In 2018, Amazon brought me in as the lead UX Sound Designer for Astro, their first consumer home robot. Astro used cameras and other sensors to map and navigate your home and workplace, and could proactively patrol, check up on loved ones, and transport small items using its built-in cargo bin. While there was a well-defined feature set and form factor, initially there was no character direction. In fact, even before Astro had a name, there were two main questions—was it simply Alexa on wheels, or was it a robot with its own character?

The Astro team was divided. One option was to focus on Alexa, and treat the mobile robot simply as an added utility. I argued for Astro to not focus on Alexa, along with the majority of the UX team. Our belief was that a thing that moves through your home and turns toward you with intent can never be just an appliance. People would ascribe character to whether we wanted them to or not, and so the only question was whether we shaped that character or let it happen by accident.

Ultimately, Astro became Astro rather than Alexa, and user testing backed up our decision. People didn’t see the robot as Alexa. They saw it as its own character, and that’s what they wanted it to be. Alexa on the device felt somewhat strange and creepy, but building Astro its own voice was too slow and expensive in 2018. So, we settled on Alexa as a supporting character that handled any actual talking, while Astro was the main character, communicating as much as it could without words, through sound, motion, and facial expressions.

I had been brought on to the Astro team to define the robot’s sound design language and voice. But there was no one to flesh out the robot’s actual character. You cannot make a single real decision about a character without defining it first. Every choice about how Astro moved, sounded, paused, or reacted was a character choice, and those choices required all disciplines working together. As Sound Lead, I was weaving together sound, motion, and character, and how they played together inside each story moment. The animators, who programmed Astro’s motion and facial expressions, were extraordinary at what they did, but the emotional arc they were animating came from the sound (and therefore character) work first. So I stepped into that role, which is where my real work started. What I learned about building character for robots applies to nearly everything being built in embodied AI right now.

Character Is a Design System

Developing a character for Astro meant answering questions that had never been asked about a product at Amazon: What is the emotional range of this robot’s baseline state? How does this robot communicate uncertainty without eroding trust? Where is the line between being expressive and annoying? What are the vulnerabilities of this device’s character?

These are design questions. They have real answers, and every team working on the product has to build from them. For example, Astro’s emotional range was designed to be relatively small at first. We never wanted Astro to get too sad or too angry. It could play sad, but would snap out of it quickly and end the reaction on a high note to keep things positive.

Character leaks out of every seam and can create a disjointed experience if not defined correctly. Even if it’s just animation timing that’s slightly off, or a response that’s technically correct but contextually tone-deaf, users feel every one of these inconsistencies, even if they can’t name them. Watch what happens at the beginning and end of this Sing sequence:

Astro goes from nothing, into the emotional moment, and then lands back on nothing. No build up, no cool down, no sense that the feeling came from somewhere or had anywhere to go. I pushed hard for better character stitching, the transitions in and out of expressive moments that make a performance feel continuous rather than assembled, but it never got implemented. The moment itself works. But without the stitching, it reads as a clip playing on a robot rather than coming from within the robot character itself.

Story and Sound at the Beginning

We had decided that Astro would have no spoken dialogue, but it had something that functioned the same way: a vocabulary of sounds, tones, and rhythms that acted as its voice. This vocabulary became the leading output of the character’s personality. The robot’s motion and facial expressions were built around it.

Astro’s wake-up sequence is a great example. Waking wasn’t just a boot animation on the screen; it was an entire performance. Slow and humble at first, the robot oriented itself quietly, then stretched its screen, checked its wheels, and finally, with an upward gesture toward its telescoping mast, it popped it up slightly, and did a little dance of joy. Sound, motion, and eyes hit every beat together in full choreography.

The character’s output in that sequence was first written as a story. Astro is waking up in its new home for the first time. Its main aspiration is to be part of a family, so this is the moment it has been waiting for, this is its purpose. Being the responsible character that it is, it wants to make sure everything is good to go before it introduces itself and starts learning its new home.

