I, like many people, live in a house that is longer than it is wide. My internet connection to the ISP is in one corner of the house and this makes it problematic for any meaningful signal to reach the opposite corner of the house. My solution was set up a Wifi Access Point closer to the middle of the house at a point that I could easily run ethernet from the main router.

I’ve tried quite a few solutions in the past but have shied away from an extender/repeater due to the halved throughput. I was waiting for the excellently reviewed Ubiquiti NanoHD to drop in price, but then I decided it wasn’t dropping in price quick enough and I had to look for alternatives.

Enter the TP-Link EAP245. Not a lot of reputable sites have had reviews of it, so I decided I should just post to help add to the literature out there. I bought this access point from Amazon Canada for $99+tax which is a bargain compared to any other router or access point. It has MU-MIMO which was very important to me as we are a household with more than 20 devices. In retrospect this was a bit premature as I don’t really have any MU-MIMO clients yet. Maybe with the proliferation of WiFi 6 this might change. But I’m not even sure of the compatibility between AC Wave 2 and WiFi 6. (If any reader knows, please drop me a comment)

The box came with a POE injector and installation was a cinch. I just have it lying on the floor for now. I used iPerf to run some really quick tests between the R7000P and the AP.

Performance

I had a server running on a Surface Pro 3 that was hardwired to the Netgear R7000p via ethernet showing a 1Gbps link. I used my Pixel 3xl (a 2×2 AC device) to walk around my house until it reported the appropriate signal strength for each of the radios. I then ran iPerf (via the Magic iPerf app) using the following flags ‘-c (ipaddress) -P 20’. I ran a few runs until the scores stabilized and I have reported them above.

One thing to note regarding the results is that I believe the Netgear has greater range than the TP-Link even though the TP-Link uses the range more effectively. Put another way, the Netgear will give a stronger signal further from the access point but will be slightly slower compared the TP-Link at that same signal strength. In real world usage, I believe this comes down to a wash. The two are basically neck and neck.

A note about WiFi ratings of these products. According to my reading of the the excellent material at smallnetbuilder.net, the ratings are meaningless and this kind of is proven out in the rudimentary tests shown above. The 1750 rated access point consistently outperformed the 2300 rated router. Part of the increase according to the manufacturers is on the 2.4ghz band that I don’t care about at all. That band is too busy in my area to be of any use and is too easily affected by the microwave. The other part of the increase is based on a rarely supported 5ghz enhancement that you will never come across. In my testing I never saw link rates higher than 866mbps on the 5ghz band for either access point.

Some issues with the firmware

A few miscellaneous notes and observations. The TP-Link connects much faster than the Netgear.. Not sure if some enhanced handshake process was introduced and is going on. But it is uncanny. Managing the TP-Link EAP is fairly straight forward. I used the web interface first and then switched to the Omada controller just to try it out. There is one oddity I noticed though. If I turned QoS off, the WiFi link rates would plummet and never go above 54mbps. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a firmware bug? I may try contacting TP-Link about this because it is very confusing. This behavior was consistent across 2 firmware versions and across both the web interface and Omada controller.

Conclusion

I am extremely happy with my purchase of the TP-Link EAP 245 v3 access point. Due to my placement of it, it pushes signal into the areas of the house where it was lacking before. And all devices that are able to connect to it get very strong speeds. It is currently sitting on the floor but I am seriously considering wall mounting it vertically closer to the top floor so that the signal becomes even stronger.

If you’re on the fence between spending double for a Ubiquiti Unifi Nano-HD or going with the TP-Link, just know that I have no complaints settling for the TP-Link. I’m still getting 200Mbps a floor away on a 2×2 AC client and around 600Mbps when I’m right on top of the AP. That on top of the quick connect and the ability to potentially manage many more clients than a personal home router has me satisfied. I will update this entry as I use it with more notes.

We’ve all been told the future is wireless.
But are we really ready for this future?
Apple’s removal of the headphone jack from their iPhone’s (and the proliferation of this trend across to Android manufacturers) has really drawn a spotlight on the state of wireless headphones and earbuds.
The debate around whether Apple’s move is prescient or premature won’t be settled anytime soon. But the best we can do is look around to see what the current landscape for wireless headphones looks like.

That brings me to the Erato Muse 5.

They are true wireless earbuds that compete with the Airpods and the Bragi offerings.
Most people may know Erato as the company behind the Apollo 7 (what’s up with the random odd numbers in your products Erato?) fundraising campaign.
Those headphones shipped last year and they were widely lauded for their superior sound quality and their extremely stable connection that had
the fewest drop-outs compared to other competitors at the time.
Erato returned late last year with a indiegogo campaign for the Muse 5 and the Rio 3. (Really Erato?)
The Rio 3 are athletic true wireless earbuds while the Muse 5 are the slightly more subtle earbuds.

