Luma Home WiFi System The Surround WiFi Router 2020 Detailed Review

Luma Home WiFi System Router 2020 Detailed Review. 

Luma Home WiFi System Router: One of the hardest tasks people are often faced with when they move into a new home is securing a consistently reliable internet connection. This is especially the case if you have more than a few bedrooms and additional square footage. Since Wi-Fi transmission caps out at a certain point, it can become weak as the distance from your router increases. To fix this, you’ll likely have to purchase additional hardware. 

So how do you secure full coverage in your home, regardless of your router’s location? Luma, the “Surround WiFi Router” maybe your best solution. 

Overview 

There’s a new type of wireless product hitting the market: Wi-Fi systems use individual modules to create a mesh network that delivers wireless networking to all areas of your home.

Luma Home WiFi System joins the AmpliFi, and Plume systems as the latest modular Wi-Fi solution to tout ease of use and whole-house coverage.

Luma makes it easy to invite users to a guest network and to create filter policies for each user. The system delivered good close-proximity throughput in our testing, but we found that performance took a hit as we moved away from the main module. 

Design and Features 

The 3-pack system of routers reviewed here (which Luma refers to as modules) is designed for the typical home, but you can add more modules (up to ten on a single network) if you require more coverage.

In the box, you also get three power supplies and one Ethernet cable. The hexagon-shaped modules are available in white, gold, orange, or silver, and measure 4.1 by 4.6 by 1.1 inches (HWD).

There’s a round LED ring on the face of the module that flashes blue during the initial setup, green when configuring the Wi-Fi network, and red when there’s an error.

The light goes out when everything is up and running. The modules communicate with one another via a proprietary mesh network and are designed to be placed within 40 feet of each other to blanket your home with Wi-Fi coverage. 

Installation and Performance 

To install the Luma routers, you have to download the free Android or iOS app. When you first open the app, you press the Setup Luma button and select how many modules you are installing.

You’ll be asked to answer questions, such as what type of home you live in (single-family, apartment/condo, or townhouse) and how many floors are in your home. 

You then have to tell the app where your router/modem is located by clicking on an area of your home (front, back, middle, upstairs, or downstairs) and then create a network name and password.

The app will prompt you to plug in the first Luma module, connect it to your modem, and restart the modem. You can then name the module using a list of room names (Master Bedroom, Kitchen, Office, etc).

The light ring will spin blue briefly and turn solid blue when the module is initialized. Press the Start Wi-Fi button and wait for the light ring to flash green seven times.

It will turn off when it’s ready. The entire process took less than five minutes. 

Performance

 

Under its smooth skin, Luma is a 2×2 router that delivers two independent lanes of data traffic, while using a pair of leading technologies — MU-MIMO, for efficient traffic management, and beamforming, to better direct the signal to the receiving antenna on a connected device. The Luma tops out at a maximum throughput of 1.3 Gbps. 

Luma isn’t designed for network tweakers 

The drawback to the Luma network is that there is very little customization involved as seen with the typical store-bought router.

Users can’t log in using a web browser to configure the finer details like specific channels, channel widths, and so on. Instead, the Wi-Fi Settings aspect in the app’s menu brings up a single page listing the network’s name, password, and options to set up a guest network.

There’s an “Advanced” option too that pulls up another page with a few more options. 

Don’t worry: Luma has your back 

As for the other three panels listed in the main window, the Security section provides a brief report showing the number of scanned events and alerts.

Tapping on the report panel pulls up a second page where users can toggle the security mode between three options: Off, Detect, and Block.

The Detect aspect will alert users of suspicious activity so they can manually take action whereas the Block option automatically blocks suspicious activity. 

PROS 

• Easy to install and configure. 
• Built-in security and content filtering. 
• Good close-proximity throughput in testing. 

CONS 

• Expensive. 
• Limited Ethernet ports. 
• Lacks dedicated band control. 
• No advanced management settings. 
• Middling range performance. 

The Verdict

 

We can safely conclude that although the Luma Home WiFi System has taken a long time for the company to produce and finally release, they put a lot of extra effort into making the system run flawlessly and with the best technology.

We think that it’s currently one of the best user-friendly products for home network and Internet security – especially for those who aren’t too savvy with a typical router.