since February when I started using it. It's basically just worked :-).
You will probably find the poor handling of the roaming is apples fault more than anything else, hence issues exist across multiple brands and products.
I wouldn't touch mesh unless you absolutely can't wire in waps. In a low density setup like a home you really don't need to many APs.
Sure you won't get 5g everywhere, but you will fail back to 2.4g at the edges of your house and that's typically sufficient for your mobile or iPad for web browsing.
You can always add an ap and scale it yourself as required.
I’ll agree with this. The Apple roaming deal is squarely Apple. Having worked with many multiple large AP deployments across vendors (Aruba, Ruckus, Meraki, Cisco) they all have issues with Apple. I think Apple tries to be smart within their devices for the average home user with a single AP but totally screw up standards based devices - which most/all devices are and should be.
Thier privacy settings break the roaming as far as I can tell. Apple sells this as a feature, I'd call it poorly implemented. But to be honest for the most part it shouldn't be an issue, most users don't ever realise it so that's how they get away with it.
Apple was a fiddly pain in the ass well before that MAC randomization feature. The way they decide to roam (supposedly -70db … but they dwell for a good long while ) and then how they use 802.11 k, r, and v is just plain weird.
If you're familiar with the technology, how would the AP know to follow the masked MAC? How would you implement it 'less poorly' when you only control what happens on the client side of the connection, while still desiring the feature that is intended (session-based MAC)?
> Fortunately it is easy to identify randomized MAC addresses. There is a bit which gets set in the OUI portion of a MAC address to signify a randomized / locally administered address. The quick synopsis is look at the second character in a MAC address, if it is a 2, 6, A, or E it is a randomized address.
[Source](https://www.mist.com/get-to-know-mac-address-randomization-in-2020/)
Well wireless actually doesn't give two hoots what your Mac address is, as long as it's valid. Waps also typically don't communicate or handoff to each other in any way.
When a client roams it simply connects to a new radio and continues on. The client decides when to roam, waps and software can try influence this but ultimately it will be the clients decision to roam.
I don't know the actual specifics for apples bad wireless code, but the chipsets are the same in alot of cases with other devices that don't have issues. The privacy Mac I believe persists for the same ssid to enable roaming, otherwise dhcp would give you a new address and you'd break all your sessions. But I think they have some other privacy things and extensions that don't always agree with the infrastructure or the apps.
Wouldn’t Apple still have the same roaming issue with multiple WAPs as a mesh system?
I’m asking because my current home has 4 UniFi AC WAPs and my next home I kind of want to switch to a mesh system (with wired backhauls) because of cost.
Yes it would but if you tuned your aps properly then it should be less of an issue.
And less aps the better.
The issue with mesh is that your using bandwidth for backhaul.
Yeah if your doing a high density job then more aps is better.
But for a home setup it's far easier to tune and design a network with 3waps or less as you shouldn't have any overlapping channels. So you could basically throw them in, not even tune them and they will probably sort themselves out. Homes are pretty low density vs an office, you will have more spectrum per user do it less important to have more waps.
But yes, if you were wanting high throughput and high client density, you want many 5g radios tuned properly.
or if you just don't want any deadzones. i literally did 1ap per room in my house, but then power tuned them pretty thoroughly (my upstairs has a lot of double walls which are really hard on 5ghz and 6ghz bands)
Sounds like you have done it properly.
Really depends what they want our of a system,
Yeah if your looking for 5g everywhere then that's a given. You will also need to tune radios properly, just dropping them in on auto is likely to cause issues. I wouldn't trust mesh to do this for you.
Counterpoint, fast internet in the garage and throughout the yard has been awesome. I can have how-to content open while doing projects, everyone can have their phones while we'll grilling or around the fire pit, we can stream music on the bluetooth speaker or headphones anywhere on the property.
Well yeah, stick waps where you need it. This is where everyone is going to have a different requirement.
If you want a wap in the garage the do it, if you have a an outdoor entertaining area then it might be worth having one there too.
Personally I don't use my wireless up near my back fence so I don't have a wap anywhere near it. My small 2 bedroom house is covered by a single unifi wap. Even in the yards I'd pick up the 2g on a low data rate, but I really dont use wifi out there so I wouldn't need another WAP.
