Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsDefinitely recommended
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2018
I live in a single-story house approximately 2,100 feet in size. I was using an Apple Airport Extreme as a router/base station and an Apple Airport Express as an extender. Both were functional but few of my devices would successfully connect in the 5GHz band, and 2.4GHz was definitely congested. As a result, streaming audio and video was susceptible to interference from our microwave, among other issues.
Maybe some of the problems could have been solved with further site analysis, and manual channel selection. Maybe not. While I was reluctant to spend money on replacing otherwise-good equipment, I was attracted to the advertised capabilities of the Samsung/Plume system to optimize band usage and speed, so I decided to give it a try.
For an old networking dog like me, the highly automated nature of the SmartThings WiFi installation -- as well as the fact that a smart phone is absolutely required for setup (as noted in fine print on the box -- was slightly jarring. But, for normal people it will be a delight, and is likely very much like what Apple would have done if they were still making networking equipment. Creating a functioning wireless network and adding the two extenders was an absolute breeze.
For anything more complicated, you download the Plume software in addition to Samsung's own. Via Plume, I reconfigured the wireless network to use my preferred range of private IP addresses (not necessary for anyone doing a first-time install), and then I had to go configure a lot of client devices to match my new network name. (Though I don't have the last word in a connected home, there's an AV receiver and four Blu-Ray players that support streaming, two Apple TVs, an Amazon Fire TV. three Chromecast Audios, a wireless printer, a Synology NAS, Hue light bulbs, an IP phone adapter, two Haiku fans, and whatever else I've forgotten to mention at the moment. I also sometimes stream to TVs using either Miracast or AirPlay, which of course had added to the network congestion.)
The software of course has facilities for creating guest networks and other functionality. (There's a constellation-like map of your network, too, though I didn't find that very useful.) It also shows you all connected devices and can show you how much bandwidth they're using, and you can selectively cut off any of them. (For some reason, during the first couple of days I had the network up, I wasn't getting any indications of bandwidth used, but that feature started working on the third day.)
As others have likely mentioned, each SmartThings WiFi unit is identical, with an "in" port for connecting to a DSL or cable modem, and an "out" port for adding wired devices. Additional "out" ports, as the Apple Airport Extreme had featured, might have been nice, but I solved that roblem easily by adding a $15 D-Link switch.
Anyhow, here's the bottom line. I expected an improvement, but perhaps not much of one. But I'm happy to say that since the installation of the SmartThings WiFi system, there is good connectivity throughout my house, and that every device that's capable of doing so (which means everything except my fans) is connected using the 5GHz band. No more congestion, and no more microwave interference.
And, just about the full bandwidth of my 115 Mbps cable connection is available anywhere in the house, to all of my devices. (Before, they were lucky to get less than half that speed.)