This narrative came first because it drove every other decision that we made. After the story was written, sound gave that story a metaphorical voice: the excited tones, the pacing as it checked its wheels, and the bright melodic phrase as Astro looked up at its new family for the first time and introduced itself. Once the sound was laid down, animation did their thing with motion and facial expressions, taking cues from the emotional arc the sound had established. Motion didn’t lead—it followed the feeling of the story and the sounds, the same way an animator follows a recorded vocal take.

That wake up sequence became one of the most-discussed moments in early user testing. People described it as “alive.” What they were responding to wasn’t any single element. It was all three channels (sound, motion, and facial expressions) expressing the same defined character in harmony.

Context Is Where Character Becomes Real

The most compelling characters are defined not by a fixed disposition but by how they respond to their environments and the people in them. They’re still recognizably themselves even as they adapt. This is what I call contextual character. A robot living in a home doesn’t occupy a single emotional state. It moves through rooms with different energy, encounters people in different moods, operates at different times of day, and responds to an endless range of social situations it was never explicitly designed for.

We got close to a contextual character output with Astro’s sound. When a specific piece of environmental context was fed in, the system adapted beautifully, and Astro felt completely alive. But every state like this was still a prediction we made by hand—a situation we had to imagine in advance and design a response for. A random home throws more situations at a robot than anyone can possibly predict, so there was always a longer tail of moments the system was never prepared for.

The difference between a product people describe as “smart” and one they describe as “aware” often comes down to this. Smartness is capability. Awareness is context. Presence is character. And character is always in reaction to the people around it, to its environment, to its own evolving state. That’s what makes it feel like something is emotionally present with you.

This is where AI changes the game for character design in ways that go well beyond what was possible with Astro. AI-driven adaptation doesn’t require the contextual predictions that we relied on. It learns the specific rhythms, preferences, and emotional context of the people it lives and works with. The character doesn’t just respond to context. It grows into it.

What Industry Is Missing

The character and soul of the impending wave of embodied AI products appears to almost always be an afterthought. And character defined late is character defined by default. It becomes the sum of a thousand small decisions made by different people thinking about anything but character. People project character onto devices whether you plan for it or not, especially if those devices move—a robot that moves is already a character. If nobody has designed this character, the result will be products that feel like nothing, or worse, feel confusing and not trustworthy. Technically impressive, but lifeless.

We did not get this fully right with Astro. So many things were moving in parallel that character was rarely treated as a utility, and it made sense why. When you are building a first-of-its-kind product, the things that are the loudest are the ones that break, the deadlines, the costs, the features a customer can point to on a box. Character is quieter than all of that. It’s easy to assume it can come later. On a team as large as the Amazon Astro team, it’s lucky to get any idea onto the roadmap when it is competing with a hundred others that all feel more urgent in the moment. None of this came from people not caring. It came from character being the kind of thing that is hard to prioritize until you see what its absence costs you.

My Asks to Product Leaders

If you are building a product that will share physical or conversational space with people, three things are worth considering:

Define character before you define interactions. You need a defensible character with enough emotional logic to answer hard questions consistently. Find answers to character questions early, and have every discipline build from the same foundation.

Build story and sound into the character pipeline, not the production pipeline. Story and sound developed alongside character definition has the chance to inform motion, expression, and interaction logic. This requires a different kind of collaboration, and a different kind of hire.

Design for adaptation, not just consistency. A consistent character is necessary, but the products that will matter most in people’s lives are the ones that deepen through use. The infrastructure to support that is more and more accessible, but the design thinking to take advantage of it is still rare.

An unabridged version of this story can be read on Medium.

Sennheiser has launched its first serious challenger in the growing open-ear earbuds market, with the new Accentum Clip promising the situational awareness that this category is known for. It does so without sacrificing sound quality.

Open-ear earbuds have become increasingly popular among commuters, runners and gym-goers who want to stay aware of their surroundings while listening to music. However, the trade-off has often been weaker audio performance. That’s exactly what Sennheiser is aiming to address here.

