Nokia is a brand people are well familiar with and that is mobiles to most but they play a huge role around the world when it comes to mobile networks and communications and are also playing huge role in the 5G area but they are also powering in house communications for office and home and have several products on the market right now to enhance your connectivity experience which is welcome. I own some 250 nokia devices myself and this is my first time to try out their solutions to connectivity at home.
The Nokia Beacon WiFi trio comes in a well presented box giving you all you need including plugs to get you set up very quickly it will take around ten minutes to set up and get going you get three towers in the box and one is connected to your existing router and the other two can be placed where you might find them best suited, For me I am a new build and find even bluetooth products an issue here due to the materials used in the house and this is a welcome addition, I have tested other repeaters and extenders before and they have all boosted my experience in some form or in some areas of the house. The app that comes along with this is also good and easy to follow and will help you set up the whole system from scratch.
Due to the lockdown at present whilst testing our speeds where slow most of the time and this was done by the provider to give a balanced approach for all customers to have some kind of connection to the web this not only applied to my broadband but my phone and we did have a blackout over the last few weeks which did not bode well with the public but this is how things work and it happneds to all networks from time to time be it from over capacity or a fault, I am no expert when it comes to such or WiFi solutions but I know it has boosted performance in the house between upstairs and downstairs from where I work and I will be leaving out all the technical jargon to simplify how it works.
The Beacon Trio is a mesh system and many have asked me about MESH and what it is which is simply a home system that can give better stability and speed in your house with multiple nodes placed in your home which for people with bigger houses would be a better solution by connecting to the nearest one based on your location in the house,Just like the Nokia set up one connects to your main router then you place the rest where it suits best.
Once set up you are good to go
Speed test samples below, Testing with several devices connected during this pandemic showed a constant better speed with the Nokia Beacon VS Virgin especially upstairs in my house which suits me perfectly and for the kids in the house. Even with more connected including tv and other peripherals the speed was better in general but somewhat slower than when I actually got the kit at first but having said that you do not get the advertised speeds you pay for but overall the connection is better and stable for all devices which in short and with the bandwith being used now on the network it still gave better results.
I will come back to this again later on to get more results and speed tests for comparsion when we are in more normal times rather than now due to the virus to get more results,I did have some initial screenshots of tests but lost them after changing devices an not backing up.. Silly me, But they where better and still even with these speeds overall the stability is enhanced greatly and no buffering compared to using the standard set up and as noted upstairs in particular showed great results which has been a problem for me the last while when working in my little studio as I work both downstairs and upstairs during the day and of late with people around all day it is required for some quite space on calls and so on.
The App
The design of the towers are nice but rather big and on par with our existing router which we plug this into it does not replace your current router in case you are wondering like any other offering similar you are still paying the same money to your current provider, The design is slender but on the bigger side and I would like to see a direct plug in option to a socket from Nokia rather than having towers but having said that it is no huge deal. The benefits here outweigh anything else especially with a large home like we have now and this covers up to 420 square meters which ha sproven to kill blackspots in my house which is great. For the security concious we have 64 bit and 128 bit WEP and WPA support that includes WPA-PSK and WPA
I have my router set to 2.4 and 5Ghz but the Nokia beacon picks the best channel and beacon for you to connect to within the property all done without you knowing what is going on in the background but if you look on the app you can get information as to what is connected to what beacon which is cool. Overall this is an ideal piece of kit to have in the house especially if you have lots of tech which many homes now have today espeically with IoT and other connected devices like smart lights and virtual assistants and with most houses today we have more mobile phones at hand and this is a solution to stop congestion in the house and enjoy 4K streaming and more with no buffering it is easy to set up too and not too expensive. One thing for sure and I have said before Nokia is in a league of its own when it comes to communcations and they offer much more than many people know about which is mobile phones.