Linksys AC1300 Velop Mesh Wifi 5-System (Open Box)

Short version--with the same service provider (Comcast Xfinity) and same upstream equipment our experiences with home wifi systems have been: Apple Airport: rock solid Linksys Velop: nothing but problems Netgear Orbi: rock solid We recommend that you stay as far away from Linksys as possible in order to avoid a living hell. Long version--when Apple discontinued their Airport wifi equipment we decided to replace it with a mesh system and narrowed our choice down to the Velop and Orbi systems based on rather extensive research. They seemed to be pretty equal at that point, and our decision to go with Velop over Orbi was based exclusively on the fact that Linksys explicitly and unambiguously stated on their website that parental controls were fully implemented and available on the Velop, while Orbi only stated that parental controls were still being developed. After setting up the Velop system, which was much more difficult than anything we had ever experienced with our Apple equipment, we could not get the parental controls to work, so we made the first of what would turn into many interminable support calls with hard-to-understand non-native English speakers. After resetting the system, including restarting the Comcast router, and each Velop node in turn (a 30-minute process that we discovered was the first troubleshooting step for ANY problem) the parental controls were still missing, so we were passed along to the next level of support, where we were told that parental controls were simply not yet available on the Velop system! When we explained that we had only chosen Velop over Orbi because of the availability of parental controls, we were merely told that the feature would be coming soon. Our objection that this was outright lying and consumer fraud was met with a non-chalant, "oh, that's just marketing." Parental controls did not arrive until six months later, and then only partially, but the entire time the website boldly claimed "granular parental controls" as a current feature. But then the real hardware problems started. We experienced regular dropouts in service and often one or more nodes would just spontaneously go offline. Each time we called in we had to go through the same 30-minute reset procedure before anything else, and that was usually followed by checking and updating the firmware in each node in turn (another 30 minutes). At some point (our personal record was a 2 hour and 20 minute support call) the system would usually come back online and work for a week or so before the same problems returned. And the whole time we were being told that adding additional nodes would certainly solve the problems. It did not--this is simply another dishonest up-sell in order for someone in the marketing department to earn a commission. Finally, in order to maintain our remaining sanity, we pulled out the Velop system (no they would not issue a refund for any reason) and got the Orbi. We have had no problems since. We will never again purchase any product from Linksys (nor for that matter from Belkin, their parent company), and can only recommend that everyone else follow the same advice.