**A Comprehensive Review of the Nova Mw12 Mesh System**

The Nova Mw12 mesh system is a high-performance wireless network solution designed to provide fast and reliable internet connectivity for homes, offices, and large-scale installations. One of the standout features of this device is its dedicated backhaul connection, which enables one of the Wi-Fi connections to operate at speeds close to 900 megabits per second. This dedicated connection allows devices to communicate with each other without interference from other wireless signals, resulting in faster data transfer rates and reduced latency.

The system consists of three nodes: a central hub and two outer nodes that provide coverage to different areas of the installation. The Mw12 node offers improved performance compared to its predecessor, the Nova Mw6. For example, we noticed a 30-40% increase in speeds when testing the Mw12 in a separate building over 25 meters away from the hub. This significant improvement makes the Mw12 an excellent choice for larger installations or homes with multiple floors and extensive coverage requirements.

**Key Features and Limitations**

One of the primary advantages of the Nova Mw12 is its ability to handle more devices simultaneously, making it suitable for large households or offices with many users. However, this increased capacity also comes at a cost. The device requires an app on compatible smartphones or tablets to configure settings, monitor performance, and make changes. While most people have access to these apps, some may find the lack of a web-based interface inconvenient, particularly when it comes to remote setup or troubleshooting.

Another limitation of the Nova Mw12 is its limited options for changing wireless frequency and authentication type for the password. Users can only change the name of the router and Wi-Fi password but not the wireless frequency, which might be a drawback for some users. The same issue applies to other Novas we've reviewed; however, this should not deter potential buyers, as these are relatively minor complaints.

**Price and Value**

The Nova Mw12 is priced around £300 in the UK market, which may seem steep compared to its competitors. However, considering its performance capabilities, it offers exceptional value for money. In contrast, the Nova Mw6 has similar specifications but can be purchased at a lower price point of approximately £150-£170. The significant price difference is largely due to the fact that six MW6 nodes can be bought for the same price as three MW12 nodes.

**Recommendation**

Ultimately, whether or not the Nova Mw12 is worth its premium price depends on individual needs and budget constraints. For users requiring high-performance wireless connectivity, especially in larger installations or homes with extensive coverage requirements, the Mw12 offers unparalleled benefits. However, for those with more modest internet demands or smaller spaces, the MW6 or other options may provide sufficient performance at a lower cost.

The Nova Mw12 is certainly a top-of-the-line solution designed for those who demand the best in wireless networking. With its impressive speeds and capacity to handle multiple devices, it's an excellent choice for larger households or offices with demanding internet needs. While it comes with some limitations, such as the need for an app-based interface and limited configuration options, these are minor drawbacks considering the overall value provided.

**The Hell Yeah Award**

Despite its premium price and some limitations, we believe that the Nova Mw12 is a highly recommended solution for those who require high-performance wireless networking. Its exceptional performance capabilities make it an excellent choice for large-scale installations or homes with extensive coverage requirements. With its dedicated backhaul connection and impressive speeds, the MW12 is undoubtedly one of the best mesh systems on the market.

In recognition of its outstanding features and value, we award the Nova Mw12 our "Hell Yeah" award. While some may argue that it's not worth the premium price, those who demand the very best in wireless networking will find the Mw12 to be an excellent choice.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone phil from tech for tex here today we're going to be looking at this from tender it's the nova mw12 in basics it's an ac-2100 tri-band whole home mesh wi-fi system or even more basics it's a mesh wi-fi system which is designed to increase the signal in your home or office so you can get faster speeds more items connected and so forth and we're going to give you a run through of what's inside the box and give it some testing to see how it compares to their previous models the recommended retail price of this is 269.99 we do have links in the description below they will show you the cheapest prices available in your country so make sure you click that link just below okay so let's have a look at the box so we've got the nova it is the nw12 free pack so that's the model there are other models we'll go through those in a few minutes this is a ac2100 tri-band whole home mesh wi-fi system tri-band me basically means it's got free wi-fi signals going out which gives you even better coverage devices what if you've got any devices which are tri-band anything along that lines basically means it's better than dual band which is obviously better than single band devices so it gives you basically at the moment the best of the best of what you're able to get wi-fi signal wise as it says it covers up to 6 000 square feet bear in mind that goes up and down depending on houses and stuff walls and different things what are around but again gives you a rough idea what sort of coverage you can actually get so and as you can see it says cover up to 6000 square feet um multi-wall um penetration so that basically this means it sends the signal through the walls it's got that tri-band design which i've told you about which it's also got a gigabit port so that means if you've got a nova in one room let's say a bedroom and you've got a computer in the bedroom and you don't want to connect up to wi-fi you want to connect up to the router or to the nova with a cable you can do and it'll wirelessly send the signal from the master node which is plugged into your router to this secondary node which is plugged into your pc and you connect up just as if you've got a cable plugged directly into your main router which may