Introduction
If your router isn’t providing a strong wireless signal throughout your home, this Wi-Fi 6 extender could be the answer. It works like a relay transmitter, broadcasting a network of its own that connects back to the router; if you install it a few rooms away from the router, it can provide a strong signal in areas where the existing coverage is weak and patchy. The Devolo WiFi 6 Repeater 3000 is fairly speedy too: the name represents a total bandwidth of 600Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band, plus 2,400Mbits/sec for 5GHz connections. You won’t hit those speeds in your own home – they’re theoretical maximums – but it means there’s potential for fast connections.
Design and features
Liable to get in the way of nearby plug socketsLED signal indicator, and downward-facing Ethernet socket
As is usual for a wireless extender, the Repeater 3000 is a chunky white box that plugs into a mains socket. It’s quite wide, meaning you probably won’t be able to plug anything into an adjacent socket. That’s especially a problem if you want access to the WPS button on the right-hand side. Still, the Gigabit Ethernet socket is located on the bottom, so at least that doesn’t get in the way, and I like the four-segment signal strength indicator on the front. The Repeater 3000 also benefits from an impressive management portal. It’s loaded with technical information about your main and extended networks, plus connected devices and neighbouring networks. A Clone function tells the repeater to replicate the network name and password from your router, so devices can connect automatically without being reconfigured, and there’s also a mesh mode that lets multiple Devolo extenders work together with shared settings. As well as acting as a repeater, there’s an access point mode, where the Devolo WiFi 6 Repeater 3000 has to be connected via Ethernet to your router. This can be useful if you want to get a wireless signal far from your router, such as in a garden office.
Performance
Widespread coverage gives improved Wi-Fi performance throughout the houseDownload speeds are good but not on par with TP-Link’s rival repeater
The Repeater 3000 supports both crossband and in-band connections. In crossband mode, it uses the 2.4GHz band to communicate with the router and reserves the 5GHz frequency range for device connections. It’s an elegant idea, but since the 2.4GHz radio is only a quarter as fast as the 5GHz one, it results in a performance bottleneck. You’re better off with in-band mode, which uses the 5GHz radio for both client and router connections. In this configuration, the Repeater 3000 does a respectable job of shoring up Wi-Fi performance. With my D-Link R15 Eagle Pro AI router on its own, I measured average download speeds of 41Mbits/sec in the bedroom and 44Mbits/sec in the kitchen. Once I’d installed the Devolo Repeater and connected to the extended network, performance leapt to 218Mbits/sec and 102Mbits/sec. Even at the extremities of my home, the Repeater 3000 was a big help. In the utility room, I’d been getting just 12Mbits/sec from the router, but the extender boosted this to a much more respectable 57Mbits/sec.
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