The Accentum Clip uses a 12mm dynamic driver and carries Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification, with support for LDAC on compatible devices for higher-quality music streaming. In addition, Sennheiser has included a Dynamic EQ feature that automatically adjusts audio performance at lower volumes. This helps maintain bass and clarity without introducing distortion.

The earbuds feature a clip-style design that sits outside the ear canal rather than sealing it off. According to Sennheiser, this allows users to hear traffic, conversations and other environmental sounds naturally, without relying on transparency modes.

Advertisement

Each earbud weighs just 6.8g and uses a flexible silicone bridge designed to fit a wide range of ear shapes. An IP54 rating means they’re protected against dust and sweat, making them a natural fit for workouts and outdoor use.

Advertisement

Battery life is another highlight. The Accentum Clip can deliver up to nine hours of listening on a single charge, while the included charging case extends total playback to 36 hours. Notably, a quick 10-minute charge provides up to two hours of listening time.

Elsewhere, the earbuds are powered by Bluetooth 6.0. They support multipoint connectivity and Google Fast Pair. Furthermore, they use dual microphones with AI-powered noise reduction to improve call quality in noisy environments.

The Accentum Clip will be available in Black and Cream from 23 July 2026 in the UK, with pricing set at £149.

Advertisement

Adobe is bringing AI assistants to some of its biggest creative apps.

New chatbot-style tools are now rolling out in public beta for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, InDesign and Frame.io. The new assistants are designed to handle repetitive tasks and help users make edits using natural language prompts.

Rather than digging through menus or learning complex workflows, users can simply describe what they want to do. Then, the software does much of the heavy lifting.

Notification overload

Feature (and tracking) fatigue

Will Shanklin for Engadget

In this economy?

Road safety

Style and substance

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

Opting for something simpler

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

Waymo had to recall a similar number last month after it discovered a bug that allowed AVs to drive onto flooded roads.

A new recall notice shows that Waymo is pulling nearly 3,900 robotaxis from US streets over a software issue that lets autonomous vehicles (AVs) enter and drive in closed freeway construction zones.

This comes just a month after the company had to recall a similar number of cars after it found a different bug that allowed its AVs to drive onto flooded roadways.

“Under certain circumstances”, Waymo’s fifth-generation automated driving system (ADS) software could allow AVs to enter and drive “at speed” in freeway construction zones, according to the safety recall report filed with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on 17 June.

The ADS in question is unable to recognise construction zones, or “inappropriately” prioritises avoiding other freeway hazards, the document noted. Waymo said it owns all of the 3,871 robotaxis it is recalling.

Mounting safety concerns alongside political roadblocks hindering its rollout plans in the US are bringing into question whether Waymo – or its competitors – might succeed in enabling wider robotaxi adoption.

Waymo said it began monitoring the latest issue after six separate incidents in April where its robotaxis failed to recognise, and drove past, ramp closure signs into pre-planned freeway construction zones in Arizona.

Seven similar incidents in mid-May saw Waymo AVs drive between traffic cones to enter freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company decided to recall the cars on 8 June.

“We identified an area of improvement regarding performance around freeway construction zones,” the company said in a statement to news publications. “We voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators, and decided to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA.”

This is the sixth recall Waymo has had to issue for its robotaxis, TechCrunch reported. In December, the company issued a software recall after its AVs drove dangerously around school buses. Other recalls involved low-speed collisions with gates and telephone poles.

Waymo is currently being investigated by the US vehicle safety authority after one of its AVs struck a child near a school in California.

The company also faced major disruption to its services in late December when a massive power outage in San Francisco stalled its AVs, causing disrupted traffic and gridlock conditions.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

‘If this pilot delivers what we expect, it adds real momentum to Ireland’s decarbonisation story,’ said Equinix’s Irish head Peter Lantry.

Global data centre giant Equinix is testing its first hydrogen-powered back-up units in Ireland.