be rooms away and which you're not able to connect a cable into which is ideal for stuff like nas systems or high-end gaming pcs where you want the fastest speeds possible um obviously nothing replaces a direct connection into a router but that's going to be a lot faster than using just standard wi-fi um ideal again for stuff like nasa's and stuff and i actually use one on an mw12 sorry mw6 system which is a dual band i've got a nas plugged into one and it does the job absolutely fine and it goes on about here 900 megahertz dual core and so forth just telling you how fast it is which probably means nothing to most people so let's have a look at the rest of the box so on there you've got basic information um on the back is where it all is by the looks of it so it shows you an example how it works you position them in different places in the house so let's just say your main router was in the living room which is here you position one in let's just say the kitchen or near the stairs and then you position one on say the landing or a room upstairs and that will then spread the signal all the way around the house and it goes on about all the different bits you can see the different models they've got here they've got the mw3 5g the six and this one which is a 12. basic differences is is the range it covers and the speeds as well as how many devices for example the mw3 supports 40 devices the 5 supports 80 the 60 supports 90 and this one supports 120 when i say how many devices that's how many things you can connect up to it so phones tvs laptops and so forth and other things is speeds so supports the megabytes and the mw12 supports uh over 500 megabytes by the looks of it a little bit of increase in the box so it gives you a rough idea but the basics is the higher ones the mw 5 6 and 12 if i'm correct do have gigabit ports on there where the mw3 does not so it's only ideal for speeds roughly under 100 megs but that gives you a rough idea that's the box so this is what you've got in the box you've got basically the quick installation guide which tells you how to do it it tells you need to download an app if you want to change the the settings it tells you what the lights do on the top basically green means good amber means okay-ish and red means bad you've also got a basically terms and conditions rubbish over there we're not going to read those for now well you've got one ethernet cable which is roughly one and a half meters long you've got three power cables to power each of the novas those are roughly 1.2 meters long so just bear in mind wherever you're going to position the main node it's going to have to be roughly within 1.2 meters 1.5 meters of your main router so what you would do would be connect this cable into here connect that up to your main router to on the ports on the back obviously plug the power cable in that one's working then you pull those two in and those two are working obviously you position them different places in your house to spread the signal that's the basics for the plugs and the cables so the nova nodes itself a look at this one it does have a slight diamond design on there i'd say it is and it looks pretty good it might be sort of a cross celtic style design it's hard to tell with the lights but on the bottom it does have full rubber feet to stop it sliding around which is good it does have two little cut outs there which you could use to mount on a wall if you wanted to and lots of little holes on the bottom which are designed for keeping it nice and cool it has a little hole there for reset so if you want to do a factory reset on it for whatever reason you can click there inside you've got the information so it tells you the uh for example the wireless code there so the name so it's a nova whatever and then the password to obviously let anyone onto the router that will be the same on every single node you get um so obviously in the free pack you've got a qr code as well that'll take you to the link to download the software if you want and as well as helping you connect up possibly depending on the device you're connecting with you've got four ports in here one's for the power which is pretty straightforward you plug it in there next one is wlan or one which is where you would connect up your ethernet cable which is this one and plug that other end into your router so your bt home hub or whatever it may be called basically your modem where your internet comes into the house um and then you've got two more ports that's for that's general lan connections these are gigabit ports apparently so that means you can connect up other devices directly to this so you could use this not only as a wi-fi sort of extender sorry to use the word but mesh system but you could also use it as sort of like an access point so you can plug devices directly in into it like a nas system which is a network network attached storage or other things like a pc or even a tv or something like that you can plug it directly into there even printers for example it will let you plug them directly into there as long as obviously they use an ethernet connection which is also known as a lan cat5 cat6 whatever as long as it uses that basically plugs there you can plug it in um so it gives you a rough idea so that's basics to it otherwise you've got a little light on the top that goes green once it's connected if it goes yellow that means it's got a fair connection if it's red it means it's disconnected it's pretty straight forward let's plug them in and just show you briefly how they work okay i'm going to show you how to set these up from scratch the only difference from what you would be using would be the cable which you connect up to your main router i'm having to use a longer cable which you could do as well but you'd have to go and purchase one because our main router is so far away from our bench here what we're testing them on the basics is you get a cable you plug in one end into your main router or modem or whatever you want to call it and then you plug it into the bottom over here which is the basically the one with the blue symbol you plug it into which is one also known as lan as well because i think it doubles up as both so you plug that into there so that's in so that's nice and simple then you get your power cable and plug that in well the power cable socket okay so it's pretty straightforward there is a cutout where you can position the cables unders at the back so it