Linksys Velop Mesh Home WiFi System (Open Box)

so here is the situation: 2 floor apartment. floor is concrete 3.5 inch . I have setup and flushed many routers in the past (probably dozens). The configuration was a breeze: download the liksys app. create a linksys account , define few parameters and the node is up. restart times of each node are twice than standard router but I don't count it as there are only few times when you really need to reboot a router. this is where the good part ends. so: I placed 1 node in the upper floor (near the cable modem upstairs) and the 2nd node in the lower floor of the apartment. distance between nodes: 6.5 feet (yep, less than seven feet). node2 led status : red which means the slave node can barely "see" the master node. so in the lower floor I get the illusion of a full wifi signal but can't really stream decently (speed test: 5-7 Mbps ). I made several tests in and tried to optimize nodes location based on the Linksys documentation. at all times distance between nodes was less than 10 feet. near node1 with my internet plan (I got only 40Mbps plan) : I get the full bandwidth. on the lower floor (just below) node1 (when node2 is off) : I get only 15% of the bandwidth. If I turn on node2 then its even lower. I hate the fact I must register with Linksys account (I already have a linksys.com account but this one doesn't work with Velop account - go figure...) If I wanted registration I could have bought Google WiFi but that is only a small drawback. The biggest disappointment from this system is its poor mesh performance. so I recommend this setup only for tech newbies who have really thin wooden walls. All others: (bricks or concrete walls + corners) search another MU-MIMO solution. Luckily I kept my old setup : an old (dual band) Linksys E3200 router (upper floor) and a small repeater (Xiaomi Wifi Mini Youth on the lower floor which is a 15$ AP). this setup provides me better coverage and bandwidth than what this dual band Velop Mesh system. With E3200 I can get (on the same spots) : 20Mbps (meaning 50% of my bandwidth) compared to 4-5Mbs with Velop... This package is going back. For 200$ You can buy a good tri band MU-MIMO router that will outperform this setup. do I hear a netgear nighthawk in the crowd ? or even buy two 100$ routers and connect them ... I love Linksys products. In most cases they are robust, stable and programmable! (I like a lot the Tomato firmware). I cherish them from early days of Linksys WRT-54G. I am aware that Linksys also offer the same bundle but with tri-band for a bit more but after seeing the current performance I won't even test that. Tri band relies on 3rd 5Ghz band for inter-communication and that will not go through concrete any better. Maybe mesh wasn't designed for hard apartment like I have (1000 sq feet). update: 2Aug2018: I ended up buying a ubiquiti access point UAP-AC-Lite. that devoice works as promised. download speed tests show 87% of my theoretical max .A+ for Ubiquiti for the mesh solution.