I’ll just quote the OpenWRT Wiki here, because I think half the comments here confuse mesh and roaming:
Are you sure you want a mesh?
If you are looking for a solution to enable your user devices to seamlessly roam from one access point to another in your home, you need 802.11r (roaming), not 802.11s.
It is unfortunate that some manufacturers have used the word “Mesh” for marketing purposes to describe their non-standard, closed source, proprietary “roaming” functionality and this causes great confusion to many people when they enter the world of international standards and open source firmware for their network infrastructure.
- The accepted standard for mesh networks is ieee802.11s.
- The accepted standard for fast roaming of user devices is ieee802.11r.
These are two completely unrelated standards.
Source: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/802-11s#are_you_sure_you_want_a_mesh
There is this overview showing the options: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/wifiextenders/overview
I have only used the WDS mode once and none of the others, so my experience isn’t enough to make a recommendation.