Style has never been paramount in the connectivity sphere. Just glimpse the shelves of clunky, unreliable routers that haven’t changed in 10-plus years. “They have been black boxes for so long, but now wi-fi is becoming a core utility—like power and water,” says Nick Weaver, the CEO of eero, a product company that seeks to upend the home networking market.

eero offers a design-centric wi-fi solution, its hardware—in the form of a sleek, gently sloping square, with internal antennae, a soft-touch bottom, matte sides, and a lustrous, light-reflecting top—was inspired by iconic architect Eero Saarinen. “We work with a lot of visionary innovations to try to reflect the elegance and spirit of technology in the industrial design,” says designer Fred Bould, who has worked with Nest Labs, GoPro, and Roku. Unlike other routers, the eero system uses complex proprietary software, allows for simultaneous streaming on multiple devices and use of multiple radio frequencies and channels, and includes a user-friendly app that makes setup easy.