Best Wifi Router Test - Google Wifi vs Apple Airport Extreme vs Xiaomi Mi Wifi 3

Transcript

0:00 Speaker A: Hi everybody, I'm Sander and I believe in technology. Speaker A: As the number of connected devices is increasing rapidly, the WI Fi routers need to change as well. Speaker A: In my home at any given point there's more than 20 devices connected and so far I've been using the Apple Airport Extreme to connect all of them. Speaker A: But I've had some performance and heat issues because of the location and size of the router. Speaker A: I was looking for alternatives and came across the super affordable xiaomi mi wi fi 3 and the latest release from Google Google WI Fi.

0:30 Speaker A: Let's take a look. Speaker A: All wireless routers have several different things affecting them from the bands that they support and the I OS that they have on them due all the way to your home build and the location you put your router. Speaker A: So this comparison test is completely subjective though I try to show you the relative performance to each other. Speaker A: In this video we'll be looking at the Apple Airport Extreme that was released in 2013, the Xiaomi Mi WiFi 3 which was released in 2016 and the newest to the family, Google WI Fi.

1:06 Speaker A: First of all, let's take a look at the specs and the hardware that it come with and also the app and the controls they provide, compare them to each other and also run an unscientific test in my home to test the signal strength, the bandwidth and also do some Internet speed test. Speaker A: Let's take a look at the Apple Airport Extreme. Speaker A: On hardware side this the Airport Extreme houses four ethernet ports, one for the connection to go in and three to distribute it across the cable connection around your house.

1:33 Speaker A: It is also housing a USB interface for all of your network drives. Speaker A: It's supporting the latest protocol 802.11 ABGNAC standard. Speaker A: It's had got dual band 2.45 GHz antennas. Speaker A: It's got a six element antenna array and supports the latest security standard WPA PSK and and houses 32 megabytes of flash and 512 MB of RAM. Speaker A: It also supports performing or what is also known as spatial filtering, meaning it can direct the strength of the signal towards the device that is using it.

2:05 Speaker A: It weighs 945 grams and costs $179. Speaker A: Now let's take a look at Google's hardware. Speaker A: On hardware side, Google houses two ethernet ports that can be used either to point the Internet from your modem to come in and one to share it with other devices or if it's on a mesh network you can use both of them to share connection to your cable devices and the USB C for power inside. Speaker A: It also supports the latest 802.11 protocols A, B, G, N, AC it's got a dual band simultaneous 2.4 and 5 GHz antennas.

2:37 Speaker A: It's housing 4 gigabytes of flash and 512 megabytes of RAM. Speaker A: It's supporting the latest security standard WP8BSK. Speaker A: It has got mesh networking capability very similar to EERO devices that you might have seen before that are well known where the devices can connect to each other and create a larger, more stable network at your home. Speaker A: It's also Bluetooth smart ready so all your smart home devices might in the future be able to connect to it as well.

3:03 Speaker A: And similar to Apple, it also supports performing or spatial filtering to direct the strength of the signal towards the devices. Speaker A: It weighs 340 grams, about a third of the Apple's weight and costs $129. Speaker A: And last but not least, Xiaomi Mi 3 Wi Fi hardware Xiaomi Mi Wi Fi hoses three Ethernet ports, one for the connection to go in from your modem and two to share them with your cable devices. Speaker A: It also has a USB to connect your network drives and also provides an app for you to access those files inside.

3:33 Speaker A: It's also supporting the latest protocols 802.11 AB GN AC, the dual band simultaneous 2.45 GHz WI FI. Speaker A: It's got four element antennas, has 128 MB of flash, 128 megabytes of RAM. Speaker A: It's supporting the latest security WPA2PSK standard. Speaker A: It is also supporting the performing or spatial filtering to divert the strength of the signal towards the devices that need it most.

3:59 Speaker A: It only weighs 220 grams, being the lightest in the mix, about four times lighter than Apple for example, and and costs only $35. Speaker A: So what is the difference you might ask? Speaker A: Why should I pay five times more compared to the Xiaomi Mi Wi Fi? Speaker A: 3 To the airport extreme, one of the first differences in the flash storage they have while Airport Extreme only has 32 MB of flash storage, the Xiaomi has 4 times more 128 and Google is housing 4 gigabytes of flash storage on board.

