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Amped Wireless ALLY Plus Wi-FI Network with AVG & Parental Controls - REVIEWED!
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May 30, 2025
Ready for a better wireless network for your home or office that lets you control which devices get access when and includes builtin AVG antivirus and malware site protection? Add a two-unit automatic mesh network to the mix and you've got the surprisingly powerful ALLY Plus from Amped Wireless. From its small, sleek units to the easy to use smartphone app for controlling and managing access and content (particularly parental controls and child Internet access), it's pretty slick. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checks out the Amped Wireless Ally Plus wi-fi mesh network with parental controls and finds lots to like, though it's not without its hiccups... Learn more: http://amzn.to/2hxwGmy
View Video Transcript
0:00
is this the secret to Great home Wi-Fi
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and keeping your children safe online
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let's find
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[Music]
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out Dave Taylor here and this time we're
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talking Wi-Fi specifically we're talking
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home Wi-Fi networks this is one of two
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identical looking units that comes with
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the amped Ally plus and this is a pretty
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slick solution for your home Wi-Fi it is
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a mesh Network although technically mesh
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networks need three or more units still
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two units they seamlessly work together
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which means that you don't see two
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different Wi-Fi spots you see one spot
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and your system will automatically pick
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the stronger signal the idea is that you
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have one plugged directly into your
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cable modem whatever it is that gives
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you internet and then the second one you
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put at like sort of 2/3 of the way to
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the dead spot in your house
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and it amplifies all that signal and
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then you get between the two of them up
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to 15,000 square ft of space covered now
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if you have a home with more than 15,000
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square ft congratulations you've got a
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lot of dusting and vacuuming to do
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seriously has a pretty darn large space
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certainly for my house when I have three
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stories and a backyard this the between
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the two of them it covers it really well
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I never have any issues with signal and
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it's super easy to work with because you
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just plug the extender into the wall and
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walk away and it does everything itself
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it finds the base unit they pair up
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everything works very seamlessly it
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takes a minute or two but it's just very
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nice and this in fact what I'm holding
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this is the extender unit but both are
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exactly the same size the only
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difference is the set of ports on the
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back as you can see the ports on the
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base unit include a bunch of ethernet
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Jacks so you can plug in other devices
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whereas on the extender unit there's
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really not much going on it's just a
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couple of fundamental buttons and you
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can plug in one device if you're so
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inclined and otherwise you're good to go
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so that's pretty easy and um what I
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really like about this where this really
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shines is it really shines in protecting
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your home so there are two features it
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has that does that um but I want to get
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back to those in a second let's just be
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really super geeky for a second so this
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offer you offers
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you 2.4 gigahertz at 600 megabits per
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second and a 5 gigahertz at 1300
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megabits per second it's mu mimo
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technology which means it offers
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80211 a b GN and AC the latest version
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and the units have four antennas you
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don't see any antennas it's a sort of
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this modern antenna design where
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everything's embedded which is pretty
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nice actually it's much more attractive
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so there are three dualband High Gain
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antennas and one single band High Gain
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and that's the difference between the
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2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz where it's really
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much more amazing is these little
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devices a bunch of amplifiers too so
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there in a this unit it has 14
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amplifiers it has four 2.4 GHz internal
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amps four low noise amps three 5 GHz
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internal amps and three low noise amps
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so there's a lot going on in this little
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package and of course is's also a lot
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going on in the core base unit and
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together they add up to being a pretty
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darn seamless Wi-Fi network even in a
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complicated structure or even if you
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want to have a backyard and good Wi-Fi
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on the far side of your pool wish I had
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that problem but hopefully you do now
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the two things that make the amped Ally
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really cool are that it has really great
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parental controls and that it's just
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super easy to work with so um let me
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show you on the parental control site
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it's like many of these modern Wi-Fi
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based systems and everything it comes
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with an app and so the app let me put
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this down you can get Android or iPhone
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and so on this first screen you can see
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it's pretty darn straightforward to set
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up and you can see all the devices that
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I have hooked up and if I go to users I
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can go in and I can go to Junior cuz I
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like to keep an eye on what my
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daughter's doing and more importantly I
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like to make sure that her internet is
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off in the middle of the night so if she
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gets up at 2: in the morning and wants
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to play on her phone it's just not going
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to work the wifei system doesn't give
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her an error message just doesn't work
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so she'll be laying there complaining
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God the internet's out whereas if I
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wanted to be up at 2: in the morning hey
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I'm the parent I get to do this but if I
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want to be up at 2: in the morning I can
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do that perfectly well now notice it
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also tracks what websites you can set up
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certain off-limits websites and it'll
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actually report if your child goes to
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those sites they won't get there but
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it'll report that they tried um you can
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have multiple devices per person all of
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that really nice I think that that's
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really important for your kids to stay
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safe because let's be honest most
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pre-teens and teens are pretty clueless
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when it comes to Online safety so all of
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that's great and you can see on this
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screen how easy it is to do things like
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change your Wi-Fi network or change the
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password or even turn on guest test
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access all of these things on a
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traditional am Wi-Fi unit where you know
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you have to go and get hooked up and
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have it on your computer and all this
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sort of stuff they can be a real pain
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whereas in this once you get into the
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app super easy now one more thing I want
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to say about the amped Ally is that it
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also comes with built-in AVG Antivirus
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and so they have a cloud-based Blacklist
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and what that means is that it'll
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automatically protect you if you are
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visiting a site and suddenly pops up a
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window from a known malware site this
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will block that and that by itself might
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be worth its weighting gold if you're
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the kind of person or you have someone
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in your family who's the kind of person
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who likes to explore the rougher edges
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of the internet so the AVG Antivirus
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included it automatically keeps itself
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up to date because it's cloud-based it's
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not actually on one of the units so
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super easy and straightforward now the
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performance
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my experience is the performance has
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been terrific every so often I find that
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the app has a problem connecting and
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then I just have to wait a couple of
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seconds and then it goes and sees all
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the devices and everything I think
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that's just a handshake issue but it's
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certainly nothing that Mars the
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experience and from the device
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perspective man my devices just zip
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right along I've streamed Netflix I can
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do Amazon Prime video you know all those
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sort of high demand applications seem to
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work just fine I've uploaded YouTube
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videos and this device has been
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perfectly fine even off of the extender
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rather than off of the base unit now in
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terms of performance if you are running
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off of the extender because you're
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further away from your base there's
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approximately a 15% performance hit from
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everything that I've read from different
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people testing it um I haven't really
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experienced that myself but I don't
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really go all the way to 10 on my
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internet use for the most part so you
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should probably know that but I don't
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think you'll have an issue with that so
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the only other thing to talk about is
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the price but before we get there can I
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please ask click on the Subscribe button
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and subscribe to my channel appreciate
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that thank you now if you just need the
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router and you don't need this guy the
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extender the router itself with AVG with
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all these terrific parental controls and
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everything that unit by itself is
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$158.2 if you want to get the unit plus
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the extender which gives you that 15,000
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square ft um coverage and I would
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certainly recommend it why would you not
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want great Wi-Fi throughout your house
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um if you get the one with the extender
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it bumps the price up to
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$259.50 so either way it's entirely
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within the normal range of what's a good
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reasonably priced Wi-Fi base station and
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I really like the ease of parental
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controls and I really like the avgm
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antivirus built into this and frankly I
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like its form factor it's small it's
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thin it's very welld designed so this is
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Dave Taylor we're looking at the amped
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Ally plus Wi-Fi base station and
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extender and I'll catch you in my next
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[Music]
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video
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he