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What is BT Complete Wi-Fi?
The BT Whole Home Wi-Fi Mesh System proved to be a great success. Generally fast and cheap, it was a decent upgrade for those who owned an existing router and did not want to replace it. With BT Complete Wi-Fi, BT offers a neater solution: a new router for the basic connection and disks that you distribute in your home to improve the signal.
Completely available exclusively for BT Plus customers, Complete Wi-Fi gives you a BT Smart Hub 2 router and a single Wi-Fi disk to increase the range of your wireless network. If there are still areas of darkness, customers can order up to two other Wi-Fi disks for free. If you still can not get a signal everywhere, BT will refund you £ 20.
Faster network speeds and a cost of just £ 5 per month for BT Plus customers make BT Complete Wi-Fi a worthy upgrade for existing BT Smart Hub owners. Few configuration options hurt slightly.
Related: Best Wi-Fi Extensions
BT Complete Wi-Fi – Design and Features
BT Complete Wi-Fi is available for BT Plus customers only. With BT Plus, you get a "Keep Connected" promise that the company will send you a 4G router if your broadband goes down, allowing you to stay online until the problem is resolved. By subscribing to a mobile phone contract, you get double data. The promise "Keep Connected Connected" is also valid: if your main broadband is down, your phones enjoy unlimited 4G for the duration of the show.
BT Complete Wi-Fi includes Smart Hub 2 and a single Wi-Fi disk designed to extend wireless range. The Smart Hub 2 is an evolution of the previous router's design. Externally, it looks pretty similar, but the status lights have moved to the center of the disc.
As far as routers are concerned, the Smart Hub 2 is harmless and should easily be integrated into your home. Like the old router, at the back is a reference card to remove, which shows the default secure wireless settings. It's convenient, especially when you have guests and want to give them your network password.
On the back of the router are four Gigabit Ethernet ports to add external devices, a USB device to share external storage, and a single RJ-11 port for your Internet connection.
The use of RJ-11 could be slightly disappointing for some. For example, I have an Openreach modem in a rack and I run an ethernet cable from where I want to place the router behind the TV. Switching to RJ-11 only meant that I had to install the Smart Hub 2 in the closet.
The disc looks similar to the one available with the Whole Home Wi-Fi system, except this time, the disc is black and does not have an extractable card with Wi-Fi details.
BT Whole Home Wi-Fi is not compatible with Complete Wi-Fi; you can only use the new disks with the existing system. Since BT will send you free to two other drives, this is not really a problem: with a fully loaded full Wi-Fi system, you have four access points (three disks). and the router) compared to Whole Home. The three discs of Wi-Fi.
BT Complete Wi-Fi – Interface and Features
BT Complete Wi-Fi is configured and configured through the new My BT app, rather than having a dedicated application of the type used with the Whole Home Wi-Fi system. It guides you through the configuration of the router, then in the search for the best location to place your records.
Ideally, it should be possible to place and configure the wireless drives, but it did not work for me. Instead, I had to connect the drive via Ethernet directly to the router for configuration. Once installed, the drive worked perfectly to bring it back to its main location. If you have multiple disks, you can repeat the process to install them as well.
Once the disk (s) are installed, you can use the application to manage your system, but note that many options are not available. You can turn off the light on your router and disks, or turn them off completely. This last option is useful if you have a drive in a bedroom and do not want to be disturbed by flashing lights. Note that the lights will turn on to warn you of any problem.
From the application, you can also change the network name and password, and that's it. There is currently no option for a guest network and the application does not allow you to control simple things such as port forwarding. BT indicated that additional features were being exploited. Options such as guest networks should therefore be considered in the future.
The Whole Home Wi-Fi system has also been launched in a fairly basic form, but only for new features soon added via online updates.
To change more advanced settings, you must access the web portal. This too is pretty basic, but from there you can change the automatic channel wireless networks to the ones you define. This can be useful if you are having interference issues with the automatic settings and want to lock your configuration.
Port forwarding is available through this interface and is the only way to configure the rules you need.
I recommend disabling Smart Setup. This feature redirects new devices that connect to a page on the configuration of other BT services and is particularly boring.
Parental control is available on the My BT online portal. Once activated, the rules apply to all devices connected to your network. It's unfortunate that you can not create profiles for each family member because they group all their devices. This would provide better control, including individual filtering levels and a setting that allows each family member to connect to the Internet. This puts BT Complete Wi-Fi behind the competition.
Of course, BT TV YouView is supported immediately, so you can stream live channels such as BT Sport without the need to configure features.
BT Complete Wi-Fi – Performance
The new system uses 802.11ac. For the Smart Hub 2, the 5GHz channel has a maximum throughput of 1733 Mbps and the 2.4GHz channel has a throughput of 289Mbps. The drives have the same speed of 1733Mbps 5GHz and a faster network of 385Mbps 2.4GHz.
As usual for mesh systems, the BT full Wi-Fi system combines the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks under the same name, using tape management to direct the connection of customers to the best network for their abilities and their reach. The system will also push customers to the most powerful drive to maintain performance while traveling through your home.
Using the TamoSoft Throughput Test, I have achieved impressive results. At 2 meters, I saw download speeds of 480.81 Mbps and download speeds of 199.21 Mbps (average of 340.01 Mbps). At 5 meters and a higher floor, I've seen download speeds of 417.92 Mbps and download speeds of 141.08 Mbps (average of 279.5 Mbps). At 10 meters and two stories higher, download speeds reached 315.09 Mbps, and download speeds remained high at 187.05 Mbps (average 251.07 Mbps).
This compares well to the Netgear Orbi RBK50 system, although it is 10 meters up on the second floor, the tri-band system being a bit more powerful at range.
Why buy the BT Complete Wi-Fi?
BT Complete Wi-Fi throughput has successfully tracked the Netgear Orbi RBK50, both systems using a router and a single disk / satellite. Since BT Complete Wi-Fi only costs £ 5 per month for BT Plus customers, it's a great upgrade for those who use an older hub. At this price, it would take more than four years to the BT system to cost you more than the Orbi.
This is not the whole story, however. Although BT Complete Wi-Fi is fast and easy to configure, it lacks many features. There is no guest network at the moment and no way to set individual parental controls.
In addition, satellites have only one Ethernet port, making them less useful when you need to connect other wired devices. For those who want more control over their networks, more features and more Ethernet ports, the Netgear RBK50 remains the first choice. Its application is better, it has a guest network and parental controls are available for individual members of the family. It's a little faster too.
That said, if you want something simple, fast and cheap – and you have a BT broadband connection – then BT Complete Wi-Fi is a great choice.
Verdict
BT Complete Wi-Fi, powerful and value for money, is a decent upgrade for older router users, but is not particularly feature-rich.
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