doesn't get in the way now this will connect up to the internet as you can see it's already a little green so i'll be surprised if it's connected already but we'll give it a go and find out so yeah it's starting to flash a little bit there so if i click go on to my phone as you can see it's flashing now so i'm guessing that's in the process of connecting i just go into settings go for wi-fi and look for the name of the node on the bottom it's finally come up it takes a few seconds because we've only just turned it on just like if you turn in a router on it takes a minute or two to come on you click the name of the node and it asks for the password as we said the password is on the bottom so and it's the same on all the nodes you can change that in the software if you wish which you have to use an app on your phone or tablet to do that so as soon as you put your password in it should connect up and work and it looks like i've typed the password is wrong which doesn't help so make sure you do it exactly as it is press join that seems to be going through now so as you can see that is now connected okay so that's as simple as it is to connect it up obviously make sure you put the right password in right otherwise it won't connect i'm just going to do a quick test just to make sure it is working as it should be that's connected up yeah my wi-fi is now connected to this nova which is very good news our internet where i'm testing the moment is only around about 50 60 megabytes and it's picking up that sort of speed on here so that's pretty good we will be testing it on a faster network i'll take it to our retail store where we've got internet's called internet speed coming in at about 400 megabytes well that's the basic for how to set it up now if you want to set one of the other nodes up ideally you take it into another room you just get the power cable plug the power cable in obviously plug the other end of the power cable into a socket and then it'll go through the motions of connecting up so then what that does is then this one starts talking to this one and goes oh i've got internet and it goes oh if you've got internet can i use yours and then they basically share the internet and then you get the third one and do exactly the same i won't do the third one because it's setting up exactly the same as the second one so what that does is when you've got a different place in the house because the share in it this is able to share out a certain distance this is as well so they sort of overlap and complement each other and even if one of the nodes goes down let's just say i don't know for whatever reason someone unplugs it and you don't realize the other nodes in the house usually compensate and help and still work if you're only two of them are working to let you get connected to the internet still as you can see this one's flashing same way as this one did i'm guessing it'll start flashing a bit quicker in a few seconds and once it's done that it'll go that block green again so basically they're doing what's called wearing technical terms a handshake okay so they're basically saying yes yes i want to talk to each other and there you go it's going green these are pre-set up so you don't have to set them up to want to work with the other or anything like that they're all done already and the same with the third one it's basically plug-in go get your phone out put your codes in or whatever device you're using and you're on the internet simple as so that's it so i can connect up to whichever node i want well i don't connect to whichever it automatically does it to whichever you got your best signal and away you go now you can set the novas up through your phone so you need to get the tender wi-fi app which basically you scan the qr code on the bottom when you open the tendon nova software let me try and make it easy for you to see i'll ask you to agree to terms and conditions and so forth this is picking up my preset up um one and it's going oh there's a new manageable tender router is found nova this is the new one so you just press set up it'll say welcome you just follow the instructions so it's identifying your connection type as in are you using wi-fi cable blah blah blah and how it's working so basic says you just keep pressing next and then if it asks you do you want to change anything that's obviously optional so you can change your wi-fi name you can change your password as well so that's totally up to you and then go through all the different settings to do whatever you want let me just skip through all that once you've got it all set up obviously i'm showing you with my pre-set up network as you can see i've got two mw sixes and some mw fives in there so it gives you a rough idea i've got a network already set up these work exactly the same but you can click on each individual node it gives you information about them if you really want to so that's pretty good but there's also settings on there as well so you can go to settings you can change your wireless settings you can set up a guest network uh partner controls internet settings you've got add another nova if you wanted to so you just press add nova you find the nova you want to add you scan the qr code on the bottom and it adds it onto the system so you could go out and buy multiple different ones so you've got quite a few different options on there one of the two of the things what you can't do is stuff like changing your wi-fi um channels and stuff like that which is a can be a bit of a pain um so well to some people it can be a bit of a pain but in basics in most cases you would never need to do that anyway the only time you would is if let's just say you've got a neighbor who was really close to you and they were running their devices on the same wi-fi frequency sometimes you can have hiccups but again i think that happens on a lot of mesh systems where you can't change the wifi signal otherwise it causes the whole system to start well not talking to each other basically so that's the basics to it so as you can see it's pretty straightforward you can do what you want you can go in the wireless settings change the details save it and so forth you can monitor it and there's that many different things on there let me go back here we go and then you can go to back to your screen and have a look at all your different options and if you've got multiple of these networks up it lets you show all the different ones you've got so