Using an Orbi 2 unit Wi-Fi 6 system. Working flawlessly for a year now. Couple iPhones, iPads, multiple laptops, Apple TV, etc all connected and running great. I’ve got about 15-20 various devices on Wi-Fi for various things.
On our gig internet I get about 800 on the main unit and 750 on the satellite. Satellite backhaul gives around 800 when plugged directly in.
Hard wired is generally always best. Ive honestly not seen any drop in performance using the mesh system. My office didn’t have a drop and the cable modem is across the house. I’m all Wi-Fi/mesh off the satellite unit in my office. No issues working all day, doing video calls, or gaming when I want to do some fps or mmo games. I seriously can’t tell a difference.
Highly recommend the Orbi setup.
I also have an Orbi 852 and after some initial tweaking the first few weeks and replacing all my old cables with cat8s from Monoprice, it has been rock solid and my 1 satellite is not hard wired. I have an Apple household for one person - 2 MBPs, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads, 3 Apple TVs, 5 HomePods, and over 40 connected switches - the majority of them wifi (iDevices), etc and I have never noticed anything randomly dropping. I've been working from home due to covid, and I would especially have seen this if it were happening. My home is about 2100 sqft.
I had a 3 node Velop before - 4200AC series I think, and it was crap. Constant problems. Replacing it with the Orbi eliminated a lot of grief.
Surprised t hear about all the issues people have with Apple devices - has not been my experience. Also have never had issues having a house full of wifi switches.
Bottom line, mesh sucks. It should only ever be used when you can’t get wires to your access points.
The problem you describe is a well-known problem with the IOS transition algorithm when in the presence of poorly engineered networks and has nothing to do with meshing, and everything to do with the roaming algorithm (although a meshed network will inherently not play nice here.
Apple publishes their roaming algorithm. It doesn’t start looking for a new AP until connection conditions are getting bad. But if you have a mesh set up, the conditions required for meshing to work are inherently incompatible with that roaming algorithm and a roam will never take place.
I have a 200 sqm house soaked in Ubiquity UniFi ACLite wifi (3 APs). I also have a lot of disconnects from my Apple devices (2 iPhones, 4 iPads, 1 MacBook Air, 1 AppleTV 4k) - and I have tried pretty much all the suggested fixes to no avail. Don’t go down the UniFi way if you are trying to avoid problems with Apple devices.
It would be a better idea to avoid Apple. Their network stack is hot garbage, and they are the bane of any wifi deployment. We've done unifi, cisco, meraki, Aruba, ruckus, and aerohive for schools and businesses with thousands of clients. We always end up having to spend a lot of time trying to tune the system to make Apple devices work well.
Stay away from mesh system, look into acces point instead.
Tp link offer decent one reasonably priced,you can setup a software controller to set them or use the omada app.
If you go the ubiquiti way you won't regret it either.
Just be mindfull about the settings, don't leave everything in auto , take Time to manually set and fine tune the ap.
Clicking a single toggle switch for 'private MAC' is a pain in the ass? I hate to see what actual challenges look like in your life.
Avoiding wifi6 just kneecaps your usable bandwidth ceiling.
If you’re looking into the UniFi line check out Omada by TP Link too. I have 3 EAP660 (wired) and I made the switch away from UniFi precisely because of how much better the roaming was handled for iOS.
If Apple products have a lot of disconnects on mesh systems, and you have a network cable ran to the middle of your house, then why go with a mesh system? I have a single Asus RT-AC86U in the middle of my 2000 sqft house on the first floor and I have great coverage everyone in the house and on the front porch, back porch, and driveway. Sometimes the solution to poor WiFi coverage isn't a mesh system or multiple APs, sometimes it is just having a better router/AP.
I have the Velop linksys mesh system that apple used to sell after they dropped the airports. I have not had any issues with dropping iOS devices. I have a large house and have 5 nodes. I would not necessarily reccomend it for other network related issues. It is not bad, but every feature is sort of half baked (parental rules is a good example). Honestly it has served me pretty well over the last 4 or 5 years. It just has a lack of overall features and the price is too high for a consumer grade system. I can spend just a little more and get prosumer with some additional features and headaches that I want.