The 12-week pilot programme will test two hydrogen power generators developed by UK clean energy company GeoPura situated at Equinix’s DB3 data centre in Dublin’s Blanchardstown. The units are currently being used to support cooling systems within the facility.

The pilot is in conjunction with GeoPura and ESB – which owns one of the units. A similar joint project between ESB and Microsoft was launched in 2024.

The three partners believe that the project could provide solutions for Ireland’s grid constraints, which faces mounting pressure from data centres that consumed 22pc of the country’s total metred electricity in 2024. That figure is only set to rise as more companies situate these massive energy users in Ireland.

Equinix and ESB said they will gain valuable data insights into carbon reduction potential as a result of the project, which could be beneficial to policymakers and universities as they assess Ireland’s renewable needs.

Currently, Ireland has 72 data centre buildings that created more than 850,000 jobs and added more than €100bn in annual gross value to the economy, according to a March report from KPMG. The Government says data centres directly employ only 21,000.

Meanwhile, climate activists say that the rapid expansion of data centres cost the Irish economy €715m between 2015 and 2023. Climate group Friends of the Earth, in a recent report, said that households could face an additional €1.43bn in electricity costs linked to data centre growth between 2026 and 2034.

In January, the Government launched a new plan to attract more investments in highly energy-intensive sectors by offering companies the ability co-locate alongside indigenous renewable energy resources. The companies can still locate developments outside these locations.

“As data demand continues to grow, solutions like hydrogen power units offer a reliable, clean alternative to traditional backup generation,” said Paul Lennon, the head of asset development at ESB generation trading.

Peter Lantry, the managing director of Equinix Ireland said: “If this pilot delivers what we expect, it adds real momentum to Ireland’s decarbonisation story.”

The new hydrogen generators are a first for Equinix’s 280-plus data centre footprint worldwide. The two deployed generators have helped Equinix bring its power use effectiveness (PEU) – a metric used to measure the efficiency of power usage by data centres – to below 1.3, the company said.

A lower PEU means data centres are using a majority of the energy consumed for computing. An ideal PEU is 1, which would mean that all the energy consumed by the facility is used for IT, with no overhead for cooling, lighting or other support.

The units, housed in shipping containers, are powered by green hydrogen and use advanced fuel cell technology that allows the system to produce “clean, silent” energy, Equinix said.

They make “zero” direct onsite emissions, and only produce water and heat as byproducts at the point of use. The back-up generators can also respond in real-time to changes in grid capacity and turn on on its own when needed.

“As demand for digital infrastructure continues to grow, operators are facing increasing pressure to secure reliable power, reduce emissions and minimise the impact on local communities,” said GeoPura CEO Andrew Cunningham.

“This trial shows how hydrogen can help address those challenges today. By combining hydrogen fuel cell technology with battery systems and uninterruptible power capabilities, we’re delivering reliable zero direct onsite-emission power that can respond instantly when required.”

The partners also believe that hydrogen power in this context could offer a viable lower-carbon alternative for construction sites and other temporary power needs traditionally reliant on diesel generation. Hydrogen fuel units such as these are scalable up to 50 MW to support both backup and prime power applications.

According to the trio, the waste heat could also make potential uses for future district heating projects and the water can be recycled into the on-site cooling systems.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

The Hidden Cost of Cyber Risk report, found that often the challenges being faced by companies are as a result of everyday cyber disruption, rather than large scale isolated issues.

The eir business Hidden Cost of Cyber Risk report, which is supported by Microsoft and the Kemmy Business School of the University of Limerick, has found that on average cyber attacks are costing Irish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) up to €3.4bn annually. 

However, the greatest impact is not from large-scale, one-off breaches, but rather frequent, day-to-day cybersecurity-related disruptions, that are in turn, driving losses for many Irish companies. 

Reportedly, SMEs lose more than 7.2m working days every year due to cyber incidents, with affected businesses experiencing multiple incidents annually. For individual firms, this equates to nearly three working weeks lost annually. 

Susan Brady, the managing director at eir business, said: “This report shows that cyber risk is not just about rare, large-scale attacks. 

