Not that I complain about having to choose from a healthy amount of devices, but it quickly get confusing when you have multiple AX1800 models available from the same brand. The Archer AX73 seems to be in the same class with the RT-AX82U which has proven to be a fairly reliable router (a personal favorite), both sharing the same SoC and WiFi chips, but, while the hardware is extremely important, the software and user experience have at least an equal value. And there’s something that TP-Link has done that caught my eye and its about the decision to add the Home Shield package to the AX73, while keeping the HomeCare out.

The HomeCare package was provided by TrendMicro and it included QoS, Parental Control and Antivirus, so, hopefully, TP-Link didn’t take the same road as Netgear and removed important features for the sake of re-adding them later with a subscription. In any case, the TP-Link AX73 does come with the expected WiFi 6 features, such as OFDMA, the 1024-QAM modulation and 160MHz channel bandwidth, so let’s put it to the test and see how well it fares when compared to its main competitors.

UPDATE 08.22.2023: I have run some multi-client stress tests on the TP-Link AX5400 AX73: simultaneous 1080p and 4K streaming traffic, browsing and VoIP.

Design and Build Quality

You very rarely get a TP-Link router with a plain look and the AX73 is one of those devices where the manufacturer said yes to every idea that came from the design team. And the end result is a bit peculiar, but still fairly interesting. That being said, the TP-Link AX73 features a rectangular plastic case covered by a black matte finish, with the exception of a large piece of plastic at the top that’s glossy black. This piece interrupts the unique pattern that covers almost the entire upper section of the router – the pattern resembles some sort of textile braiding and there are multiple cut-outs to let the air flow through.

The bottom part of the router is covered by the same type of pattern and these small, but numerous ventilation holes do help quite a bit with keeping the internal temperature in check. Yes, the router does get warm while functioning, but it did not show signs of overheating for now.

I noticed that on the bottom of the AX73, TP-Link has added four silicone feet to keep the router in place (still can’t fathom why they haven’t done the same with the AX50) and there are also a couple of holes to help you mount the device on the wall. If you want to keep the TP-Link AX73 on a desk, know that the router is not that compact (it measures 10.7 x 5.8 x 1.9 inches) and there are lots of antennas, surrounding the case. The AX73 does come with six antennas, four positioned on the rear side and two on the left and right side of the device and no, they’re not detachable (the trend of upgrading the antennas is essentially gone by this point).

TP-Link has positioned the seven LEDs on the front of the AX73 (on the upper edge) and, while they’re quite discreet, you do get the option to turn them off if the light bothers you during the night. From the left, there’s the Power LED (solid green when everything functions properly), followed by the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz LEDs (still have those strange WiFi icons). The next LED is responsible for showing the status of the Internet connection and, similarly to the Netgear RAX10, it will remain turned off if there’s no cable connected; the LED will turn amber if there’s a cable connected, but no link and will turn green when it has a proper Internet connection. Lastly, there’s a single LAN port for all four (borderline useless unless you add one LED per port), a USB LED and a WPS LED.

On the rear side of the TP-Link AX73, there are four buttons, one for turning Off/On the LEDs, one for enabling the WPS process, one for turning On/Off the WiFi and the last one is a recessed Reset button (press and hold it for about 10 seconds to return the router to its default settings). Further to the right, there are four LAN ports (all Gigabit), one WAN port (also Gigabit), a Power button and a Power connector. On the right side of the AX73, there’s a single USB 3.0 port for adding a printer or an external storage device.

Internal Hardware

I rarely had problems opening the case of any TP-Link routers, so the tear-down process of the TP-Link AX73 is not that difficult. Do be aware that even if there aren’t any sealed screws, you can still void the warranty by opening the device. If that’s fine with you, remove the four screws from underneath the four silicone feet and then gently detach the top cover. It’s not that easy to do it, so I suggest using a prying tool and start from the front side of the case and then slowly move towards the rear until the top pops off.

You will then be greeted by a fairly large PCB (there is no wasted internal space, so the dimensions of the router are justified) and you will see a black heat sink covering up the main components. To remove it, you need to turn the PCB upside down and the process of removing the board is stupidly difficult. You can easily damage it, so take your time, slowly and gently trying to push the ports and buttons until the PCB gets removed.
Afterwards, you need to remove the two screws from the top part to detach the bottom-placed metallic sink which apparently has some thermal paste to transfer the heat (you will need to reapply it afterwards). This way, you should be able to easily remove the three screws and finally detach the top heatsink. This way, I was able to identify the tri-core 1.5GHz Broadcom BCM6750KFEBG SoC which is the same as on the Asus RT-AX82U, 128MB of flash memory from ESMT (F50L1G41LB), 512MB of RAM from ESMT M15T4G16256A, 2x DG36001 G 2101-V LAN transformers and one DG18101 G 2042-Y LAN transformer.

For the WiFi, the TP-Link Archer AX73 relies on Broadcom BCM43684KRFBG 802.11a/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 chipset (along with a Skyworks SKY85743 front-end module) for the 5GHz band and on the Broadcom BCM6750 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 chip (along with Qorvo QPF4216 integrated front-end module) for the 2.4GHz band.
Note: The TP-Link AX73 is advertised as an AX5400-class WiFi 6 router, so it features a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 4,804Mbps on the 5GHz radio band and a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 574Mbps on the 2.4GHz band – these are theoretical values, so you won’t be able to reach this performance inside your home (they can hardly be achieved in a lab).

