Are Expensive Routers a Scam don t waste your money

I'm testing this $135 Amazon Wi-Fi 7 router to see if it can hold up against its premium $279 competitor. You may think that all routers are the same, right? That if they give you Wi-Fi, then that's good enough. I used to think the exact same thing. Now, I'm fairly new to router shopping. Not that long ago, I was someone that virtually never found myself in a store mulling over the latest wireless internet diffusion machine, aka a router. I mean, why would I be? Your internet service provider is literally giving you a router that works perfectly fine, and it's made specially for your internet, which is what they want you to believe. Until you notice a rental fee pop up a year or so into your internet contract. In the beginning, you tell yourself, it's not that bad. It's $10 a month, but that's a slippery slope to just let them get away with that. Not getting swindled by internet barons motivated me to finally become the proud owner of a Wi-Fi 6 Spider Crab. Introducing my Synology RT6600AX, currently plugged into our internet. In a recent video, I looked at the benefits of upgrading to Wi-Fi 7, mainly to answer the questions, do we need to upgrade at all? The result was a clear improvement over what I currently had, but that got me thinking, am I actually seeing an improvement from Wi-Fi 7, or is this a result of using a premium router over something cheaper? So I've gone and grabbed yet another router, this time from Amazon's house brand, to figure out if I'm getting value, or just diverting my hard-earned dollars from one swindler to another. When you think routers, you're thinking Netgear, TP-Link, Asus, Synology, even Cisco. But today, we're looking at the Eero 7. Nobody's heard of Eero, so what makes them so special, and why did Amazon buy them? You see, in the olden times of the late 2010s, Eero was on the cutting edge of home routers. Back then, if your Wi-Fi didn't reach all the parts of your house, you'd use this thing called a Wi-Fi repeater to catch the signal and relay it to the dead zone. Now, Eero took this concept and expanded on it with a concept called mesh networking. Instead of using repeaters, they used multiple routers, and instead of just talking to the main router, all the different nodes would talk to each other to build a strong network of networks within your 1500-square-foot sprawling manor. I meant 15,000-square-foot. This innovation made them a darling startup of Silicon Valley until 2019, when they got swallowed up whole by the Bezos machine. Apparently, the whopping $97 million deal was a steal. It was sort of drama where the employee stock options lost all of the value, while the owners got a big juicy payout. Since they got bought, they have continued to make mesh routers, but there hasn't been a ton of innovation on the actual devices while being under Amazon's umbrella. If you live in an apartment or a small house, you probably have limited use for this technology anyways. They sell these as a single unit, which is how mine came in, but also in multipacks of two or even three. This glossy white wedge has a rating of 4.4 stars, with around 800 global reviews since its release in February 2025. Now, that sounds good, and it is, but it's important to remember that when Amazon owns the product and the store, they can position wherever they want in the search results. One potential method of achieving favorable ratings is to place your devices artificially high in the search. If you're looking for a new router, but you don't want to think too hard, who's going to complain if the product is easy to find and just works? And it does seem to just work out of the box. Many of these sub-five-star reviews complain about device compatibility issues, surprisingly low range, and lack of certain Wi-Fi 7 features. And in this corner, we have the Ubiquiti Dream 7, or is that UniFi Dream 7? They aren't very clear on what they want to be called. From what I can tell, UniFi is the product, Ubiquiti is the company. And if you haven't heard of Eero, you almost certainly aren't familiar with Ubiquiti. Cheap routers can work fine and dandy right up until you actually need them for something important. For Wi-Fi, that might be okay, but some things I need to be reliable, and that's why I switched to the Narwhal Frio Z10 Ultra, today's sponsor. You've probably seen plenty of robot vacuums before, but how about one that actually knows what not to clean? Thanks to its dual RGB obstacle avoidance cameras, the Frio Z10 Ultra can see and steer around even the trickiest hazards, like electrical cords, without having to stop and untangle it every time it runs under your desk. It's basically a cleaning robot with common sense. Then there's the Edge Reach Extended Mop Head, which gets right up against the walls and corners, cleaning spots I didn't even realize existed. This was truly mind-blowing to see in action for the first time. It can detect liquid or tough stains too, and automatically switches into wash mode, scrubbing with up to 8 newtons of pressure. On the vacuuming side, it's equipped with a zero-tangle brush that spins at 4400 RPM, which means even the tangliest hair clumps are no problem. Everything then gets taken care of by the self-cleaning base station, which washes and dries the mop heads, so you never have to touch the dirty water, and the whole thing just feels premium. The sleek, modern design blends into your home, and it's surprisingly quiet, so you can clean while you're working, filming, or even sleeping. The Narwhal Frio Z10 Ultra isn't just