ELEVATE TECH UPDATE
SUMMER 2025
Pushing past Gigabit speeds
Plus, rethink your living room TV setup, and a few updates from whole-home audio brands.
Multi-Gig Speeds
With more and more homes having fiber Internet, we've noticed an increase in homeowners looking for multi-gig performance from their network. For many customers with Spectrum, Cox, or Xfinity, you've probably noticed that the highest speed you can pay for is 1 gig. This is a very high speed, and is overkill for most homeowners. But fiber's high bandwidth allows companies like AT&T and Google to offer multi-gig speeds (2, 3, 5, even 10gig) at a high, but digestible, price.
The issue is that most consumer devices nowadays only come with a gigabit ethernet port (limited to 1 gig). Again, for most devices like TVs, cameras, and smart home devices, this is plenty, even in today's standards. But for devices like Wi-Fi access points, computers, and gaming systems, multi-gig support is much more common. For example, Eero's new line of Wi-Fi 7 access points support 2.5gig, and most gaming computers come with multi-gig ports.
To enable these speeds, you need every piece of the connection to support it: Internet speed you pay for, the port on your router and switch, the cable connecting the device, and the port on the device. Typically one of those elements doesn't have it, especially if you try to use your home's Cat5e wiring (caps out at 1 gig). That's why your home's wiring infrastructure is so important, and why we emphasize Cat6 wiring (10gig) or even fiber wiring (100gig+) for any new home we work on.
Want to squeeze all the bandwidth out of your home's network? We can help make it easier than you think.
TV Too High
TVs over fireplaces are quickly going out of style. Does your neck hurt when you watch TV?
The standard room design from the 90s and early 2000s was to focus everything in the room around the fireplace, and then slap a black rectangle above the mantel and enjoy your living room. How many of you have a TV that's so high on your wall that you have to lean your head back on your couch to comfortably watch it?
Over the years there have been solutions: Frame TVs make the black rectangle look more like art, and MantelMount has made it so you can pull your TV below the mantel when you want to watch it. But neither really solve both problems.
Instead, we have helped many clients re-think their living room. Try making your fireplace the secondary focus: make it the SIDE of your room, not the center, and rearrange your furniture so you can both enjoy the warmth and crackle of the fire, while facing a wall that more easily houses a TV lower. The result can be a much more comfortable viewing experience, while also opening opportunities for more human-centric seating, where conversation and eye contact are the priorities, rather than angles to the TV.
Smart Audio Shake-Up
Things have been shaking up in the whole-home audio space. SONOS has been struggling to redeem themselves after a terrible app update in May of last year, and Yamaha has discontinued much of their MusicCast system. We are left with 3 major players: SONOS (still), Wiim, and HEOS.
HEOS is made by Denon, a quality home theater receiver manufacturer with a good reputation, but sadly HEOS does not have the same reputation. Their product line is limited, and many users complain about poor reliability and a bad app experience. With SONOS also struggling with software, we look to Wiim.
We've mentioned this company before, but they continue to improve and expand. They're more like "the people's brand" in this space, because they keep giving users what they want: inexpensive equipment, a simple app, and even a remote (I know). Every time we interact with a Wiim product we are impressed. Recently they have been released more high-fidelity products, which broadens their capabilities even further.
If you are looking for a whole-home audio system and don't already have SONOS, Wiim would be a perfect solution.
Want to learn more? Let’s chat!
Whether you just have a quick question or you have a new project, we’d be happy to help.
ELEVATE TECH UPDATE
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