The WiFi Features

Just like the AX50, the TP-Link AX73 is a WiFi 6 router from the draft stage, but, there is a fundamental difference between it and the RAX40 and that’s the support for OneMesh which, similarly to the AiMesh, it can create a mesh network using multiple types of TP-Link routers. The concept is the same as with the dedicated WiFi mesh systems – all the routers becomes mesh nodes with one being connected to the modem and the rest communicating between each other, creating optimized paths for the data.

If one node fails, the data will be routed using the remaining connected routers. The Asus AiMesh is far more vast than the OneMesh in terms of model compatibility, but it’s still a step in the right direction. Besides the mesh capabilities, the TP-Link Archer AX73 does come with the highlighted feature from the WiFi 6 standard: the OFDMA. This feature splits the channel bandwidth into multiple resource units that can vary in size and these RUs are then allocated for communicating with multiple client devices at the same time. Doing so, you get a better handling of smaller data packets and far less interference.
MU-MIMO is also supported, and it should help handling multiple devices at the same time, without needing to rely on the round-robin technique, but the compatibility is still an issue even today.

Yes, some manufacturers have added the support of some basic MU-MIMO implementation, but unless you go for the flagship devices, the compatibility with any WiFi enhancing feature is still very scarce. The same remains true for BeamForming and the 160MHz channel bandwidth support. Both are great, one optimizing the path towards the client and the other offering a far better WiFi performance near the router, but, if you don’t have a compatible client, the throughput will not differ that much from when using WiFi 5 routers. That being said, let’s check out the wireless performance of the AX73.

Multi-Client Stress Test – 5GHz

Following the saga of testing the wireless routers in a better way than just relying on the single-client tests (which are the easy way out for most publications), I decided to put a second TP-Link router (the Archer AX5400) through the hurdles of the multi-client stress test. And yes, the principle is the same as it was with the TP-Link AX3200, the ASUS GT-AX6000 and the TUF-AX5400 – we connect five client devices to a server computer and then simulate various types of traffic (at the moment, I have simulated 4K and 1080p streaming, web browsing and VoIP).

The idea is to simulate these types of traffic on all client devices at the same time, and it can be two or more variations at the same time on a single client device (for example, 4K streaming, while the user navigates the web as well, furiously). I didn’t use iperf, but relied on the open-source tools developed by Mr. Jim Salter, netburn which creates the traffic simulations and the net-hydra which runs multiple instances of netburn on the set client devices (it relies on SSH to accomplish it).

OK, but are these results truly better than just running iperf3 which usually just show how well the router was able to reach that near-Gigabit throughput? I don’t deny the usefulness of the single-client test (the next few sections are dedicated to that), but I think we get a better idea about how the router behaves when pushed to the maximum with multi-client tests. This way, the user can understand if the TP-Link AX5400 can handle multiple 4K streams at the same time and whether there’s any place for web browsing as well – essentially, instead of focusing on the throughput, the idea is to check how quickly and how well is the router able to accomplish a specific task (we check the latency).

I know that a lot will say that these tests are not purely objective and yes, the results will differ depending on the amount of interference, the location and the type of client devices. Surely, there are better multi-client tests out there, such as the octoPal, but that will have an impact on the wallet and not many professionals bother with non-enterprise wireless networking devices since the cost is just too high. So yeah, netburn and net-hydra are the best we got for now.

The client devices that I chose are not from the same WiFi standard, one is WiFi 6E (which strangely enough, it behaved the weirdest with routers that I tested so far), two are WiFi 6 and two are WiFi 5. This is a list of their specs:

While there is a financial reason for the WiFi standard mismatch (laptops and PCs cost money), understand that we should be able to better simulate a home or office network when the client devices are more diverse. As for the server device, these are its specs:

• WiFi 6 built-in adapter + 2.5GbE Ethernet port
• 32GB RAM
• NVMe SSD storage
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600xt
• Radeon RX 6800xt.

It’s also worth mentioning that I tried to keep the same distance between the client devices and the server (same as when testing the other wireless routers), but since distance means little, I decided to share the attenuation that was detected at the client level. The ZimaBoard 832 is positioned the farthest since it’s connected to a TV (it works as an alternative to the built-in computer) and the signal strength is -65dB, while the other four clients sit in the same room as the TP-Link AX5400 – the attenuation was -33dB for the WiFi 6E PC and it ranged between -38 and -43dB for the other three client devices.

4K and 1080p Streaming – 5 Client Devices

The first type of multi-client test is the simulation of 1080p traffic on all client devices at the same time and I decided that ideally, the latency should remain underneath 150ms in order to maintain a fairly decent streaming experience. This limit is not an industry standard and can be corrected (if you think it should be higher or lower, do let me know). The clients were connected to the 5GHz network (80MHz) and OFDMA was enabled to give the WiFi 6 and 6E devices any advantages that they may need.

We can see from the graph that two client devices remained under this limit pretty much for the entire duration of the test, but three clients, the WiFi 6 Lenovo Y520 laptops and the WiFi 6E PC did experience a latency spike (the latter did not surprise me). With the exception of one of the two Lenovo laptops, it shouldn’t have a noticeable impact on the streaming experience. And even in the Lenovo laptop case, it does seem to experience it only for 1% of the time.

I also checked whether the clients managed to reach the 5Mbps limit that was set by me and surprisingly not all did. The worse offender remains one of the WiFi 6 laptops, while the best performers were the two WiFi 5 client devices. What does that mean for the user? It means that there may be some occasional buffering, but overall, the TP-Link AX5400 handled this test decently well.