4:29 Speaker A: On the other hand, Apple has 512 megabytes of RAM similar to the Google WI Fi and Xiaomi has only 128 megabytes of RAM. Speaker A: And another difference in these devices is that Google does not support USB network drives while the AirPod Extreme and the Xiaomi One House USB ports on them. Speaker A: Another difference is that the Google device is the only one which is Bluetooth smart ready to connect your potential future Bluetooth smart devices directly to the router.

4:54 Speaker A: And Google is the only one also to support mesh networking, meaning you can build a larger network across several devices that will talk to each other and choose the most strongest device related to where you're located. Speaker A: There's also difference in weight and size. Speaker A: Google being the smallest in the mix takes leads at your home followed by Apple Airport Extreme and then the Xiaomi Mi wi fi. Speaker A: Xiaomi wifi is at the same time the lightest at 220 grams, Google 345 grams and Apple Airport Extreme being almost a kilo.

5:25 Speaker A: A similar comparison also applies to the price. Speaker A: While you're shop wifi you can buy at around $35, the Google one you have to pay $129 for one or you can buy a three pack for 200 and Apple Airport extreme cost $279. Speaker A: They all also come with mobile apps. Speaker A: While the Apple Xpod Extreme only has iOS and OS X apps, the Xiaomi as well as the Google both have iOS and Android apps.

5:51 Speaker A: Xiaomi Mi Wi Fi app first of all allows you to see the current upload and download speeds, also see that per device and also set limits per device basis. Speaker A: It also shows you the storage and allows you to reset your network drives here and it also has got a marketplace for plugins where you can see updates, you can see weekly stats, you can set security for your wifi router, you can use wi fi boost to check whether you're on the right channel, and you can also set wi fi timers off when you don't want someone to be able to access your wi fi.

6:20 Speaker A: Besides you can check the status of the hardware, the storage and the wi fi network settings. Speaker A: Apple Airport utility hasn't seen any updates for almost years, so you can only see very basic things like update your router. Speaker A: Here you can see how many devices are connected, you don't see necessarily their names but you will see their addresses IP addresses and you'll be able to configure your wi fi to use which of the bands and change the name and password for your connection.

6:45 Speaker A: Google Wi Fi app allows you to set up your router and the wireless network settings. Speaker A: Also see all of the different devices connected, set their priorities based on the speed and also check your network settings. Speaker A: Everything else is done automatically. Speaker A: You can also set up guest wi Fi and different to any of the other apps. Speaker A: You can also have home control in here. Speaker A: So for example you can have your Philips Hue connected directly to a router which you can control within the app.

7:12 Speaker A: Apple Airport Utility definitely provides least control and support for your network, while the Google and Xiaomi One are actually on par and very similar. Speaker A: Only difference is that Xiaomi has an app store which you can probably see other network services coming and offering integration directly to a router like VPN services. Speaker A: But Google one has also housed home control devices, which means you can control devices without even having access to the account.

7:38 Speaker A: Someone just being on a network and being able to control your lights for example. Speaker A: So now let's get into the real life test. Speaker A: In this test I was comparing these three routers performance against the three different devices that I have, which is the iPhone 7 plus the Google Pixel XL and the latest MacBook Pro. Speaker A: And there were three things that I wanted to measure. Speaker A: First of all, the signal strength of different locations that I was able to do in my MacBook using the Wi FI diagnostics tool and on Android using the wireless diagnostics tool.

8:08 Speaker A: And the second thing that I wanted to measure was the bandwidth between the device and the router. Speaker A: I was able to do that also on my MacBook and also on my Pixel XL device. Speaker A: And a third and final thing which is the most subjective, but it's down to also my Internet service provider. Speaker A: I used the speed test across all of these devices and across three different locations. Speaker A: And the three places that I wanted to measure the signal strength, the bandwidth as well as the Internet speed are here.

8:33 Speaker A: So this is the map of my home. Speaker A: The WI FI router is placed here just because I have modem coming in there and it's possible to get it anywhere else. Speaker A: The first one is next to the WI FI router itself. Speaker A: The second one is like six or seven meters away and it's one wall that is separating it. Speaker A: So the signal has to break through one wall and then the third place is the furthest I can go in my apartment. Speaker A: So the signal has to break through two walls in every location, with every router and every device.

