It looks ridiculous having a wire crawling from one room to another, but I want to have as solid of an internet connection as possible since I work from home. I typically work from a spare bedroom that I’ve fashioned into a home office. Usually I’m hardwired, via a 50-foot Ethernet cable, to the main Eero unit that’s connected to my cable modem in the living room. Pretty well, though depending on what devices you usually have connected to your home WiFi network you may run into a snag or two. Now, you might be wondering how well the Echo Dot actually performs as an Eero beacon. Among these devices was my Echo Dot, which was labeled “Eero Built-in Compatible.” I simply tapped the Echo Dot and on the next screen tapped “Enable to extend WiFi.”īoom! My Echo Dot, purchased primarily to do smart speaker-y things, was now a full-fledged Eero beacon. More options, including advanced parental controls, are available in the app if you pay for Eero Plus.Īnyway, inside the Home section of the Eero app there’s a list of all the devices connected to your WiFi network. One neat thing about this app is the wealth of information and options it makes available to you, including showing what devices are connected to your network and displaying how much data you’ve downloaded and uploaded over the past week. Once the Eero and Echo Dot were up and running individually, I returned to the Eero app. Again, mostly tapping “next” a bunch of times. Next I had to set up the Echo Dot, which similarly was a matter of plugging it into the wall and following the instructions in the Alexa iPhone app. I first had to set up the Eero itself by plugging it into my Xfinity modem and basically tapping “next” a bunch of times from within the Eero iPhone app. We hadn’t reviewed the Pro 6E when I bought it at the end of 2022 (though we’ve since given it a good overall score), but I figured it was a reasonably safe bet because Eero wireless routers usually do pretty well in our wireless router ratings.Īs for getting the Echo Dot to function as a beacon, the process wasn’t too difficult. I pay roughly $80 per month for a 1 gigabit connection from Xfinity (Comcast). This, alongside a couple of Echo Dots I had purchased, would make up my home WiFi network in the Sonoran Desert. I decided to go with the Eero Pro 6E (a two-pack mesh system) as my wireless router. One cross-country move later, I was ready to see how all of this works in practice. I was sure to buy at least one Echo Dot anyway (and let’s be real, probably more than one), so why not extract even more value out of these devices by relying on their newfound mesh WiFi capabilities? That the Echo Dot is roughly $30 less expensive than an Eero beacon only sweetened the deal. I recently moved from New York to Arizona, and while I was planning how to set up my home WiFi network I figured, Why not get an Eero and then use the Echo Dots as beacons? Suddenly, a device you might have simply bought to listen to podcasts while cooking could serve as a critical component of your home WiFi network. Just a few months ago, Amazon released a new version of the Echo Dot that functions as a beacon for the company’s Eero mesh routers. So, what do smart speakers have to do with mesh routers? Of course, being speakers, these devices can also be used to play music from streaming services like Spotify and Sirius XM, though some devices are better suited to playing music than others. Smart speakers are neat little devices useful for carrying out simple tasks like asking what the weather will be like tomorrow, getting the latest sports scores, setting timers while cooking, and turning on and off smart appliances like lights and thermostats-all with the sound of your voice. It usually costs around $50, and Amazon frequently puts it on sale for less. First introduced in 2016, the Echo Dot is Amazon’s entry-level wireless smart speaker.
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