Moving forward, I ran the same multi-client test but with the limit set to 25Mbps, essentially simulating what the user will need if it wants the maximum video quality from Netflix. As expected, the performance was a bit worse.

We again see the two WiFi 5 client devices managing to remain below 150ms for the most part, the ZimaBoard 832 going above it for 1% of the cases, while the MacBook Pro seeing spikes for 5% of the time (once every 20 times, so not great, but not really terrible). The worse offender is again the WiFi 6E client which is pretty much unusable, while the two WiFi 6 client devices will experience buffering more often (10% of the times).

Now let’s see if the 25Mbps limit was reached by all client devices and the performance is what you would expect. The WiFi 6E PC was well below it, while the WiFi 6 clients hovered at around 22Mbps – not great.

1080p Streaming and Browsing (+ VoIP) – 5 Client Devices

How realistic are the continuous 1080p streaming simulations? Depending on the application, they can be surprisingly accurate, while the simulated web browsing will most likely not be as intense in real life. A website is composed of multiple resources (images, text, videos) which are loaded as fast as possible and we tried to emulate that by running 12 concurrent 128KB of data for each client device. But the amusing aspect is that this is done somewhat continuously (I have injected a 500ms jitter) – the user would open and close pages non-stop for the 10 minutes the test is being run.

As an equivalent to real life, I suppose you could imagine probably about 50 (or more) users still fairly violently surfing the web. But, this is a veritable stress test, so how well did the TP-Link AX5400 perform? Surprisingly, not that bad. We see that the ZimaBoard 832 deviates a bit for 5% of the time (I suppose it makes sense considering that it’s the farthest client device). The other client devices did good, with the WiFi 6E client experiencing some latency spikes for 1% of the time.

As for the continuous fast browsing, I set the limit to 1.5s and it’s where the experience would become unbearable and the user would have to reload the page. The only client device that went past that limit is the WiFi 6E client, but it’s worth mentioning that a single client, one WiFi 6 laptop was the only to maintain a fairly low latency, the rest were pretty much at the limit.

I didn’t feel like I put enough pressure on the TP-Link AX5400, so I decided to add VoIP into the mix as well, but to maintain some semblance of realism, I ran it at the level of one client device.

Can you guess which one? Yes, it’s that Lenovo laptop which went above the set 150ms immediately and permanently; pretty much all other clients went either slightly above or immediately below this limit for 1% of the time which I suppose can be acceptable. As for the simultaneous web browsing, all remained below the set limit despite the VoIP traffic running alongside it – it seems that the WiFi 6E finally behaved.

4K Streaming and Browsing – 5 Client Devices

While simulating 4K streaming and web-browsing at the same time on all 5 client devices, we can see that the latency spikes for about 10% on two clients (one WiFi 6 and one WiFi 6E, as expected), but then only the MacBook Pro remained below the set limit for 99% of the time, the other clients experiencing latency spikes for 5% of the time.

This means that users will experience noticeable buffering fairly often. What about the fast web browsing? It always remained below the 1.5s limit, so all is decently well. The question is whether the clients were able to go to the 25Mbps limit and were they able to remain there?

Again, only the WiFi 5 client devices went to 25Mbps, the others a bit below it, and the worst offender is once again the WiFi 6E PC which only reached 21.9Mbps. Surprisingly, we see that this client performed a bit better than when the test was run only with the 4K streaming simulation (perhaps we see some features finally starting up and helping the client a bit).

Multi-Client Stress Test – 2.4GHz

While the 1080p and 4K traffic simulations can be easily run while the client devices are connected to the 5GHz network, things aren’t that smooth on 2.4GHz. That’s why I decided that it’s best to only run the simulated fast web browsing simultaneously on all five clients. The limit for a somewhat decent experience remains 1.5s and the results were interesting.

We see two client devices performing as intended and yes, it’s the two WiFi 5 clients once again. The rest showed latency spikes for 1% of the time, so, while not completely negligible, it shouldn’t have a very noticeable impact either. Once every 99 times, the user will have to reload the page.

Single-client WiFi test

To do so, I had to rely on a client device equipped with an AX200 WiFi adapter (TP-Link TX3000E) and on a server device that will be directly connected to the router (via an Ethernet cable). For the first test, I connected the client device to the 5GHz network (160MHz, OFDMA enabled) and, upstream, I measured an average of 938Mbps at 5 feet and 363Mbps at 30 feet.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

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Furthermore, to keep the price tag more competitive, TP-Link did add just three other Ethernet ports and a single USB-A 3.0 port (the secondary one is USB 2.0). You do get an abundance of antennas and this is actually a tri-band router, but the physical rates aren’t that great, so there’s pretty much no chance of going above the 1,000Mbps limit, despite the multi Gigabit port (it will be great for other purposes, such as for a NAS).

TP-Link does say that the Archer AX3200 supports OFDMA and MU-MIMO, and there is also support for WPA3 encryption. I saw that the channel bandwidth of one radio band could go up to 80MHz, and for whatever reason, TP-Link said that the second 5GHz radio supports the 160MHz channel bandwidth, but after checking out the software, it doesn’t seem to go above 80MHz (not that the 160MHz channel frequency is very useful, but it should still be corrected since it could lead to confusion).

Then again, not many people actually need a tri-band router unless they want to use OneMesh and connect additional TP-Link routers to form a single larger network. It was interesting to find that the router was initially a Costco exclusive, but since I got it from a different retailer, it seems that it is now more widely available.

UPDATE 08.11.2023: I have managed to run a few multi-client stress tests on the TP-Link AX3200 (the reason for this update). This means that you can now check the latency when multiple clients run simultaneous 1080p and 4K streaming traffic, browsing and even VoIP.

