My family lives in a somewhat large house, and Xfinity's 'Wireless Gateway' router has never done a great job at coverage. Several rooms had poor reception or dead spots, particularly in the upstairs area. I bought a basic Netgear range extender as a band-aid solution, but for whatever reason, some of my devices (including my Google Pixel) still refuse to connect to it.

Last year at CES, Linksys announced its first mesh Wi-Fi system, called 'Velop.' The tri-band 2x2 802.11ac connectivity was a major selling point, but it was rather expensive — a 3-pack would set you back $500. The company launched a new dual-band Velop lineup last month, created to directly compete with the Google Wifi and other consumer mesh network systems.