Meross Whole Home Mesh WiFi System MMW120

An interesting title with the assumption of a certain “home” size. I’m confident this mesh WiFi router pair will handle our small-ish home here in Spain – the box claims “Covers up to 300m2” and “Ideal for 1-500Mbps fibre”. It says nothing about 100Mps incoming 4G but then I guess those of us using mobile providers for the home are a tiny minority. Here’s the Meross link for the mesh routers. (I’m sure that’s not how you spell “pairing” 🙂 )

I think back in our last UK home, perhaps 3 of these mesh routers would have done the job given that the house was very long (U-shaped – an old cottage with flat-roof wings at both ends) and made from 200 year old solid stone!

However, I’m just being awkward here, let’s take a look at this Mesh router pair I just received. The tech spec on the box says that the system handles Wireless 2.4Ghz at 300Mbps and 5Ghz at 856Mbps.

There are also available 2* Gigabit ports on each unit with auto wan/lan detect. Auto-pairing, seamless roaming, MU-Mimo – and there’s a 2-year warranty – that’s a good start.

Before any of my regular viewers say anything – yes, I know, Meross might normally be thought of as providing smart plugs and lights etc., I’ve reviewed LOTS of their smartplugs in the past (search for MEROSS) and they are good for for those smartplugs where I’m not fussed about reporting back to China – actually I DO make good use of the 16A Meross Smart Plugs for simple control (with their remote MEROSS APP) for our twin hot water tanks, dishwasher and washing machine – but I digress.

There’s no point in showing you more than the front view and the underside of these units as there are no other connections, buttons or lights than what you see here above and below right.

We’re looking at power input and WAN/LAN connections on the right photo – and above – setup and indicator light in each case.

So, I’m simply going to plug one of the units at random, LAN to LAN on my network to test – and apply power from one of the small 12v 1A plug-in-the-wall supplies provided in the box.

I’m using one of the two supplied Ethernet cables (any old RJ45 Ethernet cable would do)

Below I plugged power into one of the routers at random – waited 2 minutes until that front light (starting in RED) turned solid BLUE then plugged in the Ethernet lead into my system and the router.

Straight-forward up to now. The instructions say to look for the Meross WiFi access point on your phone. I did and told my phone to use it (the instructions referred to my computer but I can’t write this while not having access to my normal WiFi).

My phone SHOULD have seen two Meross access points – a 2.4G and a 5G access point. In fact it saw MERROS_MW_4629 only but that’s due to the combining function in my phone. I connected no problem. I then pointed the phone browser to 192.168.58.1 as instructed. On the top right I noted a language selector – default was German – this was easily switched to English.

I was asked to set a password. I did and a wizard page opened up. I was then asked to setup a WiFi name (SSID) and password. I used the default setting for encryption (WPA-WPA2-PSK) and gave the router an SSID (meross1) and password. All very easy up to now.

I connected the phone to my new access point (meross1) and on checking I could access YouTube (set to higher quality and full screen) no problem.

I then took a look at the manual and noted that setting up the second router meant nothing more than turning it on within 9m of the first router and waiting for the light to turn blue. The red LED on the second router lit up. 20 seconds later the LED turned BLUE – then flashed RED for a second then returned to solid BLUE.

I disconnected the second router and took it upstairs – first checking to see if my phone could see the first router up there (meross1). It could not see anything, not even my normal WiFi access point which is, like the first Meross, positioned at the far end of my downstairs office.

Imagine if you will – the far end of my ground floor office (made of breezeblock, unlike the rest of our cavehome which is largely made of rock). It has my main WiFi access point – and incoming modem at the far end… now travel 17 metres through the office, a hallway and into the living room from which you can go upstairs via a curved stairway (sitting on stone and surrounded by stone. Toward the end of that 17 metres is our upstairs office and the desk on which I positioned the second Meross.

On being plugged into power alone, the LED on the front first glowed RED then went to BLUE – after a few seconds started to (and continued to) alternate between red and blue – but my phone now had access to the Internet with (according to my phone – on which I’d turned off mobile data to be sure) a full signal.

I then walked a further 10 metres to the far end of the far bedroom – where I checked the phone – which still had a strong signal and I could watch random YouTube videos no problem.

I now walked back downstairs and into our below-floor-level far bedroom – into the farthest corner where my phone picked up a weak-looking signal from the first router, but one which non-the-less played high quality mode full-screen YouTube video no problem.

From experience I’m confident that the access point being used would now be the downstairs one as there’s a big curve (180 degrees) from the new upstairs Meross router and they far end of the lower-ground bedroom.

To test this theory – I moved router #1 to the other end of my office – nearest the rest of the house – as the far corner, though handy is a daft place to put a router at the best of times.

I reconnected router #1 about 3m across my office – bringing it closer to the main house by that distance. Afer maybe 20 seconds the blue light came on again. I once again took my phone firstly to the downstairs bedroom – which now I had a reasonable looking signal.

I then took it upstairs and noted that router #2 was now on solid blue instead of alternating blue and red.

Simple operation, good signal – no need for wiring to the second router, no need for a second SSID. That’s a good start. The router manual claims that up to 64 client devices can be attached. Time to take a look at the controls on a PC.

At first sight, nothing out of the ordinary and not at all powerful. So, off I looked in “ADVANCED SETTINGS”

I headed off to Meross support – downloads to see if there were firmware upgrades for this unit – no – but then it is new. Turning DHCP on and off – yes, setting the time, yes. Erm, nothing about port mapping or MAC/IP binding… I guess this router is oriented to users for whom the simple interface and cable-free meshing is important – but not power users or anyone wanting to fix an internal IP address in the router. As far as I can tell, no guest network exists.

One of the units appears on my normal LAN, no sign of the other – and I cannot gain access to the control web-page on my LAN subnet, just the range that the Meross puts itself in. Of course this would be slightly different if the Meross pair were connected to your incoming modem and you were only using their subnet. However, for my purposes, I’ve now grown used to the kind of power you get using the likes of the OpenWrt-powered GL-iNET routers.

Update November 2022

At the time of writing, the Meross units are VERY inexpensive – a PAIR come to less than ONE of my GL-iNET routers so if simplicity is what you are after, then they are likely a great deal.