you can see i've got text i've got one in our chip store and then it's picking up another nova set there and one i've set up as well so you can set up lots of different ones and you can access each of them so if you want to access the system in our store you just click on that one and then you can basically unbind it or go into the description and change the settings and so forth if you wanted and as you can see we've got two units set up in the store what we use for demonstration purposes and i can change those settings not even being in the store uh with ease okay so let's get started with the testing we're doing the internet ping test first this is basically testing how quickly the computer or should i say the wi-fi responds between the device we're testing from and the internet which is usually the exchange and basically you can see here that speeds of roughly the same no matter if they're on wi-fi or lan with a couple of milliseconds difference between each but basically the lower the speed the better obviously the lan is generally always the better on the once we get to 12 meters away we we can't check the bt hub via lan because it's too far away with the cable so we're just testing it with wi-fi and you can see the bt hub wi-fi is 24 followed by the tenderland at 18 and the tender running the y520 and as you can see the ping test is a lot more responsive on the tender devices when you get further away from the router because of obviously that mesh coverage now we're doing the test again 25 meters away this time we're in basically a non-attached brick garage which is basically separate from the main building so it's a bit of a distance away it's got to go for plenty of walls the bt hub could not connect via wi-fi it was too far away but the tender mw-12 via wi-fi and land still kept a very low ping level which is excellent work considering the distance away and again that whole mesh system is covering a large area okay so we're doing basically the same test again but this time it's download speed so that's how fast you're actually downloading so in the equivalent of a car that would be the maximum speed the car will be able to go so here you can see two meters away from the bt hub you can see that speeds are pretty much the same on all within one or two megabits per second so again this is megabits not mega bytes so when you get further away this is when this next test comes into show so the further away you get from the bt hub the speed drops as you can see via the wi-fi it drops down to 48 megabits per second in comparison to the tender nova was running at 64 and 63 depending on if you're using lan or wi-fi so the actual speed using the tender novas that is a hugely difference to the bt hub so i can't really say enough of the actual speed you're actually managing not to increase but to keep but again when you get even further away we couldn't even connect up to the bt hub at all 25 meters away again it's in a garage which is a brick garage but with the tenders and overs we were still able to get mid high 50 megabytes i'm sure to say mega bits per second download speed which is pretty good in all honesty compared to the mw6 which again is still a good measure wi-fi system was a cheaper model we were only getting around about mid 40s so again it's a definitely increase in speed we also tested this on our network in our retail shop which gets roughly around about 400 megabits per second download speeds and again it was able to cope with that no issue at all again right next to the router doesn't make much of a difference but the further away you get the more of a difference there is for example from one side of our shop to the other it drops from 400 down to 200 using just the standard virgin router but when we connected the novas up we're able to get well over 370 megabytes per second which was one hell of a less of a drop than using the virgin router from what i can tell the difference in the tri-band compared to a dual band mesh system like the mw-6 and this one which is the mw12 is that this version has sort of like a a backbone or what they call a dedicated backhaul which basically means one of the wi-fi connections which is the 5g ones which is capable of going close to 900 megabits per second is dedicated for the devices talking between each other so they're not having to talk to each other as well as messing around with the wi-fi connecting them from another device and so forth so you've got one dedicated with them talking to each other and sending data between the two and then you've got a standard 2.4 g and another 5g connection where you would connect up to the device so it basically gives more options of connecting up to the device and allowing more information to pass through without it being interrupted only real negatives i see about the device is one is that you need an app to actually use it as in change the settings or anything like that on your smartphone or tablet not everyone has one but generally most people do these days but would be nice to have an option of logging into a web console like you would on most routers where you type in an address like 192.168.1.2 and then type in a password and an admin um details to get in there and change the settings um which you cannot do with this you have to use the app on your device which can be a bit of a pain if you're getting someone to try and remotely help you because that means they can't just log into the router and change the settings for you they have to have the app on their phone to be able to do it and generally they're not going to be able to set that up without coming probably round to your house and do it so remotely setting this up or changing things might be an issue and that seems to be the same with all the novas we've come across you also have limited options in changing things like the wireless frequency and the authentication type for the password yes you can change the name of the router change the wi-fi password but you cannot change the frequency which is a bit of a pain and again the same thing on all the other novas we've come across now we come down to the price at the moment the price for this device is roughly 300 uk pounds which is a lot of money for a mesh system don't get me wrong it's one hell of a good mesh system but is it worth 300 pounds only you can answer that unfortunately but for me i think it's probably worth it but when you consider the mw6 which specifications aren't