BT Whole Home Wifi

I am looking at potentially improving my home wireless - I have a couple of TP Link wifi extenders but they keep falling off the network and are a bit hit and miss.

I have Fibre 100 (150Mbps download) and a Smart Hub 2. I could get complete wifi but I am not keen on paying monthly. I know BT do the Whole Home Wifi and Mini Whole Home Wifi products that I could get through Amazon or Ebay - but does anyone have any experience of how well these work with the Home Hub 2? I don't want to spend a fairly chunky sum on something that doesn't work better than what I currently have.

Probably looking at 3 or 4 discs as it is a 4 bed house, I want to cover down the end of the garden and one of the bedrooms seems to be a faraday cage so I have to position the repeater just right so the signal goes through the door.

Designed to work well with the Smart Hub 2 (not the Home Hub 2 which you also mention is a very old BT router - so guessing just a slip up in the wording).

Might be worth trying a third party router first as it might be a cheaper & neater solution than BT wifi discs, which do work well.

If you don't want to spend shed loads of money on the latest & greatest wifi 6 router, then the Netgear R7800 (best wifi 5 router out there for wifi) or Asus RT-AC88U or Asus RT-AC86U will almost certainly beat any standalone BT router for wifi. How much by, you won't know know until you give it a try. Btw my single Netgear wifi 6 router easily provides full wifi coverage in my 4 bedroom house on my Gigabit line. But its a relatively new house with wafer thin walls, which helps a lot

AFAIK, the bt-whole-home-wi-fi that you purchase outright ( white discs ) will not 'converge ' with your current router - they will set up a second wifi network which does not include you current Hub - even if its a BT one - so you will have your SSID from your hub, and the another from your 'whole home wifi'. So you would need a disc where your Hub is.

the 'Complete wifi' that you purchase alongside your broadband ( black Discs ), converges with the smart hub 2 - so you dont need a disc where the router is.

I have the 'complete wifi' ( on fibre 900 ) with 4 discs to cover a large property and also an out house in the garden and it works well - i get between 100 - 400 mbps in every room which is ample for my wifi needs. I didnt pay that much extra each month to upgrade - and i think the cost at the end of the term if i dont send them back is £30 - so cost wise it worked out less than buying the discs outright.

obviously this set up can only be used with BT, the 'complete wifi' disc is useless with another company - whereas 'whole home wifi ' will work with any provider so its flexible if you move to a new company

Thanks Andrew - and yes, that was a slip up - it is smart hub 2.

It is unlikely a single router is going to reach everywhere I need coverage so some sort of extension is going to be needed. I have TP-Link RE305 devices at the moment but their connection to the hub is unstable despite a good signal where they are located - I seem to have to reboot the hub regularly to keep them online properly.

I am looking for the definitive answer as to whether the Whole Home WiFi that you can buy outright integrates with Smart Hub 2. MrS thinks it does but you think it doesn't - I haven't yet found anything definitive online to confirm either way and most of the reviews were done before the Smart Hub 2 came out.

non of the set up guides for 'whole home wifi ' indicate integration with the smart hub 2.

if you did want to buy the 'complete wifi ' discs outright that are for the smart hub 2 - a google search shows they can be bought from BT at https://www.bt.com/broadband/accessories#advanced

Thanks. Although they are a bit pricey and I suspect that allows BT to encourage people to the monthly payment as I suspect I would need at least 2 and possibly 3 discs (BT when I use their selector for the whole home suggest I would need 4 of the premium discs and I just don't believe that - it isn't a sprawling mansion!). 3 discs at £300 would allow me to "rent" them for a good while by which time new technology would be out to replace them so at that price owning them would be unlikely to make sense).

In reply to a post by ian72:

I am looking for the definitive answer as to whether the Whole Home WiFi that you can buy outright integrates with Smart Hub 2. MrS thinks it does but you think it doesn't - I haven't yet found anything definitive online to confirm either way and most of the reviews were done before the Smart Hub 2 came out.

only the black discs work with the smarthub 2, you set them up using the MyBT app - the same one as you access billing. The ones you buy in the store are white and have their own app BT whole home WiFi. You must have one next to the hub connected via Ethernet. The first one in the store kit must connect via Ethernet.

The WiFi guarantee ships with the black ones and as long as you have the smarthub 2 away you go. People are selling them on eBay for about £50 to £75 each if you want to get them unofficially as a one time cost.

Worth adding with BT’s WiFi guarantee they ship you one disc originally. Then if this isn’t good enough they will ship a second. It continues this way, they do not send 2, 3 or 4 at once.

Get the black ones if you have a Smart Hub 2 already ... they are a tickle to set up, and wherever I’ve encountered them, work very well indeed.

Just going to respond to latest message for convenience.

Thanks all for your advice, might see what eBay can offer me but if not then may have to go for complete wifi.

Mine is off eBay, I have uploaded some pics of the setup. I got it for about £55 I think. I have had to do a lot of playing around with positioning, basically tried about 10 different outlets but I now have it covering the whole garden and the extension which is built with wire mesh in the walls acting as a literal faraday cage.

I sacrificed having an "excellent" signal to the extender but with a "good" signal it works fine for 80Mbps.

https://ibb.co/album/yFypCz

Commits black discs for Smart Hub integration to write once memory

Of the ISP routers I've had in last 5 years, the Smart Hub 2 gives the best coverage

BT offers is trying 3 of the black discs as a one time purchase at £300. The ebay has some a lot cheaper pre-owned though some do look possibly fresh out of box

Just managed to order a brand new one off ebay for £55 plus postage. Have bid on some others but will have to see if any of those pan out. Thanks for the advice.

Thanks, as per my other post I have ordered one off ebay now and have some bids in for others. Hopefully they will operate better than the TPLinks as I haven't been impressed with them.

They work the same as main hub performance wise I can’t see any difference.

I do 4K streaming on bedroom tv.