“For most SMEs, it is the cumulative impact of everyday incidents, from phishing emails and ransomware attempts to service disruptions, that drives significant loss of time and productivity. These risks affect not just individual businesses, but supply chains, customers and the wider business ecosystem.

Challenges big and small

The report noted that, while single events can have significant financial implications, research suggests that the cumulative effect of repeated disruption, downtime, lost productivity and operational interruption creates the greatest economic cost per SME annually. The report also found that “much of this impact is avoidable”, for organisations exhibiting higher ‘cyber preparedness’.   

The report stated that the companies with more cyber preparedness tend to experience fewer incidents, lower overall losses and significantly less disruption. Moreover, the organisations with higher levels of preparedness can reduce annual downtime from more than 30 days to around five days, while structured data management significantly lowers the likelihood of experiencing an attack.

Commenting on the report, the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Alan Dillon, TD said, “Small and medium-sized enterprises are central to the Irish economy and ensuring they are resilient in an increasingly digital environment is critical. 

“This research highlights the real and growing impact that cyber risk is having on businesses across the country, not just in financial terms, but in disrupted operations and lost productivity. However, with the right support, guidance and focus on practical measures, businesses can strengthen their resilience and reduce their exposure. “

Dr Mauricio Perez-Alaniz, an assistant prof in the Department of Economics, for the Kemmy Business School welcomed the attention to the issue. He said, “While SMEs are increasingly being reminded about the potential productivity and sustainability gains that can arise from the adoption of digital technologies, the issue of cyber risk, and the associated costs of cyberattacks, require more attention.

“This report seeks to do just that. It provides an intuitive approach to quantify the costs of cyber-attacks in terms of direct economic costs, and more importantly, potential costs associated with downtime. It is important to keep in mind that fully quantifying such costs is difficult. While the estimates presented by the report are necessarily high-level and resting on a set of assumptions, they offer important insights into the scale and nature of the issue.”

In early June, ESET published a similar report, the SMB Cyber Readiness Index 2026, which also indicated that some organisations are neglecting to pay attention to everyday threats, amid a sharper focus on large-scale, one-off cyber incidents. The report found that businesses are risking harm and loss of profits by allowing threats perceived to be smaller, to ‘pass through’.

Previously commenting on the report, Michal Jankech, the vice-president of enterprise, SMB and MSP at ESET, said: “While 78pc of SMBs recognise cybersecurity’s strategic importance, inconsistent understanding of key threats, technology and terminology, including MDR and security posture, suggests there is still room for improvement. Any improvement will have to start with a reality check. 

“We’ve found SMBs’ concerns are often shaped by headlines on emerging threats like AI-driven attacks, while more routine risks, phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities and lack of monitoring, are underestimated. This hints that many respondents misperceive their security posture and resilience.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Integrity360’s Richard Ford discusses the unease caused by Anthropic’s advanced cybersecurity AI model, and how cyber teams can prepare for such technology.

In the time since Anthropic first revealed Claude Mythos in April, discourse around the cybersecurity AI model has been unceasing.

Anthropic’s claims that Mythos has seemingly advanced capabilities in finding and exploiting software security vulnerabilities caused a frenzy in public and private sectors around the world – including in Ireland.

“The issue is not that Anthropic has created this. The issue is that Anthropic has demonstrated that this is possible,” said Richard Browne, director of the National Cyber Security Centre, when speaking to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence shortly after the Mythos reveal.

Mythos has not been released to the general public yet, though Anthropic had been granting access to a pool of companies, banks and authorities – that is, before a recent US government order resulted in the company disabling the model for all of its users.

But while institutions and governments panic over the capabilities of this new AI model, Integrity360 CTO Richard Ford says Mythos should be approached with “measured scrutiny rather than hype”.

“Based on the information available so far, the model appears capable as an autonomous attack tool, but there is no clear evidence that it materially outperforms existing large language models in this area,” he tells SiliconRepublic.com.

