By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Apple really brought consumer WiFi to the mainstream with its AirPort base station and cards. Great industrial design and solid software integration made AirPort base stations the easiest and most convenient Wi-Fi routers, specially for owners of Mac computers.
Sadly, Apple no longer felt the need to continue evolving and innovating their line of AirPort routers and even the Time Machine backup drive. These products continued to be sold even if many of their features and specs were outdated by industry standards. Now that Apple has finally stopped selling Wi-Fi routers, where are users expected to go.
Google WiFi's elegance extends to the ease of use of its app
The good news is that there's no shortage of viable Wi-Fi routers in the market today. There are powerful multi-antenna monstrosities that are geared to stream full resolution 4K video as well as handle dozens of devices. But these don't offer the style and simplicity that AirPort Base stations once did.
My choice is Google WiFi, which are almost Apple-esque in their understated and white simplicity. These small and pucklike routers are actually very powerful and can be expanded to cover larger areas since they're using a Mesh network that expands coverage without degrading signal.
More importantly, they're incredibly easy to set-up via a smartphone app and even have various parental control tools and the ability to quickly test connections to see if everything is in tip-top shape.
I've been using Google WiFi for a year in my home office and love how it knows which devices to prioritize as well as how much bandwidth to allocate depending on the different devices' Wi-Fi capability. The seamless yet understated design also fits in nicely with interior decorations so you don't feel you need to hide the unsightly devices.