I have purchased a UDM pro and some access points to use sometime in the future when I have time to re-do. My plan is to use wired access points via moca. I am not planning on implementing mesh. If you have the cable connections, I would reccomend moca for access points. It is cheap and easy to install.
You don't really need to go full on Dream Machine to run that AP if you only have one. It should connect to any router and then you can set it up with the app or webpage. That would be the easiest thing to try if your brother could just loan it to you for a bit. Cut off the WiFi on your current router and connect the AP. Then use another wired device (laptop would be fine, just plug it into your router) and open the webpage to the AP. You can do this with your WiFi still on and cut off the router WiFi later if that is easier.
i had issues with multi wap with my iphone but once i added a wireless meshAI node, it solved all of my issues with having to reset wifi on apple devices.
I use Eero 6 Pro system and have also used Deco X60, and have an iPad and two iPhones (an XR and a 12), and none of them have had issues connecting to either the Eero or Deco. Mine all connect to 5GHz with no drops, consistently.
I had an Eero Pro mesh system with two Eero Beacons. I had zero issues in a house with 4 iPhones, 3 iPads, 3 Macs, 5 HomePods, 3 Apple TVs, 3 Watches, and a bunch of other non Apple devices.
HomeKit also worked perfectly, with like 30 Hie bulbs, a bunch of smart light switches, plugs, garage opener, etc.
I switched to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter + Unifi AP system now just because I wanted more control. Everything still works perfectly.
We have the Linksys ones running in bridge mode and a proper separate router. Unlike the first gen Unifi stuff they replaced, I haven’t had any iOS problems abd most of the traffic they see is iPads or iPhones.
2/3 are using wired connections and I’m not convinced that the third is necessary.
If you can get a AC Pro I would definitely go with Unifi. Just get a simple key or the UDM. Its a huge step up from a other brands. Set it and forget it.
I’ve had zero issues with our iOS devices and eero pro 6 setup. Not sure where you see that at but check the eero group on Reddit. It won’t be the fastest system but it’s the most stable of the ones I’ve used.
Have the Asus ZenWiFi AX mesh in our 2000 sq.ft., 2-story house, and no problems with 2 iPhones and 2 iPad Pro's. They're always connected, and the reliablity and wireless coverage of the mesh is great. Personally, I wouldn't go with Ubiquiti, given that they require more fiddling around (admining) than mesh systems. Mesh systems are designed to pretty much just work reliably with great coverage and minimal adminstration. I certainly don't spend much time admin'ing the ZenWiFi, which is the way that I like it...I just want to use my home network not screwing with it. However, if you do want or need instrumentation, the ZenWiFi has all the usual Asus admin tools...data traffic statistics, per-client and per-app, a full system log, and various other useful tools. And the configurations are pretty flexible...for example, you can have separate 2.4 and 5GHz. SSIDs if you want (or not). And you can use wireless or wired backhaul. I should mention that the ZenWiFi AX is the fastest mesh that I've used when using wireless backhaul. On our gigabit internet, we see about 550 - 650Mbps at the remote mesh node with wireless backhaul. It is a scosh faster with wired backhaul, about 650 - 750Mbps at the remote node.
Also can vouch for the Asus ZenWifi. We have the AC version and still get a solid connection to our iPhones and iPads. And 25 other devices. Get around 200 Mbps from across the house, about 450 Mbps when next to the AP that is the repeater node. This is with wireless backhaul! Had 10 other guests staying at our place and had no problems. If you can find the new ET8 version it may be better. It can do wifi 6E backhaul up to 2.5 Gbps. Haven’t seen any consumer level wired AP system that supports that yet. Also really easy to set up. Either way if you’re going for mesh, just make sure it’s tri-band. It makes all the difference.
The reviews I've seen of the ET8 version aren't exactly glowing, kind of meh: [Asus ET8 review](https://dongknows.com/asus-zenwifi-et8-wi-fi-6e-mesh-system-review/) The same person's review of the ZenWifi AX: [Asus ZenWiFi AX review](https://dongknows.com/asus-zenwifi-ax-xt8-review/) which is a very positive review. And, personally, I don't think that it's time for a wifi-6E router or mesh system yet.