Erato promises that they’ve baked in all that they’ve learnt from the Apollo 7s into the latest earbuds; let’s find out if it’s enough to teleport us to the future or whether it leaves us bitterly aware of the present.

Appearance

I ordered my Erato Muse 5 in blue. They looked a few shades darker in the pictures on my monitor but in real life they skew closer to baby blue than I’d like.
They are also a little bit bigger than I would like. A colleague of mine recently bought the Bragi The Headphone (seriously Bragi?) and they are what I think is the perfect size. If you have average sized ears, the Headphones will fit entirely within your ear conch and that I think is perfect. The Muse 5 on the other hand stick out quite a bit from your ear. I’ve heard them compared to clip-on air fresheners for your car and to Frankenstein style bolts sticking out of your ear. They are a little bit on the bigger side but to be completely honest, if you don’t listen to the haters, they look perfectly fine. I did get stopped by a homeless person who was trying to speak sign-language to me but I think that’s to be expected with any true wireless headphones.

Comfort and fit

Finding the right fit with Muse 5 was almost impossible for me. Especially with the tips and seals that ship in the box.
Due to the nature of the fitseal and tips, the earbuds make contact not only with your ear canal but also with the rest of your ear conch.
Unfortunately, the shape of your ear conch changes and deforms as your face makes expressions. This results in the headphones shifting and losing the seal every time you move/walk around/talk/eat/make expressions.
I then tried some Comply tips (T-200) that I had lying around and the difference in fit was night and day. The Muse 5 were no longer depending on the FitSeal sleeves to form a seal but instead the Comply tips were doing that on their own. I suddenly found that my comfort from and enjoyment of the Muse 5 had skyrocketed.
The bottom line: if you’re buying the Muse 5, budget some money for the Comply tips to go along with it. They should really be shipped in the box.

Bluetooth Connection

The Erato Muse 5 mostly hold their Bluetooth connection well. But if they drop the connection or stutter once, you can generally expect them to do it a few more times in a row. Most of the time I’ve been satisfied by their ability to hold the connection but the stutters and drop-outs do have the tendency to get annoying once in a while. Note that in the case of a drop-out, no action is required on the user’s part. The Muse 5 recover from dropouts and stutters themselves. But it still has the potential to be inconvenient when you are trying to zone out or concentrate on something else.

Sound Quality – Music

The Erato Muse 5 sound awesome but only if you get the fit right. And as mentioned previously, I could not get a proper fit with the tips that shipped in the box.
But with the Comply tips, the sound quality increased to the point that I would call these one of the best single driver headphones I have ever listened to.
Bass is full and blends well with the Mids without over-powering them. Mids are balanced and warm. Highs are just a tad bit recessed and don’t sparkle as much as headphones with a Balanced Armature driver but that is to be expected. The details and separation is amazing. I’ve heard details in songs I hadn’t heard before.
Colour me thoroughly impressed.

A note about 3D SurroundSound – this is a DSP that Erato claims increases sound quality. It just spaces the various out and increases separation. But it also reduces volumes and I believe reduces dynamic range. I think this is a gimmick and prefer it to be turned off but your mileage may vary.

Sound Quality – Video

The Erato Muse 5 unfortunately are unusable for watching videos. They have a very noticeable lag that makes it impossible to comfortably watch a video. Erato claims that most bluetooth headphones suffer from a lag and almost all truly wireless headphones suffer from a greater lag but I find this claim to be dubious. The colleague of mine with the Bragi The Headphone claims that they are perfectly suitable for videos and I have an over the ear Headphone set (Jabra Move) that are fine for videos even though an almost imperceptible lag might exist.
Unfortunately, there really is no fix to this, and if your use case for the Muse 5 involves watching videos then I would recommend you stay from truly wireless headphones for the time being. Hopefully someone solves the lag issue soon.

Battery life

Erato claims that the Muse 5 lasts for 4 hours with the carrying case being able to re-charge it up to 3 times. In the month that I have had the Muse 5, I’ve been unable to test the veracity of the claim as I never listen to music for more than 2 hours in a row. The headphones never died on me and always had battery when I pulled them out of their carrying case. I just make sure to regularly charge the case and then don’t think about battery life too much.
If you’re planning on using these headphones for extended sessions, then maybe Rio3 would be a better choice with their longer battery life.

Conclusion

I love these headphones and I think they truly are perfect for music listening once you put some Comply tips on them. They are pricey and they do have their drawbacks. Just remember, videos are un-watchable and the tips in the box are garbage. Look past these foibles and the sound quality will blow you away and the convenience of true wireless headphones will change your life.