that far off this you can pick it up at the moment uh roughly probably 150 pounds maybe 170 or something like that there's a big difference in price because for example you could pick up six nodes for the mw6 for the same price you can pick up just three nodes for the mw12 so it's down to what you're using it for for example we saw a difference between using the mw6 and the mw12 especially when getting further away that 25 meter range in basically a separate building we found the speeds were roughly 30 40 percent faster than mw6 the little brother should we say or little sister which is a lot better i'm going to say that can make well save a lot of time for us if our internet speed is going faster also you can connect up more devices to it as well so you've got basically better coverage better speeds more devices connect to it it's basically more more more but obviously it does cost you more as well if you're one of these people what wants the best of the best the fastest internet speeds the quickest response times but you've got to use wireless you want your gaming to have the best ping so you can react faster in your games and stuff like that then yes mw12 definitely for you and go for it every day of the week but if all you're doing is in a three-bedroom house and you need to just play on facebook and a few basic games then i suggest going for something like the mw 6. don't get me wrong the whole nova range is brilliant but obviously different ones suit different people but this one is aimed at basically people who want the best of the best big offices maybe you can use it as well multiple people can connect up or larger homes or for example us a home what's got basically a building to the side in our case a garage where they need that extra penetration from the wireless signal so what sort of award do we give the device like this well it's quite a hard one to do because we do highly recommend this but does it go that extra mile i think it does personally does come with a little bit of a cost but again you get what you pay for so the award we're going to give this is our hell yeah award youhi everyone phil from tech for tex here today we're going to be looking at this from tender it's the nova mw12 in basics it's an ac-2100 tri-band whole home mesh wi-fi system or even more basics it's a mesh wi-fi system which is designed to increase the signal in your home or office so you can get faster speeds more items connected and so forth and we're going to give you a run through of what's inside the box and give it some testing to see how it compares to their previous models the recommended retail price of this is 269.99 we do have links in the description below they will show you the cheapest prices available in your country so make sure you click that link just below okay so let's have a look at the box so we've got the nova it is the nw12 free pack so that's the model there are other models we'll go through those in a few minutes this is a ac2100 tri-band whole home mesh wi-fi system tri-band me basically means it's got free wi-fi signals going out which gives you even better coverage devices what if you've got any devices which are tri-band anything along that lines basically means it's better than dual band which is obviously better than single band devices so it gives you basically at the moment the best of the best of what you're able to get wi-fi signal wise as it says it covers up to 6 000 square feet bear in mind that goes up and down depending on houses and stuff walls and different things what are around but again gives you a rough idea what sort of coverage you can actually get so and as you can see it says cover up to 6000 square feet um multi-wall um penetration so that basically this means it sends the signal through the walls it's got that tri-band design which i've told you about which it's also got a gigabit port so that means if you've got a nova in one room let's say a bedroom and you've got a computer in the bedroom and you don't want to connect up to wi-fi you want to connect up to the router or to the nova with a cable you can do and it'll wirelessly send the signal from the master node which is plugged into your router to this secondary node which is plugged into your pc and you connect up just as if you've got a cable plugged directly into your main router which may be rooms away and which you're not able to connect a cable into which is ideal for stuff like nas systems or high-end gaming pcs where you want the fastest speeds possible um obviously nothing replaces a direct connection into a router but that's going to be a lot faster than using just standard wi-fi um ideal again for stuff like nasa's and stuff and i actually use one on an mw12 sorry mw6 system which is a dual band i've got a nas plugged into one and it does the job absolutely fine and it goes on about here 900 megahertz dual core and so forth just telling you how fast it is which probably means nothing to most people so let's have a look at the rest of the box so on there you've got basic information um on the back is where it all is by the looks of it so it shows you an example how it works you position them in different places in the house so let's just say your main router was in the living room which is here you position one in let's just say the kitchen or near the stairs and then you position one on say the landing or a room upstairs and that will then spread the signal all the way around the house and it goes on about all the different bits you can see the different models they've got here they've got the mw3 5g the six and this one which is a 12. basic differences is is the range it covers and the speeds as well as how many devices for example the mw3 supports 40 devices the 5 supports 80 the 60 supports 90 and this one supports 120 when i say how many devices that's how many things you can connect up to it so phones tvs laptops and so forth and other things is speeds so supports the megabytes and the mw12 supports uh over 500 megabytes by the looks of it a little bit of increase in the box so it gives you a rough idea but the basics is the higher ones the mw 5 6 and 12 if i'm correct do have gigabit ports on there where the mw3 does not so it's only ideal for speeds roughly under 100 megs but that gives you a rough idea that's the box so this is what you've got in the box you've got basically the quick installation guide which tells you how to do it it tells you need to download an