Hi, In a two-story house, I have the R7800 placed in the pantry where the optical fiber enters. While the signal on the ground floor is "okay", on the first floor it is weak. Practically on the first floor in each room I have RJ45 sockets that I can use for R7800 and Extender / Mesh communication. What to do: 1. Sell R7800 and buy something else? 2. Buy EX8000 and link RJ45 cable with R7800 3. MK62 and link RJ45 cable with R7800 4. Orbi .. which? only router or only satellite ?
Extenders work great when used in extender mode. Problem is when you hardwire it in (best performance) it runs in access point mode and that disables the smart roaming features. So if you're planning on using a single ssid (mesh) setup, then I'd recommend either going with orbi or the MK nighthawk. Both work really well. And if you're hardwiring it in, then you can get a dual band system and have roughly the same performance as the triband (except for the really high end equipment).
You can complement the R7800 but it doesn't integrate. Meaning you'd want them with separate ssid's and on different channels. You'd either put the r7800 in AP mode or the mesh in AP mode depending on how you connected it.
When you're hardwired in, any of the systems are pretty good. The wired backhaul is really nice. I'd read through a few of Dong Knows reviews as he does a great job of giving honest reviews and putting test results in on mesh systems. I've mainly used the higher end systems so don't have a good reference for the dual bands (other than the SXK30 that I've used).