Design and Build Quality

The TP-Link Archer AX3200 is actually the first WiFi 6 router from the series to go for this more aggressive look which then was recycled by the AX80, AX90 and the newer WiFi 6E AXE95. TP-Link put lots of lines at the top of the case, creating a rising sun and rays effect with an elevated division in the middle that ends up with a single LED on the front.

They had so much space to add a proper LED array, but no, let’s keep it minimal, while also adding six (fixed) antennas all around the case and putting various lines and ridges pretty much everywhere. Also, the device itself is far from being compact considering that it measures 11.9 x 8.1 x 6.8 inches (or 30.2 x 20.7 x 17.4 cm) so you do have to seriously take into account its footprint if you intend to leave the router on a desk. You don’t have to though because the TP-Link Archer AX3200 has two mounting holes at the bottom to let you mount it on the wall.

I could also mention the four silicone feet that do a good job at keeping the wireless router into place (the weight of the TP-Link Archer AX3200 also plays an important factor – it weighs 1.9lbs). I haven’t mentioned it before, but you can see it from the photos that the TP-Link Archer AX3200 is made of plastic and it is covered by a black matte finish, like most other wireless routers on the market. I did check for ventilation holes and the bottom area has lots of cut-outs to allow air to flow through.

If everything is working properly, then the LED will be solid blue. TP-Link has hidden three button on the front of the case, underneath the LED section: one button turns on or off the WiFi (press and hold it for 2 seconds), one turns off the LED and the last enables the WPS function.

Now let’s check out the ports. Besides the USB 3.0 port from the left side of the device, everything else can be found on the rear side. And, from the left, there’s the USB 2.0 port (for printers, most likely) followed by the Power port and the Power button. Next, we can see the Reset button (to return the TP-Link Archer AX3200 to its factory settings) and the two WAN ports, one 2.5GbE and the second Ethernet Gigabit. Farther to the right, there are three Ethernet LAN port, all Gigabit.

Internal Hardware (TP-Link Archer AX3200 Teardown)

If you intend to open up the case of the TP-Link Archer AX3200, know that it can void the warranty, even if there are no seal stickers – still, as long as you leave everything intact, it should be fine. So, all that needs to be done is to remove the four screws from underneath the silicone feet, then, using a prying tool, just move slowly to detach the top part.

After doing so myself, I saw the large heatsink that covers the PCB almost in its entirety and, after removing it (from the other side of the board), I could see the main components. I was able to identify the quad-core 1.5GHz Broadcom BCM6755KFEBG SoC, the 256MB SDRAM ESMT M15T4G16256A, the 128MB of flash memory from ESMT (F50L1G41A), as well as the Broadcom BCM53134SKFBG 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet switch chip and the Broadcom BCM54991EL single-port 2.5GbE Ethernet transceiver.

As for WiFi, the TP-Link Archer AX3200 uses the Broadcom BCM6755KFEBG 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 + 2X 4218 7259 front-end modules for the 2.4GHz radio band, as well as for the first 5GHz radio (includes the 2X Skyworks SKY85743 WLAN front-end modules). The Broadcom BCM43684KRFBG 802.11a/n/ac/ax 4×4:3 + 4X Skyworks SKY85743 WLAN front-end modules + MT3136A IC is used for the second, more powerful 5GHz radio band. The TP-Link Archer AX3200 features the following features a maximum theoretical data transfer rates: for the 2.4GHz radio, it’s 574Mbps; for the first 5GHz radio, it’s 1,201Mbps and for the second 5GHz, it is 1,440Mbps.

The WiFi Features

The TP-Link Archer AX3200 does come with the main WiFi 6 features, such as OFDMA and TWT, but there is no BSS Coloring, which I suppose makes sense considering the price and the targeted demographic. Even OFDMA will be of use only in a truly crowded environments and if the client devices are compatible, and right now, there is barely compatibility with the features of WiFi 5 (such as MU-MIMO). I noticed that TP-Link did not mention whether the OFDMA is available on all three radio bands and if it’s both ul/dl, so I checked the interface.

There is the option to enable OFDMA globally, but no mention on how it is implemented – I think it’s only on the better 5GHz radio, but I don’t have the equipment to confirm it. I also noticed that MU-MIMO could be enabled only on the secondary 5GHz radio, so there are clearly some limitations in place, most likely to keep the cost low. Then again, unless actually using compatible clients, you’re not going to see any benefit from any of these features. I did see that there was support for OpenMesh which is the equivalent to the AiMesh from Asus and considering the three radio bands, one could be used for backhaul traffic, so you get a better throughput at the secondary mesh node.

Another thing that I saw when setting up the SSIDs was that the first 5GHz uses different channels than the second 5GHz, and it makes sense considering that we don’t want any overlapping between the two. But it also highlights how much of a niche device is a tri-band router. Unless you have very specific applications in mind (OneMesh, IoT or something similar), you’re better off with a single 5GHz radio band which can be more powerful than the two offered by the TP-Link Archer AX3200 put together.

Multi-Client Stress Test – 5GHz

After the Asus GT-AX6000 and the TUF-AX5400 were put through some multi-client stress tests, I decided that I wanted to see how a TP-Link device would perform and the TP-Link AX3200 was the closest to grab from the shelf. So, I powered it up, hooked up the server machine (via Ethernet connection) and prepared the five client devices. If you didn’t check the other two router reviews, know that I decided to use the tools developed by Jim Salter (netburn and net-hydra) for simultaneous simulation of various types of traffic.

