Justin and Lyndi are Nashville natives. Home is where they spend lots of time, both working and relaxing. They also regularly host Airbnb guests, so having good WiFi is a major priority. When Justin started experimenting with smart-home technology, he knew they needed to upgrade to a WiFi system that never went down. In Justin’s words, everything we do relies on WiFi, and “it’s important that it’s actually working and stable.”

Meet the Reardensteins

Before moving to Nashville, Lyndi studied electrical engineering, and Justin worked in finance. But now they’ve taken very different paths. Lyndi owns an online bakery, using commercial kitchens to hone her craft and create her confections. Justin handles logistics for The Peach Truck, a company that brings fresh peaches straight from the fields to people’s homes.

The couple has also turned the top floor of their home into a regular destination for Airbnb travelers. With two bedrooms and a smart lock on the front door, the Rearden home is always open to new visitors.

“We’re booked like 70% of the month,” Justin said. “We’re seeing people from all over the world, which is super fun for us! We get to pick their brains about where they’re from and, if we ever want to travel there, we have a connection now.”

Justin and Lyndi – who go by “The Reardensteins,” which is a combination of both of their last names – don’t just host travelers; they also regularly have friends over for dinner or to have drinks out on the back porch. “We love hanging out here with guests,” Justin says.

Nashville farmhouse living

The Reardensteins designed their home with the idea of entertaining in mind. A little over three years old, the house was under construction when the couple purchased it. It’s located in a historic neighborhood which, in recent years, has been getting more and more popular. “When we moved in, we were the third new house on the street,” Justin said. “Now there are 36 new homes.”

“From the outside, you would think it was an old home,” Justin said. But that link to the past is only skin deep; the interior of the Reardenstein’s home is anything but old, pairing an open floor plan with some of the most recent innovations in the field of smart-home technologies.

The couple’s bedroom, kitchen, living room, and office are all on the ground floor, while the second plays host to two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a lounge area. The second floor is where their Airbnb guests stay, and it’s a far cry from the “couch-surfing” lifestyle with two spacious bedrooms, each artfully decorated.   

WiFi issues pre-eero

Having guests over definitely put some stress on their router. According to Justin, the second floor had almost no connection whatsoever.

“It was kind of a piece of garbage in my mind,” he said. “If I was ever doing anything in our bedroom, it didn’t work.”

As he began experimenting with more and more smart-home devices (including a Nest thermostat, an August smart lock, and a Sonos sound system) the box with “lots of antennas on it” wasn’t going to cut it, especially after one of their guests hesitantly mentioned the lack of connection upstairs.

That’s when they switched to eero. “I geek out over packaging and product design, and the whole unboxing experience was awesome,” According to Justin, setup didn’t take long at all, and it was super easy.

He bought a set of three eeros, one of which sits on his nightstand. The main unit’s in the living room, and the last one’s upstairs between the two Airbnb bedrooms.

Justin was particularly pleased with his new eeros’ form factor. “It’s beautifully designed; it doesn’t look horrible,” he said. “It’s nice because it kind of just blends in.” Some of their guests have even commented on how well eero fits in with their living room.

How’s life with eero now?

We’ve seen a “drastic improvement in our upload and download speeds” since switching to eero, Justin said. “Before, we had issues streaming Netflix from our AppleTV  – not anymore. Before FaceTime was impossible – not anymore. It’s amazing that such a small piece of technology can make such a drastic change to your life.”

When evaluating eero, the biggest things Justin was worried about were speed and reliability. For their businesses, both Lyndi and Justin do a lot of work from home, and both of them need to print out lots of documents.

Before switching to eero, their WiFi printer was incredibly slow, leading to delays and slowing their workflow considerably. Now the printer works fine and they’re able to focus on the important parts of their jobs. Most importantly, now that they have eero, there’s less time spent buffering and more time spent with their adorable furry friend.