Tenda Nova Mesh WiFi System MW5 – AC1200

Excellent product works well easy to use and setup

Este producto cumplió con todas mis expectativas, me resolvió el problema de señal en el segundo piso y es súper fácil de instalar. Lo recomiendo 100%

Have a 3 level 3,500 sq ft house that’s L shaped with garage taking up empty space and decided it was time to upgrade from single router approach. After trying multiple different router placements and trying a repeater always had areas where it was difficult getting a strong signal to in house so decided to try a mesh system. This was the first unit I tried and decided if it didn’t work then I’m out a little less than a hundred dollars and I’d just go back to old router until trying something else.

When I received it and unboxed it, I was honestly underwhelmed. How can something so small and so light do what I expected it to do. The 3 units are quite small, very light, and look presentable but don’t feel like they’re anything substantial. I say this because I’m used to wifi routers being somewhat large. In any case, I downloaded the app, hooked up the unit to modem and power, powered it, fired up the app and within 5 minutes, this router was up and running. Standing next to primary unit, I was pulling down 250Mpbs on my phone, which is about what I pull down when wired directly to modem on my laptop. First impressions kind of blew me away. With old router (which was also rated an AC1200) I would get maybe 100Mpbs standing next to it on 5 Ghtz. Plugging in the 2 “satellite” wall plug units required no configuration. Just plug it in, make sure you get a green light and you’re good. In app, I could see all units were associated with each other and “talking”. I now have a strong signal in every corner of the house. The app is simple, but does what it needs to. I can easily see at quick glance who’s connected, what node they’re connected to, how much data they’re pulling, etc.

Other reviews have stated that they’re a bit lacking in options/functionality. That is true. There’s no DMZ config, no IP reservations, etc, but for this price point and its purpose I think it does an excellent job at what it’s trying to be. This was up 100% and running within 5-10 minutes of unboxing. That’s pretty incredible, I think, coming from setting up wireless networks in the past.

The only gripe I have is that sometimes you’ll see in app that devices are connected to a certain node while another node would seemingly make more sense (this is after turning on fast roaming as well) or a device will be using 2.4Ghtz when there’s no reason it shouldn’t be using 5Ghtz, but these are minor gripes in my opinion for what you get at this price point. Solid 4.5/5 rounded to 5/5 for me.

Update Nov 2022: I unplugged and plugged back both my modem and mesh router and then placed the secondary nodes closer to the main node in order to connect them. Left them for a little while and then moved the secondary nodes back to where I need them. This seems to have fixed the connection issue. I did this back in June after I wrote secondary update. Haven’t had issue since. Customer service did respond faster after my second email, but was unable to assist in getting me WPA2. I’m just dealing with it for now and taking security measures elsewhere (strong passwords, 2-step verification, anti-virus). Putting back 1 one star.

Update May 2022: my secondary novas have stopped connecting to the main node. I just bumped up my internet speed and I don’t know if that had something to do with it. Maybe the secondary novas can’t handle the download speed? Can’t find anything to confirm this. I just emailed them letting them know of my issue. I actually emailed them weeks ago to ask how to set the tenda router to WPA2 security since it automatically set it to WPA and I can’t find a way to change this anywhere in the app. They advertise WPA2 in their description, but you don’t actually get it. I didn’t know of this until recently. Well, I finally got an email response from them 2 days ago and they asked for model number. We will see how long it takes to resolve this. Not great customer service. Because of these issues, I am taking away 2 stars.

Original review May 2019: I was hesitant to buy this system because it was so inexpensive compared to the top rated ones. I have Xfinity in a 2 story, 4 bedroom house and was constantly losing connection to the internet no matter where I was in the house. Some parts of the house was worse than others. So I decided to upgrade my router and found out about mesh wifi. I read a lot of articles and did lots of comparing before deciding on this Tenda Nova system. I like that it has only 1 corded node, which is the main one that gets hooked up to the modem. The secondary nodes are plugged right into the outlet so I have have no unsightly cords. Plus, the areas that I placed the secondary nodes are hallways so they would have been sticking out like sore thumbs if I bought the pack where all three nodes looked like the main node. I have had great internet connection everywhere in the house since installing this system. The setup through the app was incredibly simple and it’s great to be able to see all the devices that are connected. The app even does a bit of troubleshooting for you if something goes wrong. Like the other day, I suddenly lost connection so I tried to restart my modem first and nothing happened. So I went into the Tenda wifi app and it told me that the WAN cord was disconnected. Sure enough, it was loose on the modem. I just pushed it back in and we were back in business. Buy this! You won’t regret it!