9:01 Speaker A: I ran at least three tests and took the average. Speaker A: You will see all of the details in a link down in the about section which will show you all the measurements to replicate the standard home scenario. Speaker A: All of them will be running on automatic settings where they choose their own channel and bands they'll be running on. Speaker A: First of all, let's take a look at the signal strength. Speaker A: While all of the devices being next to the routers, they all showed a really good -38 DBM signal strength while going one wall away, Xiaomi and Google managed to perform equally well, only adding 10 dBm to the loss of Signal while Apple adding 20 dBm in loss and Signal going through two walls, the Google managed to maintain almost exactly the same level as through one wall while Xiaomi and Apple both had 20 DBM loss.

9:49 Speaker A: So if you take the average average across all of these three, Xiaomi and Google were definitely exceeding Apple in this instance. Speaker A: Secondly, let's take a look at the TX rating or the bandwidth between the router and the device. Speaker A: So how much data can go through? Speaker A: While Google, wi Fi and Apple managed to perform really well next to a router at 870Mbps, Xiaomi really fell short at only about 200Mbps on average across devices.

10:15 Speaker A: The reason for that could be that Xiaomi chose 2.4 GHz connection for the Android device while every other device it chose 5 GHz connection. Speaker A: While going through the first wall, the bandwidth for Google managed to stay at around 560 while it was halved for Apple to around 460. Speaker A: And in Xiaomi 120 Mbps going through two walls, Xiaomi halved again to 70 Mbps while Google managed to maintain very strong level at 468 Mbps and Apple managed to keep the same through two walls.

10:50 Speaker A: And overall average Google managed to hit this really well and is the winner at 633Mbps on average across all of these three scenarios and devices. Speaker A: Apple just being very close to it at 590 and Xiaomi really falling behind that 140 Mbps bandwidth. Speaker A: And thirdly, let's get into the most subjective test because it also includes my Internet service provider talking to the router and then talking to my device, which is really varied because the Internet service provider doesn't guarantee a most stable connection.

11:21 Speaker A: But I just did many many tests three times on each device and each router to see the average across the board. Speaker A: While being next to the device, all of the routers offered around megabits per second connection while Google being the fastest at 23 megabits per second. Speaker A: The differences came when I was moving away one wall where Google managed to maintain the 2122 megabit per second connection. Speaker A: Then both Apple and Xiaomi lost about a third and were counting at 14Mbps.

11:50 Speaker A: And similarly when I went even two walls away, then both Apple and Xiaomi declined even more in the speed test at around 12Mbps, which while Google managed to maintain the 20Mbps connection even while built two walls away. Speaker A: So on average, even though subjective, a clear winner here is Google at upped more than 20Mbps on average, while Apple and Xiaomi fall behind at 1615Mbps on average across those three tests.

12:18 Speaker A: Another interesting side note with the devices is that Google Pixel was the fastest on Xiaomi router, iPhone 7 Plus was the fastest with Google router and MacBook was the fastest using Apple's own router overall on average across all of the three routers. Speaker A: All of the three devices equal out at a similar speed at 18Mbps, but Google still had the age at 18.3Mbps and MacBook having 17.8Mbps.

12:47 Speaker A: So all of the latest wireless devices doesn't matter whether it's desktop or your phone actually give you very similar speeds. Speaker A: So to conclude, I will be keeping my Google Wi Fi router and will be selling Xiaomi Mi WiFi as well as Airport Extreme here. Speaker A: Why? Speaker A: Because Google offered the highest signal strength across the board on par with Xiaomi's router. Speaker A: It offered the highest bandwidth on par with AirPod Extreme, but also offered the highest speed test compared to other routers.

13:14 Speaker A: Besides, I like Google being the smallest in the mix as I have a tight space around here and it's easy to fit it anywhere. Speaker A: The ability to build on mesh networking when I'll be moving in the future to other places and also being Bluetooth smart ready whenever those other devices will be supported on the platform. Speaker A: It is three times more expensive than Xiaomi Mi WiFi so if you're on budget I recommend going with that. Speaker A: But at the same time it's still 30 40% cheaper than the Apple Airport Extreme so I would recommend considering Google Wi Fi.

13:43 Speaker A: Thank you very much for watching this video on the different WI Fi routers. Speaker A: I hope you enjoyed it, but please let me know in the clicking on that I button here which one of the routers you already have or you would like to get for yourself. Speaker A: And if you also believe in technology, please hit that subscribe button and thumbs up and I hope to see you next time.