And the reason why I thought this was a good idea was because the single-client tests, while useful to get a general idea about what you should expect from the wireless router, they don’t really paint an accurate picture about how the device will behave in your home. I have added signal strength (attenuation) into the reviews (better than just the amount of feet between the client and the router) but seeing how the wireless router handles multiple types of traffic at the same time across a variety of client devices should give you a better idea on whether it would survive the devices in your home or office.
These are the client devices that will be used for these tests:

The type of traffic that I am currently simulating are 4K and 1080p streaming, web browsing and VoIP (only on a single client). Obviously, this is a stress test, so it’s going to be a bit exaggerated. I say that because the web browsing is very fast and continuous, and people usually stop and read the web articles. Also, five simultaneous 4K streaming sessions at the max rate can happen, but again, it’s a very particular use case. And if it does need to happen, just don’t use WiFi, go with a cabled connection otherwise, as you will see, the latency is unforgiving.

Still, how does that translate into actual number of client devices? Usually, way more than five, but I can’t really put a specific number. Can it be 50 or 100? Sure, it can also be 10 or 5. It depends on the type of client devices, the type of traffic, the location and attenuation, and, of course, the dreaded interference. Yes, they’re very diverse (from different WiFi standards) and as I mentioned in other articles, this way, we get a more realistic experience (and I didn’t have the budget to go with identical computers). As for the server device, these are its specs:

• WiFi 6 built-in adapter + 2.5GbE Ethernet port
• 32GB RAM
• NVMe SSD storage
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600xt
• Radeon RX 6800xt.

It’s worth mentioning that the client devices will connect to a single 5GHz network (80MHz, OFDMA enabled) and know that the advantage that the TP-Link AX3200 has over other WiFi 6 routers is the extra 5GHz network which can help lower the load.

4K and 1080p Streaming – 5 Client Devices

I first ran the 1080p streaming test on all client devices at the same time for 10 minutes at a time (I ran it multiple times and made an average of all the results I got). I again chose the arbitrary 150ms limit which I suppose will be enough to get a passable performance and it seems that pretty much all client devices managed to remain under this limit. Yes, there is a sharp rise way above 150ms on one of the WiFi 6 clients, but it happened only once, so it can be considered negligible.

I did set the throughput limit on all client devices to be 5Mbps, so let’s see if all managed to reach and maintain it. As you can see from the graph, all devices, be it WiFi 5, WiFi 6 or WiFi 6E managed to reach 5Mbps which is excellent.
But what about 4K? It’s, of course more demanding that 1080p streaming and I did set the limit to 25Mbps, simulating what five devices would need to sustain the maximum quality from Netflix. And things were a bit different this time.

I kept the maximum latency limit to 150ms and, focusing on the 99%, we see that one Lenovo Y520 (WiFi 6) client and the MacBook remained acceptable up to this point, immediately followed by the ZimaBoard which, despite being the farthest, still remained decent (at a rate of 1%, you will experience some occasional buffering, so nothing too serious). The WiFi 6E PC quickly went above the set limit, so it could not maintain a good streaming experience; the second WiFi 6 laptop will do fine for 95% of the times, but you may see some buffering from time to time. As we can see, the WiFi 6E client device strikes again, as it did with the Asus routers, so it doesn’t really like being put under stress. I was also curious to see if all clients managed to reach the 25Mbps limit.

We can see that not all did which is a bit of a problem and it may force you to go with a lower resolution in case you want to stream Netflix max quality on five client devices at the same time. Then again, you always have a spare 5GHz band, so hop onto it to make no compromises.

1080p Streaming and Browsing (+ VoIP) – 5 Client Devices

Since the TP-Link AX3200 did so well on the simultaneous 1080p streaming test, I decided to cut its wings a bit and add some web browsing in the mix. And I am not talking about opening a page waiting 3-4 minutes and then open another, no, we’re going turbo mode. Close and open, close and open. Certainly, I added 500ms of jitter to randomize the process a bit and simulate some real-life conditions – additionally, I set netburn to load 12 concurrent instances of 128KB which means roughly 1.5Mbps. This is the size of most web pages and since there are 12 separate pieces, it simulates multiple types of content loaded on a page (pictures, text, tables and so on).

The first picture illustrates the 1080p streaming performance while the fast browsing is happening in the background.
As you can see, the MacBook Pro is the only device that goes above the 150ms limit at 99% (1% of the time) and yes, all have spikes, but it should not affect the overall quality of the streaming. What about the web browsing?

For the turbo-mode web browsing test, the set limit is 1.5s after which the user will need to reload the page (since it loads too slow). And, as you can see from the image, all client devices managed to remain underneath this set limit which is excellent news once again. It’s worth mentioning that all client devices also managed to reach and maintain 5Mbps. Moving forward, I wanted to make things even more difficult and included VoIP as well, but not on all client devices, only one one, simulating the user having to receive a conference call.

VoIP traffic didn’t really have that much of an impact – sure, the latency rose here and there, but not enough to impact the 1080p streaming quality. All client devices remained under the set limit (150ms), with just some rare spikes less than 1% of the time. The web browsing wasn’t impacted that much either since all clients maintained a latency underneath 1.5s.

As an early conclusion, the TP-Link AX3200 handles really well the 1080p stress test and it didn’t budge even after mixing fast browsing and VoiP.

4K Streaming and Browsing – 5 Client Devices

The 4K streaming test alone put a bit of strain on the TP-Link AX3200, so let’s see what happens after adding web browsing alongside it as well.