“The more important point is how it could be used. In the hands of threat actors, Mythos does not need to be revolutionary to be dangerous.

“It would still be highly effective when targeting organisations with weak security postures, particularly those lacking strong access controls, patching discipline and visibility across their environments.”

Hype and disruption

Ford says that much of what is driving both the hype and the concern around Mythos comes from self-reported results, with limited independent validation.

This makes it difficult to separate genuine technical advancement from narrative, he says.

“There is a legitimate question around whether the capabilities are being overstated or simply presented without enough context.

“Early claims of large-scale vulnerability discovery sound significant, but without external benchmarking or reproducibility, it is hard to assess how meaningful those findings are in practice.”

Ford adds that in the light of Anthropic’s previous difficulties with the US government, sceptics could reasonably question whether the Mythos announcement was “partly about shaping perception as much as demonstrating capability”.

But what if the purported sophistication of Mythos is as significant as Anthropic claims?

“If the claims hold true, there is a clear view that models like Mythos could begin to disrupt areas such as bug bounty programmes and the wider ethical hacking market,” says Ford. “The concern is not that human researchers become obsolete overnight, but that AI can significantly accelerate vulnerability discovery, shifting the balance in terms of speed, scale and cost.

“We are already seeing early indicators of this trend. AI-driven platforms are performing strongly in competitive CTF environments, where rapid analysis, pattern recognition and automation provide a clear advantage.

“That raises questions about how traditional bug bounty ecosystems evolve, especially if AI can identify issues faster than human researchers or commoditise parts of the process.”

How can organisations prepare?

Though Mythos has not been fully released to the public yet – and is currently disabled as of last week – Ford has some advice for cybersecurity teams regarding the eventual widespread availability of AI models such as Mythos.

“Cybersecurity teams should treat models like Mythos as an acceleration of existing threats rather than something entirely new,” he says. “The priority is getting the fundamentals right, because AI will exploit weaknesses faster, not differently.

“Strong identity controls, consistent patching and full visibility of assets remain critical. Organisations that lack these basics will be the easiest targets for AI-assisted attacks. In short, the better your fundamentals, the more resilient you will be as AI-driven threats become mainstream.”

Ford says organisations should avoid reacting to Mythos with panic, but should also take its implications seriously.

“The direction of travel is clear: AI is becoming embedded in both attack and defence,” he says.

He believes any organisation that is not building an AI-driven cyber defence will fall behind and “move directly into the crosshairs of attackers”.

“That does not mean chasing hype, but it does mean investing in capabilities that improve speed, scale and decision-making across detection and response,” he explains.

“At the same time, this only works if the fundamentals are in place. The organisations that will succeed will be those that combine solid core controls with intelligent automation, allowing them to keep pace as the threat landscape continues to accelerate.”

The reveal of Mythos has undoubtedly rocked the boat in relation to AI and its place in cybersecurity.

But while many worry about the impact of Mythos’s capacity for cyber exploitation, Ford believes the most significant long-term effect of such AI technology will be “a structural shift” in how quickly and cheaply cyberattacks can be executed – rather than a single breakthrough capability.

“If models like Mythos mature as suggested, they will compress the time between identifying an exposure and exploiting it,” he says. “Tasks that once required skilled researchers and time investment, such as reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, and initial exploitation, will become increasingly automated and scalable.

“That changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing threat actors to operate at higher volume and with greater efficiency. All of this depends of course on whether Mythos is indeed just hype or the real deal.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Netgear Orbi 970 (2-Pack) for $1,300: There’s no denying that the tri-band Wi-Fi 7 Netgear Orbi 970 is an impressive quad-band mesh. This mesh system is incredibly fast, reliable, and provides expansive coverage with plenty of high-speed Ethernet ports. However, the astronomical price makes it hard to recommend. You can get similar performance for less, and full parental controls now require a separate subscription from the security software. Ultimately, this system is only worth considering if you have a large home, a multi-gig connection, and a generous budget.