app if you want to change the the settings it tells you what the lights do on the top basically green means good amber means okay-ish and red means bad you've also got a basically terms and conditions rubbish over there we're not going to read those for now well you've got one ethernet cable which is roughly one and a half meters long you've got three power cables to power each of the novas those are roughly 1.2 meters long so just bear in mind wherever you're going to position the main node it's going to have to be roughly within 1.2 meters 1.5 meters of your main router so what you would do would be connect this cable into here connect that up to your main router to on the ports on the back obviously plug the power cable in that one's working then you pull those two in and those two are working obviously you position them different places in your house to spread the signal that's the basics for the plugs and the cables so the nova nodes itself a look at this one it does have a slight diamond design on there i'd say it is and it looks pretty good it might be sort of a cross celtic style design it's hard to tell with the lights but on the bottom it does have full rubber feet to stop it sliding around which is good it does have two little cut outs there which you could use to mount on a wall if you wanted to and lots of little holes on the bottom which are designed for keeping it nice and cool it has a little hole there for reset so if you want to do a factory reset on it for whatever reason you can click there inside you've got the information so it tells you the uh for example the wireless code there so the name so it's a nova whatever and then the password to obviously let anyone onto the router that will be the same on every single node you get um so obviously in the free pack you've got a qr code as well that'll take you to the link to download the software if you want and as well as helping you connect up possibly depending on the device you're connecting with you've got four ports in here one's for the power which is pretty straightforward you plug it in there next one is wlan or one which is where you would connect up your ethernet cable which is this one and plug that other end into your router so your bt home hub or whatever it may be called basically your modem where your internet comes into the house um and then you've got two more ports that's for that's general lan connections these are gigabit ports apparently so that means you can connect up other devices directly to this so you could use this not only as a wi-fi sort of extender sorry to use the word but mesh system but you could also use it as sort of like an access point so you can plug devices directly in into it like a nas system which is a network network attached storage or other things like a pc or even a tv or something like that you can plug it directly into there even printers for example it will let you plug them directly into there as long as obviously they use an ethernet connection which is also known as a lan cat5 cat6 whatever as long as it uses that basically plugs there you can plug it in um so it gives you a rough idea so that's basics to it otherwise you've got a little light on the top that goes green once it's connected if it goes yellow that means it's got a fair connection if it's red it means it's disconnected it's pretty straight forward let's plug them in and just show you briefly how they work okay i'm going to show you how to set these up from scratch the only difference from what you would be using would be the cable which you connect up to your main router i'm having to use a longer cable which you could do as well but you'd have to go and purchase one because our main router is so far away from our bench here what we're testing them on the basics is you get a cable you plug in one end into your main router or modem or whatever you want to call it and then you plug it into the bottom over here which is the basically the one with the blue symbol you plug it into which is one also known as lan as well because i think it doubles up as both so you plug that into there so that's in so that's nice and simple then you get your power cable and plug that in well the power cable socket okay so it's pretty straightforward there is a cutout where you can position the cables unders at the back so it doesn't get in the way now this will connect up to the internet as you can see it's already a little green so i'll be surprised if it's connected already but we'll give it a go and find out so yeah it's starting to flash a little bit there so if i click go on to my phone as you can see it's flashing now so i'm guessing that's in the process of connecting i just go into settings go for wi-fi and look for the name of the node on the bottom it's finally come up it takes a few seconds because we've only just turned it on just like if you turn in a router on it takes a minute or two to come on you click the name of the node and it asks for the password as we said the password is on the bottom so and it's the same on all the nodes you can change that in the software if you wish which you have to use an app on your phone or tablet to do that so as soon as you put your password in it should connect up and work and it looks like i've typed the password is wrong which doesn't help so make sure you do it exactly as it is press join that seems to be going through now so as you can see that is now connected okay so that's as simple as it is to connect it up obviously make sure you put the right password in right otherwise it won't connect i'm just going to do a quick test just to make sure it is working as it should be that's connected up yeah my wi-fi is now connected to this nova which is very good news our internet where i'm testing the moment is only around about 50 60 megabytes and it's picking up that sort of speed on here so that's pretty good we will be testing it on a faster network i'll take it to our retail store where we've got internet's called internet speed coming in at about 400 megabytes well that's the basic for how to set it up now if you want to set one of the other nodes up ideally you take it into another room you just get the power cable plug the power cable in obviously plug the other end of the power cable into a socket and then it'll go through the motions of connecting up so then what that does is then this one starts talking to this one and goes oh i've got internet and it goes oh if