A single Velo unit costs $199, two units cost $349, while three carry a fairly chunky $499 price tag. This pricing puts the Velop right on top of the list of competitors, with Google WiFi posing as the cheapest of the lot. Linksys however , remains unfazed by this and have gone ahead and made the Velop available for purchase both online and offline in the US and the UK.
Table of Contents
DESIGN –
The Linksys Velop comes packed with a quad-core ARM Cortex A7 processor, with 512MB of memory and 4GB of internal flash storage. The system supports dual-stream (2×2), 802.11ac networking over multiple wireless bands – two 5GHz and one 2.4GHz. On the outside too, link sys seems to have put some effort into the overall design and appearance of the Velop. Each unit is shaped like towers with a nice curve near the base to avoid the rather bland boxy look. We have holes drilled for heat dissipation, on the top and two of the sides of the unit with a clip down the bottom for managing the cables. This is provided to assist the recessed section right underneath it which place home to the two Ethernet ports, a master power switch, a reset button and 12V DC connector. The absence of a large number of ethernet ports on the Velop unit is a clear indication that the times are changing . most of us use mobile devices for computing while desktops and displays have become wireless. Therefore, users only get one spare Ethernet port once the modem is connected to the unit, while you can increase that number by increasing the number of units.
Inside each unit resides a slim line white power supplies with long, two meter cabling neatly wrapped in a bundle and a single, thin Ethernet cable. All in all , the Velop may have the pricing against it, but when it comes to sheer appearance and the basic specifications, Linksys has ticked the right boxes here.
SETUP –
As mentioned earlier, the Linksys Velop relies on an app based setup system. Quickly breeze through the Google Play or the Apple App store and download the Velop app. You are then prompted to register the Velop unit for local and remote management of the device. Next, you are given a few suggestions regarding the placement of the Velop unit after which, the device undergoes a software update and close to five minutes later, you are good to go.
An LED situated on top of the unit glows pink, cycles through to purple and finally shuts off during setup. Once the unit is setup and functional the LED glows blue.
