alt Hacker NewsHome mesh is mostly about having wireless backhaul, and you can certainly do that if you have (preferably) two radios, you just set up one radio as a client to your main AP.
Even if you aren't doing wireless backhaul you just rely on regular client behaviour to transition between APs, can enable 802.11r to improve this.
Enterprise "mesh" typically uses wired backhaul for performance and can help clients roam quicker with a controller (auth, not deciding to roam). Controller can also adjusts radio power so APs aren't talking over each other if they're too close.
Mesh isn't any magic, just regular wifi.
There are some difference in client wifi interfaces (STA) and access point wifi interfaces (APs, like you'd find on a good router). For example, some wifi interfaces don't have promiscuous mode, or can't scan while maintaining an active connection, etc.
It's like the difference between softmodems (aka winmodems) and full hardware modems. I know there are some projects that use Raspberry Pis as an AP, and it could do like 10 devices stock and 20 devices with firmware changes. Even a low-end router could handle more clients than that.