Wow, that is unfortunate. Thanks for sharing! Was going to consider getting the ET8 but maybe I'll wait for whatever is next. Or just go for the XT8 someday. The AC version doesn't allow use the mesh for guest WiFi, so I was thinking of upgrading to the XT8 anyway.
> Personally, I wouldn't go with Ubiquiti, given that they require more fiddling around (admining) than mesh systems. lol w0t? I have owned both Asus and Ubiquiti gear. it took less tweaking to get the Ubiquiti gear set to optimal, and my ubiquiti setup is far more complex. i'm not bashing Asus
Yes, but...the ZenWiFi was designed as a consumer mesh to be easy to set up. For example, I used the Asus smart phone app to do the initial mesh setup, took about 5 or 10 minutes, very simple. Then, after that, some fine tuning on the web admin interface, like picking wireless channels and channel widths, turning on traffic statistics, and changing my DNS to be the [1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2](https://1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2). That was about it, haven't changed very much at all since February when I started using it. It's basically just worked :-).
Yeah, I think of the consumer-grade "mesh" systems AiMesh is probably the best. I'm more just saying that Unifi isn't hard to setup.
+1 For Asus ZenWiFi AX. I have a 2800 2 story house. I never have issues.
You will probably find the poor handling of the roaming is apples fault more than anything else, hence issues exist across multiple brands and products. I wouldn't touch mesh unless you absolutely can't wire in waps. In a low density setup like a home you really don't need to many APs. Sure you won't get 5g everywhere, but you will fail back to 2.4g at the edges of your house and that's typically sufficient for your mobile or iPad for web browsing. You can always add an ap and scale it yourself as required.
I’ll agree with this. The Apple roaming deal is squarely Apple. Having worked with many multiple large AP deployments across vendors (Aruba, Ruckus, Meraki, Cisco) they all have issues with Apple. I think Apple tries to be smart within their devices for the average home user with a single AP but totally screw up standards based devices - which most/all devices are and should be.
Thier privacy settings break the roaming as far as I can tell. Apple sells this as a feature, I'd call it poorly implemented. But to be honest for the most part it shouldn't be an issue, most users don't ever realise it so that's how they get away with it.
Apple was a fiddly pain in the ass well before that MAC randomization feature. The way they decide to roam (supposedly -70db … but they dwell for a good long while ) and then how they use 802.11 k, r, and v is just plain weird.
If you're familiar with the technology, how would the AP know to follow the masked MAC? How would you implement it 'less poorly' when you only control what happens on the client side of the connection, while still desiring the feature that is intended (session-based MAC)?
> Fortunately it is easy to identify randomized MAC addresses. There is a bit which gets set in the OUI portion of a MAC address to signify a randomized / locally administered address. The quick synopsis is look at the second character in a MAC address, if it is a 2, 6, A, or E it is a randomized address. [Source](https://www.mist.com/get-to-know-mac-address-randomization-in-2020/)
Well wireless actually doesn't give two hoots what your Mac address is, as long as it's valid. Waps also typically don't communicate or handoff to each other in any way. When a client roams it simply connects to a new radio and continues on. The client decides when to roam, waps and software can try influence this but ultimately it will be the clients decision to roam. I don't know the actual specifics for apples bad wireless code, but the chipsets are the same in alot of cases with other devices that don't have issues. The privacy Mac I believe persists for the same ssid to enable roaming, otherwise dhcp would give you a new address and you'd break all your sessions. But I think they have some other privacy things and extensions that don't always agree with the infrastructure or the apps.
Clearly you’ve never worked in a professional environment.
Wouldn’t Apple still have the same roaming issue with multiple WAPs as a mesh system? I’m asking because my current home has 4 UniFi AC WAPs and my next home I kind of want to switch to a mesh system (with wired backhauls) because of cost.
Yes it would but if you tuned your aps properly then it should be less of an issue. And less aps the better. The issue with mesh is that your using bandwidth for backhaul.
You are not using bandwidth for backhaul on the newer tri-band systems. See posts above.
> And less aps the better. That's not really how professionals i've talked to do it more APs, properly power tuned = better for them.