We can see that only one client device stayed well under the set limit of 150ms, well, with a 1% deviation and it’s a WiFi 6 client device. The ZimaBoard 832 and the MacBook Pro also did well up until the 99% level (also the 1% spikes). The WiFi 6E refused to cooperate entirely and so did the second WiFi 6 client device. Before reaching a conclusion, let’s see the web browsing graph.

It seems that the WiFi 6E client refused to cooperate here as well and the second WiFi 6 Lenovo laptop also had a fit, getting very close to the set limit. But it still remained beneath it, barely. The other client devices had no trouble offering a good browsing experience. But, were the client devices able to reach the set 25Mbps throughput to ensure that Netflix pushes the max quality?

The answer is no, so again, as with the 4K streaming-only test, you will have to make some compromises in resolution. And, if you add the browsing into the mix, things get even more difficult for the TP-Link AX3200. Not to say that it couldn’t handle the stress, just that it won’t be able to do it properly on all client devices.

Multi-Client Stress Test – 2.4GHz

After finishing the multi-client stress tests on the 5GHz network (one of the two), I had to push the 2.4GHz network to the limit as well. Obviously, the 4K streaming test will be too much and I didn’t dare with the 1080p streaming test either. Just the plain ol’ insane-mode web-browsing.

It does seem that we did push the TP-Link AX3200 to the limit alright. Only one client device managed to stay under the 1.5s limit for the entire time, one of the two identical WiFi 6 client devices. The other client devices did well for pretty much the entire run, but there were some latency spikes which will occur about 1% of the time (leading to the need to re-load the page very, very rarely).

The WiFi 6E client device did show a higher deviation and will require that the user reloads the page 5% of the time (once every 20 times). Again, this is a stress test and you will be able to properly browse the web on way more client devices than the 5 I used. But I would take into account the option to move all the IoT, smart devices on this band instead.

The Wireless Test (5GHz)

To test the wireless performance, I connected three client devices to the first 5GHz network (the more powerful one) and yes, the channel bandwidth was set to the maximum of 80MHz. Also, since there is a 2.5GbE port, I used it to connect the server device, ensuring that there are no bottlenecks and I also made sure that the interference was kept to a minimum.

The first client device uses a WiFi 6 adapter (AX200) and the signal strength was really good, especially at 5 feet, where the attenuation was 32dB. And the throughput was maxing on the Gigabit connection since I measured an average of 936Mbps upstream, but only 361Mbps downstream. The excellent throughput remained strong even if I was about 45 feet away from the TP-Link Archer AX3200 where I saw an average of 634Mbps up and 176Mbps downstream.

At 70 feet (-81dB attenuation), I measured an average of 239Mbps upstream and 60.6Mbps downstream, so it remains very usable for pretty much any application. Moving to the secondary 5GHz WiFi network, the throughput remains really good.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

And this is one of the main reasons why I decided to check out the GT-AX6000 because it seems that the RT-AX88U Pro is essentially the same device minus the ROG features and, at the same time, Asus also wanted the ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 to be a soft of successor to the RT-AX86U or perhaps the RT-AX82U, the latter also pushing the WiFi limits with its powerful RGB.

At the same time, the ROG gaming routers series has recently gained both a WiFi 6E and even a WiFi 7 member, so is the RT-AX86U truly outdated and should we quickly move on to the next big thing? If you have the RT-AX86U, keep it, but I won’t deny that the ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 is also very well equipped and seems to be a phenomenal router. It offers two 2.5GbE ports and you can use them for dual-WAN purposes.

There’s OFDMA, 1024QAM and 160MHz channel bandwidth, and, of course, it’s very much possible to add the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 to an AiMesh network. Furthermore, the router does cater to the gaming community, so expect it to be weirdly shaped, to have RGB and some gaming-related features. These include Triple-level Game Acceleration (basically a slightly enhanced QoS), the VPN Fusion and the Mobile Game Mode. If all of this sound great to you, then let’s put the the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 to the test and see how it performs.

UPDATE 08.01.2023: I have put the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 through a few multi-client stress tests. This way, we get a better picture of the actual wireless performance than with the single-client iperf tests.

Design and Build Quality

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 sports a rectangular plastic case, kind of, because there are various parts sticking out, lots of geometrical patterns with the culmination of four dedicated areas to add the humongous four antennas, one for each of the device’s corners. So, it’s basically a drone, just add four propellers instead of the antennas and let it fly, the CPU can handle it (it’s a joke, don’t destroy your router).

The four antennas are removable, and each has a red plastic portion which I assumed were for some LEDs to shine through – it would have justified the weird shape, but no, they’re there just for show and serve no purpose above creating a gaming device aesthetic. But don’t worry, there is RGB and it’s the ROG logo at the top of the case (which, by the way, it’s covered by a black matte finish). This RGB light can be adjusted from the software, as well as turned off from one of the front-facing buttons.

The other button enabled WPS which I suggest you don’t use it due to potential security risks. Let’s talk a bit about the size of the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000. It measures 13.0 x 6.6 x 2.6 inches (or 33.0 x 16.8 x 6.6cm) and it weighs 2.47lbs (1.1 kg), so it’s both very large and heavy, and you do have to plan where you’re going to put it, especially due to the two antennas that sit at the front. The manufacturer has added four silicone feet to keep the device into place (the weight is pretty much enough to keep it steady) and I also noticed two mounting holes, so yes, it is possible to mount the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 on the wall (although the antennas would again make things complicated).