a robot vacuum, it's the most reliable, versatile floor cleaner you've ever met. If you want to rid yourself of all types of floor messes and experience clean floors 24-7, trust me, it's life-changing. Check out their Black Friday sale using the link in the description below. While Eero was becoming a darling of home Wi-Fi, Ubiquiti was targeting the tech-savvy IT person. They're known for making products that are more complex than the standard home router, but less complex than what you might find in a giant data center. Not products for low-end consumers, not for high-end professionals, but instead something in the middle, the prosumers. Now in a true prosumer move, Ubiquiti doesn't sell directly on Amazon. They sell through their own website and authorized retailers like Micro Center or B&H Photo. They seem to do this to keep control of their warranty and return system. As you know, Amazon is well known for accepting returns without question, which doesn't bode well for companies with tighter margins. One big downside to not being on Amazon is the shipping times. While the Eero arrives within a few days, the Dream 7 coming directly from Ubiquiti took weeks, and if it breaks, we're at their mercy. At least we have a warranty though, because according to some Reddit commenters, Ubiquiti won't honor warranty on products bought from third-party sellers on Amazon at all. It's also hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison or reviews without an Amazon listing, and Ubiquiti doesn't have reviews on their own store. Not that you should trust that anyways, but according to Google, the Dream 7 has racked up around 140 reviews since February 2025 between the resellers and their own store with an average rating of 4.7 stars. The sub-five-star riders are mostly unhappy with the high price ticket, some bugs in the management interface, and how easy it is to knock over due to its overly eggy shape. Egg. That high price point might make you think that it would have a fancy premium box, but shockingly, the Dream 7 box looks more like an Amazon Basics item than the actual Amazon product itself. So both didn't have a lot on the container, just a picture of the router, a QR code, and didn't contain many cables either. But this isn't a box review, we're comparing routers here. So the Eero came with a USB-C cable attached to the wall plug instead of having the cable separated from the box. Usually you'll find a cable like this for laptops, much to the dismay of many. Interesting choice, as this practice of marrying the cable in the box recently got outlawed in Europe. But at least it's easy enough to change a USB-C cable, right? Convenience, tada! Except there's one small issue. Most multi-port chargers that you probably want to use with this thing will momentarily cut power from all the devices attached to them when you plug or unplug anything from the other ports. And they do this to balance the power load. And you know what that means? Your Wi-Fi connection gets reset every time you try to charge a phone using the same brick. That's not good. Apparently a 100 watt charger will actually deliver 100 watts to a single device if none of that power is needed elsewhere. Now when you plug in a new device, it might drop down to 65 watts and then 30 watts on the second thing. So when devices are using batteries, like your phone, you don't notice anything when the power gets shut off. But home routers don't have batteries. So if you are hoping to keep a spare space on your power brick free, then expect your network to go down anytime you plug in something else. Now the Dream Router has all the electrical doohickeys on the inside. So it connects with a figure 8 style plug. Officially it's called a C7 plug, but that name isn't as fun as figure 8. Those aren't as ubiquitous as USB-C. See what I did there? But they are still quite common and have been around for a long time. So I can use this to power my PS2. It's actually pretty nifty. Despite being less than half the price, the Eero does come with a 3 foot ethernet cable. Which is a nice touch compared to my big ball of nothing from Ubiquiti to connect it to my modem. It would have been nice to include markings on the cable to identify what kind of cable it is. Is it Cat 6? 7? 8? I don't know. Considering that even Amazon Basics will label their cables. Who knows? They could have tossed in their oldest cable sitting at the warehouse and called it a day. Now ethernet might not be included with the Dream because they want you to connect it with their fancy fiber cable for a 10 gig connection. Which is nice if you had that to begin with. Fiber is very fast and very cool, but I'm just a lowly pleb with only a single digit of gigabits on my internet speed package. So I just use a regular old copier plug to plug into a 2.5 gigabit port instead. Now the Dream has four 2.5 gig ports, so having a few computers or game consoles with wired connections is totally an option. The Eero on the other hand has a lonely singular port. Which isn't a problem in most scenarios, but sometimes I want the option of not having to use wi-fi all the time. Even my current router has six ports and yes, they all serve their purpose. You've got a port going to the server and then others heading off to multiple switches around the office. Although I'm sure you don't need this level of craziness, you're probably connecting to a TV, a home server, and a gaming PC. That's still three ports that you need, which is more than the single port you get on the Eero. Wired connections offer a level of speed and stability