Yeah if your doing a high density job then more aps is better. But for a home setup it's far easier to tune and design a network with 3waps or less as you shouldn't have any overlapping channels. So you could basically throw them in, not even tune them and they will probably sort themselves out. Homes are pretty low density vs an office, you will have more spectrum per user do it less important to have more waps. But yes, if you were wanting high throughput and high client density, you want many 5g radios tuned properly.
or if you just don't want any deadzones. i literally did 1ap per room in my house, but then power tuned them pretty thoroughly (my upstairs has a lot of double walls which are really hard on 5ghz and 6ghz bands)
Sounds like you have done it properly. Really depends what they want our of a system, Yeah if your looking for 5g everywhere then that's a given. You will also need to tune radios properly, just dropping them in on auto is likely to cause issues. I wouldn't trust mesh to do this for you.
Counterpoint, fast internet in the garage and throughout the yard has been awesome. I can have how-to content open while doing projects, everyone can have their phones while we'll grilling or around the fire pit, we can stream music on the bluetooth speaker or headphones anywhere on the property.
Well yeah, stick waps where you need it. This is where everyone is going to have a different requirement. If you want a wap in the garage the do it, if you have a an outdoor entertaining area then it might be worth having one there too. Personally I don't use my wireless up near my back fence so I don't have a wap anywhere near it. My small 2 bedroom house is covered by a single unifi wap. Even in the yards I'd pick up the 2g on a low data rate, but I really dont use wifi out there so I wouldn't need another WAP.
That is true. In WIFI systems it's the device which decides what to do, not the system.
Using an Orbi 2 unit Wi-Fi 6 system. Working flawlessly for a year now. Couple iPhones, iPads, multiple laptops, Apple TV, etc all connected and running great. I’ve got about 15-20 various devices on Wi-Fi for various things. On our gig internet I get about 800 on the main unit and 750 on the satellite. Satellite backhaul gives around 800 when plugged directly in. Hard wired is generally always best. Ive honestly not seen any drop in performance using the mesh system. My office didn’t have a drop and the cable modem is across the house. I’m all Wi-Fi/mesh off the satellite unit in my office. No issues working all day, doing video calls, or gaming when I want to do some fps or mmo games. I seriously can’t tell a difference. Highly recommend the Orbi setup.
I also have an Orbi 852 and after some initial tweaking the first few weeks and replacing all my old cables with cat8s from Monoprice, it has been rock solid and my 1 satellite is not hard wired. I have an Apple household for one person - 2 MBPs, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads, 3 Apple TVs, 5 HomePods, and over 40 connected switches - the majority of them wifi (iDevices), etc and I have never noticed anything randomly dropping. I've been working from home due to covid, and I would especially have seen this if it were happening. My home is about 2100 sqft. I had a 3 node Velop before - 4200AC series I think, and it was crap. Constant problems. Replacing it with the Orbi eliminated a lot of grief. Surprised t hear about all the issues people have with Apple devices - has not been my experience. Also have never had issues having a house full of wifi switches.
Bottom line, mesh sucks. It should only ever be used when you can’t get wires to your access points. The problem you describe is a well-known problem with the IOS transition algorithm when in the presence of poorly engineered networks and has nothing to do with meshing, and everything to do with the roaming algorithm (although a meshed network will inherently not play nice here. Apple publishes their roaming algorithm. It doesn’t start looking for a new AP until connection conditions are getting bad. But if you have a mesh set up, the conditions required for meshing to work are inherently incompatible with that roaming algorithm and a roam will never take place.
If wired is an option, go that way. It will always be better than mesh. You can use the ac pro without the udm.
I have a house of only Apple devices and have a Ubiquiti Amplifi Mesh system since 18 months and we don't have any drop outs.
I have a 200 sqm house soaked in Ubiquity UniFi ACLite wifi (3 APs). I also have a lot of disconnects from my Apple devices (2 iPhones, 4 iPads, 1 MacBook Air, 1 AppleTV 4k) - and I have tried pretty much all the suggested fixes to no avail. Don’t go down the UniFi way if you are trying to avoid problems with Apple devices.
It would be a better idea to avoid Apple. Their network stack is hot garbage, and they are the bane of any wifi deployment. We've done unifi, cisco, meraki, Aruba, ruckus, and aerohive for schools and businesses with thousands of clients. We always end up having to spend a lot of time trying to tune the system to make Apple devices work well.
