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Google has rebranded its flagship WiFi device the Nest WiFi, but one word you rarely hear from Google in reference to its router is, well, the word router. Routers are big ugly things. There's usually made of cheap black plastic, festooned with antennae, and look most at home tucked away in a closet.
The problem is that these devices are supposed to cover your house in a warm cozy blanket of Wi-Fi signal and a closet seriously hinders that. The Nest WiFi wants out of the closet, and to Google's credit, it looks good enough, or at least innocuous enough, to display.
The Nest WiFi comes in three colors: Snow White, Mist Blue, or Sand Pink. It looks at home on a bookshelf or counter, which gives it a leg up on signal strength over that plastic spider lurking in the closet.
The icing on the cake for fans of Google Assistant is that the mesh extension unit, called a Point, also doubles as the equivalent to a Nest Mini, with a built-in voice-activated speaker.
### Wi-Fi Something Something hed
I tested the Nest Wifi two-pack which consists of the router and one Point extender, which sells for $269. Google says this combo will cover 3,800 square feet and up to 200 connected devices. It certainly had no trouble covering my 1200 square foot home. There's also a three pack available that adds a second Point and extends the coverage to 5,400 square feet and 300 devices.
Another option, if you don't need the Google Assistant-powered Point, or if you like Alexa better, is to pick up just the router, or even [two routers for $299](https://www.amazon.com/Google-Nest-WiFi-AC2200-Coverage/dp/B07YMJ57MB/){: rel=nofollow}.
The Nest Wifi system does not function as a modem, so you'll still need your ISP's modem. To get started you plug your Nest into your modem, download the Google Home app to your phone, and then connect to the Nest to get everything set up. The Google Home app had no trouble negotiating the setup with the two modems I tested, though it's worth noting that the Nest does not work in "bridge" mode, which some ISP's suggest using (Verizon FiOS for example). You can still get the Nest to work in these cases, but there may be a bit of extra setup involved.
Once you have the Nest WiFi setup with Google Home, things get a little confusing because to access some more advanced features you'll need to use Google's Wifi app (it has not yet been rebranded to Nest). This will help you find the best location for your point, set up and test the speaker, and test your network speeds, both between router and point and your actual home connection, as well as block sites. Some, but not all of this, can also be done in Google Home and eventually Google Home will handle everything, but for now you'll need both which adds a little complexity to what's otherwise a very simple system.
The WiFi app is where you can do more advanced things like prioritize traffic from certain points at certain hours. For example, set the point in your living room to have priority traffic in the evening for streaming Netflix, and the point in your office during the day for work.
One of my favorite features of the Nest WiFi is the ability to easily connect guests. Everyone who comes over wants on your network, but I have all sorts of drives and data connected to my network that I don't want anyone else accessing, so I use a guest network for everyone else. Any router can do that, but then I have to remember the password, which I never do. And my guest has to type it in. The Nest eliminates that. All I have to do is open up any connected Google device with a screen and I can get a QR code. My guest scans the QR code and they're connected. There's no typing in passwords, it just works.
### Shortcomings
For as simple as the Nest WiFi is most of the time, that simplicity has some costs, the biggest of which is that this is very much a Wi-Fi system. The router has one Ethernet port, which means if you want to wire much of anything you'll need an additional Ethernet switch. Worse, the point extender has no Ethernet port at all. It is the Nest WiFi after all, not the Nest Router. Google claims only about 5 percent of Nest users had devices plugged in so it shouldn't matter for most users.
How Google knows that is also something worth considering. It knows that because it collects a lot of data about your network and what happens on it. To setup the Nest Wifi using Google Home you'll need a Google Account, which means giving up some degree of privacy at the router level.
According to the various terms of service and privacy policy notices I encountered with setting up the Nest WiFi, Google's Nest cloud services will collect information about your home network, the devices on it, and any surrounding Wi-Fi networks. That's in addition to collecting stats based on usage. All the data collection can be opted out of, but given Google's history of recording data even when you opt out of being recorded it seem best to assume this data is being collected. If you're not okay with that, there are a lot of other routers on the market.
Another reason you might want to pass on the Nest Wifi is if you plan to be an early adopter of Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6, also know by the less-friendly name 802.11ax, promises to boost speeds, and connect more devices, especially the ever increasing number of IoT gadgets. Google opted to pass on Wifi 6 for now in order to keep prices down and because of the relatively few devices on the market that support Wifi 6.
While that's a logical decision right now, Wifi 6 support is picking up speed. Dell's newest laptops support it, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note10 smartphones are on board, and we expect even more devices with Wifi 6 support to arrive next year. Personally I don't update my router very often, my current router has served me well for over seven years now, and if I were looking to upgrade I'd want at least some Wi-Fi 6 support to future proof my purchase as much as possible.
Still, it's hard to argue with the ease of use that the Google Nest Wifi provides. While I am comfortable flashing routers with open firmware's like [OpenWRT](https://openwrt.org/), most people are not. And for those who want a dead simple way to ensure good Wi-Fi speeds throughout the house with a minimum of fuss, the Nest WiFi system fits the bill.
The most natural competitor for the Nest Wifi is Amazon's Eero mesh system, which behaves very similarly though it adds some nice features you won't find in the Nest Wifi like the ability to block ads at the home network level. Really though it comes down to which ecosystem you want to invest in: Google or Amazon? If the answer is Google, the Nest Wifi is what you want.
The Nest WiFi is available as a single router ($169), the two-pack I tested with router and point ($269), a three pack with an additional mesh point ($349), and a router two-pack ($299).
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