Plume Wi-Fi Pods – Fast, Reliable WiFi Hotspots to Connect you to the Web!
Today’s routers are the main cause of WiFi frustration. Plume is a company that wants to change how we get Wi-Fi signals around our homes. Instead of having a router, Plume are mini WiFi hotspots that you plug in around your house. Plume which sounds like a large, fuzzy feather is actually a series of small plug-in pucks, sized almost like nightlights.
The small pucks all work together to ensure that they’re connecting to one another in the best possible way. You just need to plug one of these pods into each room in your house or plugged directly into wall sockets around the home where you need WiFi in and they are apparently easy to setup. After you connect it to into your ISP’s modem, it extends coverage via a mesh-like system called as “Adaptive WiFi.”
Plume adapts in real-time to the devices and habits in your home and thus the connection will be fast, reliable and can be everywhere you need.
How does Plume work?
It uses a bunch of “pods,” each one of which costs $49 and plugs into a wall outlet. With one pod attached to your modem and serving as the hub of the network, you can create a network that reaches each room with equal strength. The one you plug into your DSL or cable modem serves as the primary “hub” for all of them. The mesh system constantly calculates where you are and adjusts the signal to maximize connection speeds. It also uses cloud computing to improve its performance. Plume is thus looking to change the way we use Wi-Fi.
What are the features?
- It sounds a lot like a Wi-Fi mesh network, an increasingly popular approach among networking hardware makers and extend the range of a Wi-Fi network.
- Plume switches signals between the 2.4- and 5-GHz bands, as each signal moves from pod to pod to maintain a steady transfer rate.
- Plume also uses adaptive Wi-Fi to recognize usage patterns for your various connected devices.
- It has the quality to adjust for interference from neighboring networks, without any drop in signal.
- Plume’s technology uses what it calls Adaptive WiFi that is able to respond to varying conditions around the home.
- It also has a good monitoring aspect that optimizes the network for performance. The Devices can also seamlessly roam from one pod to another.
- The system is managed with the help of a mobile app.
Price & Availability
Plume plans to start shipping its units to anyone who pre-orders at the cost of each pod will be $39. They come in champagne, silver, or onyx colors. Plume will also face competition from rivals promoting a similar multi-device approach and later each of the pods will cost $49.
The price is a lot cheaper than Eero, as it is trying to distance itself from the notion of a “traditional” mesh network. Each Plume device comes with a gigabit Ethernet port, supports AC1200 speeds, when the devices launch this fall.
Bottom Line
As one can see by actively monitoring the home network, as well as the devices connected to it, Plume detects interference and continuously makes decisions to improve signal and speed simultaneously. It even directs mobile devices to seamlessly roam as they move around the home.
So Plume is also up for pre-order now, and it promises a router-less mesh network that come from linking together multiple access points in a single location. We look forward to witnessing the rise of multi-device systems which are best suited for the task.
Keval Padia is the founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.