Starry Station Review - Coolest Smart Home WiFi Router?!
The Starry Station is certainly an interesting router. Not only is it interesting looking, it has a lot of interesting features and an excellent user experience that most routers just do not offer.
The Starry Station comes in a triangular box because, well, the Starry Station itself is a triangle. The unboxing experience is nice and simple and they only include the stuff that you need, like an ethernet cable, your power cable, and some information guides.
The simplicity follows all the way through to the design and UI. First off, the design is a clean, white triangle with your touchscreen and led light on the front and on the back you will find a fan with some Starry branding, and your ethernet and power ports.
So what about the setup of the Starry Station? Well, it is 2016 and routers have become a bit easier but they can still be a grueling process. The Starry Station can honestly be up and running in about 5 to 10 minutes tops.
Once you have plugged everything in correctly and have booted up your router, you will start the setup process. You will first need a WiFi name and password. Naming things can be hard but the Starry Station totally has you covered with a name generator. Let's be clear, it does take about 5 minutes to set up the WiFi if you have a name picked out. If not, you could spend loads of time generating names because some of them are hilarious and most are just plain weird.
Once you have settled on a name, you will need to create a password and then enter any 4 digit pin that you desire.
After that, your router is practically setup and will take you to a few screens highlighting some of the best features about the router which we will touch on in just a minute.
Before we get into the features though, you will want to pair the Starry Station with the app. This part is also very simple. Download the app from the App Store or Google Play store and create an account.
Once an account has been created, enter the generated code that's displayed on your Starry Station. This will link your account to this router and you are all set and ready to begin using the app with your router.
Speaking of the app, the app is nicely designed and display's only the important information, like your WiFi's health score, what devices are online, and how much of your WiFi that device is currently using.
Recently, Starry just pushed out an update for the Starry Station that allows users to control certain devices usage and what websites or content they are visiting on the web. This is certainly useful to parents who want to limit what things their kids see on the internet or for those who just can't seem to stop playing games and won't do their homework.
The same, simple user experience carrys over to the router's display itself and it's easy to distinguish how many devices are connected to your network by the bubbles displayed around the health score percentage. If you tap on the bubbles, you can get more information on what device is currently connected to your router.
You can also run speed tests right from your router without having to visit any websites or download any apps.
I have been using the Starry Station for about a few months now and it has been really solid. My previous router was the Google OnHub and although that router was also great, it didn't do a good job of spreading signal throughout the house like the Starry Station. Now the Starry Station isn't perfect and there are a few things that would go wrong from time to time like dropped connections and the occasional spots of dead signal but for the most part, the WiFi signal was consistent and strong all throughout my house.
If you are interested in picking a Starry Station up for yourself, check out this link: Starry Station from Amazon.com
Stay tuned as I will be covering this router again when the Google WiFi is officially released and we will have a side-by-side comparison of the two routers.