Share JeffSS's profile
JeffSS
JeffSS's stats
- Review count1
- Helpfulness votes11
- First reviewAugust 23, 2016
- Last reviewAugust 23, 2016
- Featured reviews0
- Average rating5
Reviews comments
- Review comment count0
- Helpfulness votes0
- First review commentNone
- Last review commentNone
- Featured review comments0
Questions
- Question count0
- Helpfulness votes0
- First questionNone
- Last questionNone
- Featured questions0
Answers
- Answer count0
- Helpfulness votes0
- First answerNone
- Last answerNone
- Featured answers0
- Best answers0
JeffSS's Reviews
Provide a strong Wi-Fi signal in every room and forget about buffering and dead zones with this Luma surround Wi-Fi system. The devices adapt to your home and automatically fine-tune their signal in real time to always offer peak performance and speed. A mobile app lets you set parental controls and pause access to the Internet during family time, and sharing your WiFi with visitors is simple, too-- no more remembering complex passwords, one tap and they’re good to go with Luma’s surround WiFi system.
Customer Rating
5
Surprising Increase in Speed (doubled wifi speeds!
on August 23, 2016
Posted by: JeffSS
This is kind of a long review, so in summary: Wifi download went from 70mbps to 170mbps+ throughout the whole house, setup was painless (their customer support is fantastic), and controlling content for individual users/devices is really easy to setup and works as expected.
Pro tip: If you have a router/modem combo (like mine from Xfinity), enable "bridge" mode. This will turn off your router's wifi so you only have Luma running out of your modem. I called Luma support and they walked me through this.
On to the review - I was blown away by the increase in speed that I experienced with this product. I pay for 150MBPS internet from Xfinity. Through their modem, I would consistently get 70-75mbps over wifi on the main floor of our home - which was acceptable.
However, I didn't buy Luma expecting a big increase in speed everywhere. I bought Luma for two reasons. First, I wanted to get the same 70mbps in the basement as I was getting throughout the rest of the home. Second, we just bought our kids a tablet and I wanted more control over the content they were consuming. Honestly, it's an android tablet and I wasn't sure how to setup parental controls. I'm sure there is a way to do it - but Luma seemed like a really simple way to kill two birds with one stone.
I looked to Luma for improving my wifi speed in the basement because streaming netflix / hulu / on-demand didn't work well down there. Signal was poor in the basement and the speeds would sit around 20MBPS (via speedtest.net on my phone).
Fast forward to setting up the Luma in each room. The app is very well done and guides you through the setup process seamlessly. I thought the packaging was nice and simple - although I did have a tough time sliding off the outer shell so I could open the box. Anyways, my router/modem is on the main level. I set that one up first, then upstairs in the master, then the basement.
The first speedtest I did was on the main level near the router and I noticed that my phone was switching back and forth between my Xfinity Wifi and Luma. I uploaded a screenshots of the results. The bottom two tests were my xfinity wifi which sits around 70mbps like I said. The middle two were Luma, but it was switching between signals. And the top 3 were all Luma - HUGE JUMP IN SPEED. If you can't open the screenshot, I went from 70mbps to 159, then 167, then 175. This is by far the fastest speed I've ever seen over our wifi.
During these tests I decided to give Luma support a call (see the 10 min gap between 159 and 175 on the screenshot) and explained the issue I was having with wifi switching back and forth. They suggested enabling "bridge" mode on my router, and this something I could call Xfinity to do for me, or they would walk me through the process themselves.
Not interested in dealing with Xfinity customer support, I opted for the latter and they took me through each step (which is basically 1. Log into router 2. Click big "Enable" button under "Bridge Mode").
Support gets a 10/10 from me. The guy I spoke with was extremely friendly and knowledgable.
Finally, on to the two reasons I originally purchased Luma - basement signal and parental controls. Since installing Luma my basement speeds are anywhere from 80mbps to 100mbps. - and the signal is steady. Not quite what I get on the main level next to the router - but still FAR better than what I was getting before. So check that box.
Parental controls were very easy to setup. I creased a user for my daughter, assigned the new tablet to her, then set a G rating for content. That's basically it. She's been busy the past few days so I haven't had a chance to see how the monitoring works, or exactly what type of content is being filtered, but I'll update if there's anything notable that happens.
In summary, I think this is a great product and I'm excited to see how it continues to evolve. There is more I can do with it (like setting times of day to disable devices) so I'll dive into that at some point - but I've gotten a ton of value from this product from the speed boost alone. It's a pricier product, but works leaps and bounds better than the wifi extender I tried and the parental controls are a big value-add for me.
I would recommend this to a friend!
Share this review:
+11points
11of 11voted this as helpful.
JeffSS's Review Comments
JeffSS has not submitted comments on any reviews.
JeffSS's Questions
JeffSS has not submitted any questions.
JeffSS's Answers
JeffSS has not submitted any answers.