More Wi-Fi 6 or 6E Mesh Systems I Liked

TP-Link Deco XE70 Pro

Photograph: Simon Hill

TP-Link Deco XE70 Pro (3-Pack) for $250: Support for Wi-Fi 6E, which operates on the 6-GHz band, is common, but with Wi-Fi 7 rolling out, 6E routers and mesh systems like this are falling in price. A two-pack of this tri-band mesh system is relatively affordable and enough to cover most homes, making this perhaps the best Wi-Fi 6E mesh for most people. I also tested the XE75 ($270 for a three-pack), which is almost identical, but has three Gigabit ports and no multi-Gig. There is also the XE75 Pro ($400 for a three-pack), which features the 2.5-Gbps port and theoretically offers slightly more bandwidth but is far more expensive. Since TP-Link frequently discounts its products, the standard model is the best choice for most people—though multi-gig users should opt for the Pro.

TP-Link Deco X50 Outdoor for $150: This was our previous outdoor pick, and it’s still a good dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router that will form a mesh with any Deco system (I tested with the Deco X50 4G). It’s a solid performer, but with the Wi-Fi 7 BE25 Outdoor coming in around the same price, I’d pick that instead.

TP-Link Deco X55 (3-Pack) for $150: This affordable Wi-Fi 6 mesh delivers decent coverage and performance, with optional parental controls and antivirus protection, making it ideal for a modest family home. This is a dual-band system (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). There are two gigabit Ethernet ports on each router. Coverage and speeds are solid, falling short of the Asus XT8 but beating systems like the entry-level Eero 6.

Google Nest Wifi Pro

Photograph: Simon Hill

Google Nest Wifi Pro (3-Pack) for $400: Mesh systems don’t come much simpler than this. Google’s Nest Wifi Pro is a tri-band (2.4, 5, and 6 GHz) Wi-Fi 6E system that works via Google Home, and each router sports two 1-gigabit ports. The setup is super simple, coverage and performance were solid and consistent, and my testing was refreshingly free from glitches and buffering, though WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu had issues that Google’s customer support could not fix. The Nest Wifi Pro came mid-table in raw speed at short, mid, and long range, and settings in the Home app are very bare-bones. Disappointingly, it is not backward compatible with older Nest routers.

TP-Link Deco X20 (3-Pack) for $130: The Deco X20 is an affordable Wi-Fi 6 mesh that delivers decent coverage and performance, with optional parental controls and antivirus protection, making it ideal for an average family home. This dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) mesh was our budget pick for a long time, and there are two gigabit Ethernet ports on each router. Coverage and speeds are decent, falling short of the Asus XT8 but beating systems like the entry-level Eero 6. The app is straightforward, and it’s easy to set up a guest network. Originally released with the free HomeCare software, this has since changed to a HomeShield system, so it’s not as good a bargain as it once was.

Linksys Velop Pro 6E

Courtesy of Linksys

Linksys Velop Pro 6E (2-Pack) for $280: Once up and running, this tri-band (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) Wi-Fi 6E system offers impressive range and decent speeds. It is competitively priced with quite a few dips in cost (don’t pay full price), comes with basic parental controls, and offers handy features like device prioritization and a guest network. But I had a terrible time with the installation. The app continually failed partway through the process, and I had to factory reset the routers. Even then, it took multiple attempts to add the nodes. It’s also not backward compatible with older Velop “Intelligent Mesh” systems, because this is a “Cognitive Mesh” system.

TP-Link XE200 (2-Pack) for $290: This tri-band Wi-Fi 6E mesh system (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) was fast, offered consistently wide coverage, and blew away the Wi-Fi 6 competition at close range. I downloaded a 50-GB game in 20 minutes and didn’t encounter any issues during testing. As it uses the 6 GHz band for backhaul, you have to think about placement and try to keep routers in sight of each other and within 50 feet (or better, connect them via Ethernet cable). While the XE200 is better than the XE70 Pro above, it’s simply too expensive, though it has seen some deep discounts recently, so keep an eye out for deals.