@JPoldo,

90% is still an extremely high throughput for an RE actually; but the change is the result of many improvements actually, and cannot be attributed to just one.

You are correct that the act of repeating a signal after it is received wireless results in Half-Speeds. Even with the improvements, you are likely going to have a smoother experience with an official mesh network due to the power of the nodes and the extra technologies implemented to help your device move between nodes while maintaining a stable connection.

Other improvements regarding overall efficiency such as MU-MIMO and HE160 have made it possible to push far more data through a similar size pipeline, while also increasing the overall size of the pipeline (channel width).

In a OneMesh configuration, this is extended further because your router and REs can then communicate to provide the best path back to the main router. Also, if you are looking at your REs speeds when they are given a wired connection, they are actually operating as Access Points - which do not suffer from the same loss that repeating a signal causes.