On the front of the WiFi 6 router, there is an array of LEDs, showing the status of the Power, the two WiFi radios, the 2.5GbE WAN port, the 2.5GbE LAN port, the WPS and the LAN. I would have liked to have separate LEDs for the LAN ports, but I guess it’s still better than what other manufacturers have been offering (that annoying single LED).

On the other side, there is a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port (for a printer and a storage device), followed by four Gigabit LAN ports (and yes, the LAN 1 is a Gaming port, as we saw on the RT-AX86U). Afterwards, we are greeted by the 2.5GbE WAN port and the 2.5GbE LAN port (which can also act as the secondary WAN port), the recessed Reset button, the Power switch and the Power port.

Internal Hardware (Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 Teardown)

Do you want to know why nobody else on the web has tried to open up the quite popular Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000? It’s because it takes the top spot for the worst design I have ever encountered on a router. Everything was thought to serve the means to block the user to easily open up the case and seriously, when dealing with a device that costs almost half a grand, you should have the option to safely repair it.

But it’s better to fill up the land with e-waste than to leave the repair by third parties’ option open. That being said, be aware that not only you will most likely void the warranty if you open up the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000, you may also break it, so consider yourself warned.

The first thing that you need to do is to remove the four screws from the bottom of the router, but there is one more, in the middle, underneath the label which acts as a huge warranty seal (it’s almost impossible to remove cleanly). There is more because there is an actual warranty seal on the screw, so even if you managed to get this far, the warranty is gone.

From here on things get much worse because I assumed that I could just pry the case open by carefully detaching the upper part. And it will detach a few inches but the top will not come off. That’s because the stupidly-placed antenna connectors on the sides stand in the way. So I took the prying tool and tried to detach the small portions that surrounded the antenna connectors, but they creaked so badly, I was sure the plastic would break. A few minutes later, I said whatever happens, happens (money down the drain), so I forcefully tried to pop off the sections around the connectors.

Apparently, that’s how you’re supposed to do, because they flew across the room, but still remained intact, somehow. That’s about it for the rant, so let’s see the main components. The PCB is almost as large as the case itself and there is a heatsink on the right covering the WiFi chips: there’s a Broadcom BCM6715KFBG 802.11a/b/g/n/ax 4×4:4 chip (along with 4x Skyworks SKY85331-11 front-end modules) for the 2.4GHz radio and another Broadcom BCM6715KFBG chip (802.11a/n/ac/ax), also 4×4:4 and with 4x Skyworks SKY85743-21 front-end modules for the 5GHz radio.

I was a bit confused when I saw that the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 unit that I purchased used the Broadcom platform, instead of the initially advertised Qualcomm platform, but it seems that the router that I test is actually version 2. Moving on, I took the metallic piece from the left of the board to reveal a metallic cover and the 512MB of NAND flash memory from MXIC (MX30LF2G28AD-TI). To see the rest, I had to turn the PCB upside down and, after removing the large metallic cover, I could identify the quad-core 2.0GHz Broadcom BCM4912 chipset (it’s also the switch chip for the Gigabit ports), the Broadcom BCM50991E switch chip for the 2.5GbE ports and 2X 512MB (amount to 1GB) RAM from SKHynix (H5AN4G6NBJR).

Lastly, although not as relevant as one may think, the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 features a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 1,148Mbps on the 2.4GHz radio band and up to 4,804Mbps on the 5GHz radio band.

The WiFi Features

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 offers a very similar set of features that enhance the WiFi performance, so, as expected, there’s OFDMA to help with any latency related-issues in very crowded environments (with lots of wireless access points and client devices). And you do need to enable it from the software – I liked that you get the option to enable it for DL and UL (or separate), a flexibility that most brands don’t offer.

The reason why this feature is disabled by default is because there aren’t as many WiFi 6 client devices out there as you may think, despite the push for WiFi 6E and even WiFi 7 equipment and, to make use of all the advantages that come with the newer WiFi standard, you do need compatible client devices. This remains true for the flagship features of the last WiFi gen, such as MU-MIMO and BeamForming because while these can improve the performance in certain conditions, you’re not going to see any difference if the client devices don’t support them.

And you will see on the testing section that using WiFi 5 client devices, the performance of the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 doesn’t differ that much from the better AC routers. The router also supports the 160MHz channel bandwidth and it will automatically move to DFS channels to gain a decent wireless throughput. The problem is that Asus has made some changes over the last few firmware updates and some people have complained that the 5GHz network would become invisible when set up to 160MHz. I experienced the same thing and I know that it is possible that there was some meteorologic or military radar nearby, but I checked other routers that could also use 160MHz.

And they were visible when using those channels. So, for whatever reason, the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 struggles with false positives. I did have to use the channel 52 for the following tests (which is not really ideal) even with Merlin third-party software, but that didn’t make any difference. It’s worth noting that the firmware that the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 used was the latest at the time of writing (3.0.0.4.388_22525). Lastly, I would like to mention the support for AiMesh, so the router can be added to a larger mesh network where it can work either as a mesh node or a main unit.

Multi-Client Stress Test – 5GHz

If you read the Asus TUF-AX5400 review article, you already know that I started using the tools developed by Mr Jim Salter for running multi-client stress test (netburn and net-hydra). To get a brief idea about what’s being done is that I connect five client devices to a server device (via SSH) and various types of traffic is being simulated: it can be browsing, 4K streaming, 1080p streaming and/or VoIP. But what’s the most important is that these tests can be run at the same time on all client devices, therefore simulating how an actual home network would feel and behave like.

