Do I need a mesh system, or does my router just live in the worst possible corner?

Our rented townhouse has reliable internet in the living room and a dead patch in the upstairs back bedroom. That bedroom is now my partner's office, so the dead patch has been promoted from inconvenience to household issue.

The provider's router sits on the floor inside a media cabinet at the front of the house. The cable is short, the outlet is awkward, and closing the cabinet keeps the living room tidy. It may also be an excellent way to make the router work harder.

We have been shopping for a mesh system because every product page seems to show a happy family with signal in the attic, yard, and possibly the next county. Before spending several hundred dollars, I moved the router onto a shelf outside the cabinet for one workday. The upstairs connection improved, although the back bedroom still had brief drops.

That result makes the purchase less obvious. A longer cable and better placement may be enough. A wired access point would be appealing if the rental layout allowed it. A mesh system may be the practical choice, but I do not want to use it as an expensive substitute for moving the equipment three feet.

My next test is to map three locations at the same times for several days: living room, upstairs landing, and office. We will note call stability rather than chase a single speed number. We also need to check where a second unit could sit with a decent connection to the main router; placing it directly inside the dead zone seems unlikely to create useful magic.

At what point would you stop optimizing placement and buy additional equipment? I would value renter-friendly advice that includes cables, shelves, doors, and the fact that other people have to live with the setup.