you've got internet can i use yours and then they basically share the internet and then you get the third one and do exactly the same i won't do the third one because it's setting up exactly the same as the second one so what that does is when you've got a different place in the house because the share in it this is able to share out a certain distance this is as well so they sort of overlap and complement each other and even if one of the nodes goes down let's just say i don't know for whatever reason someone unplugs it and you don't realize the other nodes in the house usually compensate and help and still work if you're only two of them are working to let you get connected to the internet still as you can see this one's flashing same way as this one did i'm guessing it'll start flashing a bit quicker in a few seconds and once it's done that it'll go that block green again so basically they're doing what's called wearing technical terms a handshake okay so they're basically saying yes yes i want to talk to each other and there you go it's going green these are pre-set up so you don't have to set them up to want to work with the other or anything like that they're all done already and the same with the third one it's basically plug-in go get your phone out put your codes in or whatever device you're using and you're on the internet simple as so that's it so i can connect up to whichever node i want well i don't connect to whichever it automatically does it to whichever you got your best signal and away you go now you can set the novas up through your phone so you need to get the tender wi-fi app which basically you scan the qr code on the bottom when you open the tendon nova software let me try and make it easy for you to see i'll ask you to agree to terms and conditions and so forth this is picking up my preset up um one and it's going oh there's a new manageable tender router is found nova this is the new one so you just press set up it'll say welcome you just follow the instructions so it's identifying your connection type as in are you using wi-fi cable blah blah blah and how it's working so basic says you just keep pressing next and then if it asks you do you want to change anything that's obviously optional so you can change your wi-fi name you can change your password as well so that's totally up to you and then go through all the different settings to do whatever you want let me just skip through all that once you've got it all set up obviously i'm showing you with my pre-set up network as you can see i've got two mw sixes and some mw fives in there so it gives you a rough idea i've got a network already set up these work exactly the same but you can click on each individual node it gives you information about them if you really want to so that's pretty good but there's also settings on there as well so you can go to settings you can change your wireless settings you can set up a guest network uh partner controls internet settings you've got add another nova if you wanted to so you just press add nova you find the nova you want to add you scan the qr code on the bottom and it adds it onto the system so you could go out and buy multiple different ones so you've got quite a few different options on there one of the two of the things what you can't do is stuff like changing your wi-fi um channels and stuff like that which is a can be a bit of a pain um so well to some people it can be a bit of a pain but in basics in most cases you would never need to do that anyway the only time you would is if let's just say you've got a neighbor who was really close to you and they were running their devices on the same wi-fi frequency sometimes you can have hiccups but again i think that happens on a lot of mesh systems where you can't change the wifi signal otherwise it causes the whole system to start well not talking to each other basically so that's the basics to it so as you can see it's pretty straightforward you can do what you want you can go in the wireless settings change the details save it and so forth you can monitor it and there's that many different things on there let me go back here we go and then you can go to back to your screen and have a look at all your different options and if you've got multiple of these networks up it lets you show all the different ones you've got so you can see i've got text i've got one in our chip store and then it's picking up another nova set there and one i've set up as well so you can set up lots of different ones and you can access each of them so if you want to access the system in our store you just click on that one and then you can basically unbind it or go into the description and change the settings and so forth if you wanted and as you can see we've got two units set up in the store what we use for demonstration purposes and i can change those settings not even being in the store uh with ease okay so let's get started with the testing we're doing the internet ping test first this is basically testing how quickly the computer or should i say the wi-fi responds between the device we're testing from and the internet which is usually the exchange and basically you can see here that speeds of roughly the same no matter if they're on wi-fi or lan with a couple of milliseconds difference between each but basically the lower the speed the better obviously the lan is generally always the better on the once we get to 12 meters away we we can't check the bt hub via lan because it's too far away with the cable so we're just testing it with wi-fi and you can see the bt hub wi-fi is 24 followed by the tenderland at 18 and the tender running the y520 and as you can see the ping test is a lot more responsive on the tender devices when you get further away from the router because of obviously that mesh coverage now we're doing the test again 25 meters away this time we're in basically a non-attached brick garage which is basically separate from the main building so it's a bit of a distance away it's got to go for plenty of walls the bt hub could not connect via wi-fi it was too far away but the tender mw-12 via wi-fi and land still kept a very low ping level which is excellent work considering the distance away and again that whole mesh system is covering a large area okay so we're doing basically the same test again but this time it's download speed so that's how fast you're actually downloading so in the equivalent of a car that would be the