What’s the better option for a two-story house: mesh system or single router?

[VictoriaH]

I’m trying to decide between a mesh system and a single powerful router for my two-story house. The main issue is that my office upstairs gets a weak signal, but I’m not sure if going full mesh is overkill since the rest of the house is covered okay.

[JerryR]

I tried a mesh setup in a two story place. It did improve the upstairs signal a bit, but not enough for the office. The rest of the house stayed reasonable after I adjusted the main router higher up and kept the extra unit only where it actually helped.

[Ethan68]

A single, strong router with good elevation and a clear line to the stairs made the biggest difference for me. I swapped to a model with beamforming and a couple of big antennas and it finally covered the second floor better, though I still noticed a slow patch near the far corner.

[Ella77]

I did a few speed tests upstairs and downstairs over a couple of days. The numbers jittered a lot, and the upstairs result bounced between usable and barely enough, which made me hesitate about spending more on gear.

[GraceCM]

Do you think the real issue is the wireless coverage or could the office layout and interference be the bigger blocker?