Google just couldn’t stop releasing new hardware products today. It’s part of a new strategy: instead of letting other companies take its software and make stuff, Google is making the first version itself. Just so with the Google Wifi, a router that follows the latest trend: instead of having a single, powerful (and ugly), centrally located router, you distribute a bunch of smaller, nice-looking devices throughout your house in a mesh network.
Where Google had tapped ASUS and TP-Link for the OnHub, it’s making the Wifi routers itself. The goal is the same, though: Google wants to prove it can do it better than anybody, then use that knowledge to let other hardware manufacturers make more routers using its system.
So what do we have with Wifi? First off, it’s inexpensive. A single router runs $129, but a three-pack (which is what Google recommends for anybody with a home bigger 1,500 square feet) is $299. Both packages are cheaper than the router that’s gotten the most mindshare in consumer mesh network, Eero.
Updated with hands-on video!
Google Wifi hardware consists of a small, white puck. It’s not quite as small as an Eero, but it’s small enough and looks inoffensive enough that you might actually be willing to set it out in the open, where Wi-Fi works best. There’s a Cylon-esque LED circle in the middle of each, where you’ll get various status information.
Unfortunately, I haven’t actually had a chance to use Google Wifi, so I don’t know yet whether those lights are on all the time or how well it actually works as a Wi-Fi router. But I can tell you that Google is talking big game for it.
The key, for Google, is that it’s using machine learning in the cloud to optimize the mesh network. Most devices aren’t very good about switching from one access point to a better, closer one on the same network. (iPhones, by the way, are better than most at this, Google tells me). So Google Wifi points keep an eye on what’s connected to them and then force the handoff themselves. Google says it’s targeting transitions that take less than 150 milliseconds, which should be virtually invisible to the user.
If you’re looking for Very Serious Power User router stuff, Google Wifi might not be for you. It’ll be controlled the same way the OnHub is, via a smartphone app. And it also lacks ports: just one Ethernet for internet access and one more for another device. It’s powered via USB-C.
One last note: I’m super not a fan of the name. The proper way to write "Wi-Fi" is to use caps and a hyphen. Google Wifi has a capital W and everything else is lowercase. Fine. Whatever.
Google Wifi will be available for preorder in November and goes on sale in December.
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