maximum speed the car will be able to go so here you can see two meters away from the bt hub you can see that speeds are pretty much the same on all within one or two megabits per second so again this is megabits not mega bytes so when you get further away this is when this next test comes into show so the further away you get from the bt hub the speed drops as you can see via the wi-fi it drops down to 48 megabits per second in comparison to the tender nova was running at 64 and 63 depending on if you're using lan or wi-fi so the actual speed using the tender novas that is a hugely difference to the bt hub so i can't really say enough of the actual speed you're actually managing not to increase but to keep but again when you get even further away we couldn't even connect up to the bt hub at all 25 meters away again it's in a garage which is a brick garage but with the tenders and overs we were still able to get mid high 50 megabytes i'm sure to say mega bits per second download speed which is pretty good in all honesty compared to the mw6 which again is still a good measure wi-fi system was a cheaper model we were only getting around about mid 40s so again it's a definitely increase in speed we also tested this on our network in our retail shop which gets roughly around about 400 megabits per second download speeds and again it was able to cope with that no issue at all again right next to the router doesn't make much of a difference but the further away you get the more of a difference there is for example from one side of our shop to the other it drops from 400 down to 200 using just the standard virgin router but when we connected the novas up we're able to get well over 370 megabytes per second which was one hell of a less of a drop than using the virgin router from what i can tell the difference in the tri-band compared to a dual band mesh system like the mw-6 and this one which is the mw12 is that this version has sort of like a a backbone or what they call a dedicated backhaul which basically means one of the wi-fi connections which is the 5g ones which is capable of going close to 900 megabits per second is dedicated for the devices talking between each other so they're not having to talk to each other as well as messing around with the wi-fi connecting them from another device and so forth so you've got one dedicated with them talking to each other and sending data between the two and then you've got a standard 2.4 g and another 5g connection where you would connect up to the device so it basically gives more options of connecting up to the device and allowing more information to pass through without it being interrupted only real negatives i see about the device is one is that you need an app to actually use it as in change the settings or anything like that on your smartphone or tablet not everyone has one but generally most people do these days but would be nice to have an option of logging into a web console like you would on most routers where you type in an address like 192.168.1.2 and then type in a password and an admin um details to get in there and change the settings um which you cannot do with this you have to use the app on your device which can be a bit of a pain if you're getting someone to try and remotely help you because that means they can't just log into the router and change the settings for you they have to have the app on their phone to be able to do it and generally they're not going to be able to set that up without coming probably round to your house and do it so remotely setting this up or changing things might be an issue and that seems to be the same with all the novas we've come across you also have limited options in changing things like the wireless frequency and the authentication type for the password yes you can change the name of the router change the wi-fi password but you cannot change the frequency which is a bit of a pain and again the same thing on all the other novas we've come across now we come down to the price at the moment the price for this device is roughly 300 uk pounds which is a lot of money for a mesh system don't get me wrong it's one hell of a good mesh system but is it worth 300 pounds only you can answer that unfortunately but for me i think it's probably worth it but when you consider the mw6 which specifications aren't that far off this you can pick it up at the moment uh roughly probably 150 pounds maybe 170 or something like that there's a big difference in price because for example you could pick up six nodes for the mw6 for the same price you can pick up just three nodes for the mw12 so it's down to what you're using it for for example we saw a difference between using the mw6 and the mw12 especially when getting further away that 25 meter range in basically a separate building we found the speeds were roughly 30 40 percent faster than mw6 the little brother should we say or little sister which is a lot better i'm going to say that can make well save a lot of time for us if our internet speed is going faster also you can connect up more devices to it as well so you've got basically better coverage better speeds more devices connect to it it's basically more more more but obviously it does cost you more as well if you're one of these people what wants the best of the best the fastest internet speeds the quickest response times but you've got to use wireless you want your gaming to have the best ping so you can react faster in your games and stuff like that then yes mw12 definitely for you and go for it every day of the week but if all you're doing is in a three-bedroom house and you need to just play on facebook and a few basic games then i suggest going for something like the mw 6. don't get me wrong the whole nova range is brilliant but obviously different ones suit different people but this one is aimed at basically people who want the best of the best big offices maybe you can use it as well multiple people can connect up or larger homes or for example us a home what's got basically a building to the side in our case a garage where they need that extra penetration from the wireless signal so what sort of award do we give the device like this well it's quite a hard one to do because we do highly recommend this but does it go that extra mile i think it does personally does come with a little bit of a cost but again you get what you pay for so the award we're going to give this is our hell yeah award you\n"