I thought I’d give an update for anyone that’s interested.
I ended up going with a 3-pack of the Amplifi HD Routers. The reasons for this were that I had height and power restrictions where I wanted to put the mesh points. The plugin antennas were not suitable and the aesthetic appeal (don’t judge me, high-WAF means I get more toys in the future ). Plus, running the other 2 routers as mesh points gives me the option of having ethernet backhaul in the future.
They arrived on Saturday, after a long delay (3+ weeks) in shipping and were installed in less than an hour. Installation is done through a phone/tablet app, but unlike Google Wifi or the others, you don’t need to tie these to a social media or third-party account unless you want to manage your network remotely.
Holy. Shit. Batman. These are night and day over my ageing Telstra supplied wireless modem/router. At the furthest point in my mesh, where the mesh point is talking to another mesh point instead of the router, I’m seeing an average throughput of 250Mbps (before I was barely getting 3Mbps). Elsewhere in the house, I’m averaging around 500-800Mbps of throughput which is significantly faster than what I was seeing before.