Question Help with multi-device selection for home Wi-Fi network

[Majdan]

I'd like to ask advice about how to design my WiFi network at home and suggestion waht devices to buy:
- It's a 3 story building with total 220sqm~2400sqft.
- Currently I use 4 mesh devices indoors (D-Link covr 1100), all connected with wired ethernet. It's two on the middle story plus one on the bottom and one on top story. Plus there are two two more same mesh devices that are outdoors and are connected to the rest wirelessly using mesh.
- The main issue is with dropping the connection on my iPhone. I did some research and it seems it's iPhones issue with some devices using 5GHz network. My D-links does not allow to name 2.4Ghz and 5GHz networks differently thus main reason for my project is to have this feature so I can tell iPhone to use only 2.4GHz in case it still have issues with 5Ghz.
- Another issue I am suspeciting is that my devices are too close to each other but due to existing wiring I probably won't change the placement of the devices. Also, removing some of them would create spots with too weak signal.
Thus I would like to turn off 2.4Ghz network on two devices and maybe turn off 5Ghz on one device.
- Probably I'd go with WiFi 6 ot 6e as 7 might be too expensive.
- I enclose NetSpot scan from few key places in my house:

https://imgur.com/a/ZKAmMb0

View: https://imgur.com/a/ZKAmMb0


Questions:
1) What devices do you recommend? I do not like D-Link but I've used Asus and it seemed good. I've heard also about Ubiquiti. But there are two many options and I would appreciate some advice.
I would prefer not to spend more than 600usd for all new devices.
2) Do I need mesh system for my setup? Or maybe it will be fine with: 1 regular router, 3 access points and 2 repeaters?
3) Any other tips or workarounds? The biggest issue is iPhone problem with 5Ghz network.

 

[bill001g]

Mesh is a marketing thing. Many of the units are just the old type of wifi repeater. The only so called mesh systems that are different are the ones that have extra dedicated radios to use to contact back to the main router. This of course make the units much more expensive and there is still the same amount of radio bandwidth so using twice as much even on different channels still is 2 radio signals that can get interference.

The best solution is the one that has been used since wifi first existed close to 10 years before the "mesh" word. A central router with remote AP is what has always been used by business.

It is extremely strange you can not run the 2.4 and 5 on different SSID. Used to be you could actually put multiple SSID on the same radio on some routers. I know I used to put in about 50 to scare off the people who used scanners to find less used radio channels.

Ubiquiti is going to be the semi pro way to accomplish this. You really just need a bunch of fairly inexpensive routers. Almost all can run in AP mode. True AP you pay quite a bit extra for features like PoE, I guess it depends on if you need that feature. Many routers can also run as repeaters you just have to read the fine print before you buy them.

You can easily have too many wifi radios. If there is too much overlap the end device have a hard job picking the best they tend to stay connected with the first they find and never change.
A lot of router/ap have the ability to reduce the radio output power. This should give you the ability to tune your coverage so you get good coverage in remote rooms but do not have too much overlap. It also reduce the different AP interfereing with each other. Long gone are the days you can set each AP to its own channel. Now days they pretty much use every bit of radio bandwidth that exists. Used to think wifi6e and the 6ghz band was the solution. Now wifi7 cames out and attempts to use 230mhz radio band. All you need is 2 wifi7 routers running like that and you can use all the available bandwidth in most countries.