that just makes it so much better. Your gaming PCs want that, your home servers especially want that, even though running cables in the walls is less convenient than connecting to a wi-fi network. And wired connection or not, convenience really was a big selling point for these devices. Both had similar setup processes once their power and network cables were attached. All you do is you scan the QR code, download the app, follow the instructions, and the app would just do everything while it connects to your router over bluetooth. And I know I'm usually harping on products for having me download apps, but for wi-fi it actually makes sense. It doesn't make sense for your fridge, your laundry machine, or your cameras. In terms of those routers though, the big difference between them came in what they needed from me or from you. So on the Dream 7, scanning the QR code was optional because the screen would tell you what to do. An account was optional. I just had to click a button to say no thanks. Heck, even the app was optional. If I wanted to connect a computer over ethernet and put an IP address into my web browser, I could. So good job to Ubiquiti for letting me have my way and not download an app. None of this was optional in the land of Eero. The app was the only way to do setup and that app wouldn't talk to me until it had my email and my phone number. I mean seriously, come on. Connecting my Amazon account was technically optional, but it was the only kind of account that I could one-click sign on. You couldn't use an authenticator instead or have a phone number and no ability to log in with a Google or Apple account. Once I had given all of my information to yet another arm of the Amazon machine, I could finally connect my devices to it. Yay! It's not like Amazon doesn't know everything about me already. So I connected my Framework 13 without an issue only to notice that connection was available as a 2.4 and 5 gigahertz. What? Where's my newer faster less crowded 6 gigahertz been? As it turns out, not all of Wi-Fi 7's features are actually mandatory, even if they were mandatory on Wi-Fi 6E. So in a cost-saving measure, Amazon took the opportunity to leave out one of the three bands. The one that made Wi-Fi 7 special. So is this just a Wi-Fi 6 router in disguise? So between multi-link operation, the improved QAM, Blackmagic, and the wider channels, the neutered Wi-Fi 7 still offers some speed and stability improvements over Wi-Fi 6, but missing the biggest speed gaining feature is hard to ignore. Also the which is a bigger number than the 160 megahertz in Wi-Fi 6, but smaller than 320, which is the size that Wi-Fi 7 is supposed to have. Everyone knows bigger number, best number. Sure, none of my devices actually use that size of channel yet, but the Dream 7 can. And what happens when I finally do get a phone or a laptop that can use those big channels? Am I just gonna have to settle for a That's the cost of not paying the extra money. Slightly less good. So all that is just theory though. In reality, the Eero gave me around half a gigabit at roughly 40 feet away, while the Dream gave me close to a gig and a half, or triple the speed. Wow. The difference was less pronounced farther away and behind some walls, but the Dream was at least 30% faster at all times. So clearly, the Dream 7 is better, right? Absolutely. But remember that Amazon sells these in a three pack for $279. That's because they can be put together in a mesh network. So they can either be set up wirelessly or wired, but wireless is not as strong. Still, it gives you some extra range and speed. Now those speeds will still fail to reach what you might get on 6 gigahertz, and you'll have an even harder time if you're in a densely populated area where you've got a lot of 2.4 and 5 gigahertz frequencies already. So I think it's safe to say that you get what you pay for with these two different devices. The Eero 7 will get the job done in a pinch, but the Dream 7 can offer triple the speed for double the price by giving much more of the Wi-Fi 7 features. It's also worth mentioning that there are some additional features unique to each router. Eero routers have an ad blocker and a VPN service. Unfortunately, that will cost you an extra $100 a year for a subscription to Eero Plus. $100 is a lot of money for something you can do on a Raspberry Pi. Piehole and wire guard anyone? You'd think Amazon might have taken this opportunity to just bundle it with Prime, but surprisingly, they keep it quite separate. It kind of feels like instead of renting my router from ISP, I'm just renting it from Amazon. That defeats the biggest reason for purchasing my own router in the first place. The Dream 7 also has ad blocking, but it's far from effective. What is a bit impressive is that it can integrate with other Ubiquiti products like security cameras, which can save footage to a microSD card. The router came with a 64GB card already installed. Ooh, good perk. MicroSD cards are pretty affordable, but it's nice to not have to run back to the store to buy one. So this is another one of those cases where paying more does get you more and going towards a brand that's dedicated to home networking and Wi-Fi connectivity rather than one that merely wanted to cash out to Amazon is a better decision overall. And while we're on the topic of things that can improve your home, check out this video here on a way that you can upgrade your home theater system or home TV system. Home TV. Get the Narwhal Frio Z10 Ultra today on their Black Friday sale using the link in the description below.