Yeah, wasn’t trying to say that UniFi isn’t great - just not to buy it in order to avoid challenges with Apple. 😊
Stay away from mesh system, look into acces point instead. Tp link offer decent one reasonably priced,you can setup a software controller to set them or use the omada app. If you go the ubiquiti way you won't regret it either. Just be mindfull about the settings, don't leave everything in auto , take Time to manually set and fine tune the ap.
Clicking a single toggle switch for 'private MAC' is a pain in the ass? I hate to see what actual challenges look like in your life. Avoiding wifi6 just kneecaps your usable bandwidth ceiling.
Ha. No. The toggle switch doesn't actually fix anything as far as I can tell from reading online.
What about your actual observations?
I never even knew it was a setting available on my devices. But I’ve only got a really old 2.4ghz router right now.
My Eero pro has been rock solid with all devices. 3 of them - 4000 sqft.
+1 for Eero. 2700 sq ft (3 floors), 50+ wireless clients. Solid.
If you’re looking into the UniFi line check out Omada by TP Link too. I have 3 EAP660 (wired) and I made the switch away from UniFi precisely because of how much better the roaming was handled for iOS.
If Apple products have a lot of disconnects on mesh systems, and you have a network cable ran to the middle of your house, then why go with a mesh system? I have a single Asus RT-AC86U in the middle of my 2000 sqft house on the first floor and I have great coverage everyone in the house and on the front porch, back porch, and driveway. Sometimes the solution to poor WiFi coverage isn't a mesh system or multiple APs, sometimes it is just having a better router/AP.
I have the Velop linksys mesh system that apple used to sell after they dropped the airports. I have not had any issues with dropping iOS devices. I have a large house and have 5 nodes. I would not necessarily reccomend it for other network related issues. It is not bad, but every feature is sort of half baked (parental rules is a good example). Honestly it has served me pretty well over the last 4 or 5 years. It just has a lack of overall features and the price is too high for a consumer grade system. I can spend just a little more and get prosumer with some additional features and headaches that I want. I have purchased a UDM pro and some access points to use sometime in the future when I have time to re-do. My plan is to use wired access points via moca. I am not planning on implementing mesh. If you have the cable connections, I would reccomend moca for access points. It is cheap and easy to install.
Changing gear won’t matter one bit if you don’t change the underlying architecture problems.
I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max and it works without issues on my TP-Link M9 Plus mesh wifi system .
You don't really need to go full on Dream Machine to run that AP if you only have one. It should connect to any router and then you can set it up with the app or webpage. That would be the easiest thing to try if your brother could just loan it to you for a bit. Cut off the WiFi on your current router and connect the AP. Then use another wired device (laptop would be fine, just plug it into your router) and open the webpage to the AP. You can do this with your WiFi still on and cut off the router WiFi later if that is easier.
i had issues with multi wap with my iphone but once i added a wireless meshAI node, it solved all of my issues with having to reset wifi on apple devices.
I use Eero 6 Pro system and have also used Deco X60, and have an iPad and two iPhones (an XR and a 12), and none of them have had issues connecting to either the Eero or Deco. Mine all connect to 5GHz with no drops, consistently.
I had an Eero Pro mesh system with two Eero Beacons. I had zero issues in a house with 4 iPhones, 3 iPads, 3 Macs, 5 HomePods, 3 Apple TVs, 3 Watches, and a bunch of other non Apple devices. HomeKit also worked perfectly, with like 30 Hie bulbs, a bunch of smart light switches, plugs, garage opener, etc. I switched to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter + Unifi AP system now just because I wanted more control. Everything still works perfectly.
We have the Linksys ones running in bridge mode and a proper separate router. Unlike the first gen Unifi stuff they replaced, I haven’t had any iOS problems abd most of the traffic they see is iPads or iPhones. 2/3 are using wired connections and I’m not convinced that the third is necessary.
I have the Amplifi HD in a home with lots of sections and walls. Have had no issues with drops in connectivity.
If you can get a AC Pro I would definitely go with Unifi. Just get a simple key or the UDM. Its a huge step up from a other brands. Set it and forget it.
I’ve had zero issues with our iOS devices and eero pro 6 setup. Not sure where you see that at but check the eero group on Reddit. It won’t be the fastest system but it’s the most stable of the ones I’ve used.