The tests will show the latency which indicates if and when a task has been accomplished and based on these results, we can get an idea of whether the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 can handle five client devices that stream at the same time, while also navigating the web and I also included some light VoIP, just to push things to the limit. I have added a table with the specs of the client devices below and yes, some are from different WiFi standards – one reason for the choice is that a real network has diversity, not all clients are the same and the second reason is money (the laptops and computers are expensive).

I made sure that just like the previous tests (with the ASUS TUF-AX5400), the client devices were connected to the 5GHz network (80MHz). OFDMA was enabled both up and down (dl and ul), as well as MU-MIMO – it may give an advantage to the compatible client devices and it may not since the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 is plenty powerful and may not be easily pushed to the limit.
The specs of the server device:

• WiFi 6 built-in adapter + 2.5GbE Ethernet port
• 32GB RAM
• NVMe SSD storage
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600xt
• Radeon RX 6800xt.

I also need to mention that the ZimaBoard 832 is the only client device that was not in the same room as the router (-65 attenuation), while the other devices were near the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 at different, but small distances. The MacBook Pro showed an attenuation of -40dB and the WiFi 6E client device showed -30dB. The Lenovo Y520 laptops showed -42 and -46dB (with linSSID).

4K and 1080p Streaming – 5 Client Devices

The first thing that I did was run the 1080p streaming test on all client devices at the same time for 5 minutes at a time and then make an average of the results (that I got after about an hour – yeah, these tests will eat up many days). On the previous article, I decided that 150ms is a good limit to what could be considered a passable latency for both 4K and 1080p streaming – I can be wrong, so again, make sure to correct me if I am wrong.

As you can see from the graph, the WiFi 6 and the WiFi 6E client devices remained under this limit at all times which means that you will get a good streaming experience on all three at the same time. The MacBook deviated a bit, so you can experience some buffering from time to time, while the WiFi 5 ZimaBoard remained consistently under limit, but it did have a sharp increase at some point. How bad is it? It should buffer less than the MacBook Pro, but it’s still not a pristine performance. Now, we want to see if the throughput was 5Mbps on all client devices since this was the limit that I put in place. And it seems that all five could maintain it without issues, which is excellent.

Moving forward, I simulated 4K streaming traffic on all client devices at the same time – the 25Mbps limit for that Netflix max quality. And things were more nuanced this time. The winner was one of the two WiFi 6 client devices (Lenovo Y520), while the others all shown a spike at 99% – this means that 1% of the requests are broken for the ZimaBoard and 5% for the rest of the client devices. If you want a flawless performance, perhaps scale down the client devices that all stream 4K at the same time – 5 may not work fine, but 4 most likely will.

I had to also check if all client devices managed to reach and maintain the 25Mbps limit that I put in place and it seems that all did. Before moving forward, let’s talk a bit about the WiFi 6E client device. It seems that when I tested the TUF-AX5400, this particular client behaved like a lunatic and while I have seen some signs that it may go full insane again, it seems that it works much better with the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000.

1080p Streaming and Browsing (+ VoIP) – 5 Client Devices

The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 should be warmed up by now, so let’s add some browsing to the simultaneous 1080p streaming test. It’s worth noting that I made sure to simulate a fairly accurate browsing behavior: a page consists of multiple resources that load one after the other, so I moved 12x128KB (roughly 1.5MB) of data, while also adding 500ms of jitter, so there is a random pause between the page loads, as it happens while browsing in real life (very fast and furious web browsing).

As you can see, pretty much all client devices managed to offer a good performance 99% of the time (three managed to remain flawless the entire time), but we can see that the ZimaBoard had an occasional slip, while the WiFi 6E client devices shows its teeth again, although very rarely. This means that the web browsing doesn’t have a heavy impact on the 1080p streaming.

For browsing, 1.5s can be considered a reasonable maximum after which the user needs to start reloading the page, so anything above that can be considered bad browsing experience. As you can see from the image above, all client devices remained underneath this limit (while 1080 streaming ran at the same time), but the WiFi 6E client decided to have a fit and will be problematic between 5 and 1% of the time (it also didn’t reach the full 5Mbps) – not great, but not really terrible. Now let’s put some more strain on the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 by including VoIP, but only on a single client device to retain some realism (I doubt people will replicate the scenarios I am running, but who knows..).

I admit I didn’t expect a sprinkle of VoIP to have such a noticeable impact, but it did. One Lenovo Y520 laptop (WiFi 6) and the WiFi 6E client device (of course) displayed some spikes about 1% of the times which can translate to occasional buffering, while the other clients were also pushed to their limits.

Browsing was still fine and no client device was pushed over the 1.5s limit, so you can take a call, furiously web browse on five client devices and also stream 1080p footage (on at least three client devices) without any major issues.

4K Streaming and Browsing – 5 Client Devices

4K streaming is more demanding than 1080p, so the results were already a tiny bit worse, but adding web browsing in the mix will show some cracks, at least using some client devices.

The ZimaBoard could not keep up and I guess it makes sense considering that it’s the farthest from the router (it’s also WiFi 5). The rest of the client devices managed to remain underneath the arbitrary limit I put in place, but the MacBook Pro (WiFi 5) and the WiFi 6E PC will experience issues 1% of the time (some occasional buffering).

As you can see from the graph, all five client devices remained underneath the 1.5s limit, so no user that browses sites in a slightly unhinged manner should experience any issues. So what do we learn from this? Browsing is not a problem with all five client devices even if there’s 4K streaming in the mix, but to get the best performance, limit it to 2 client devices (preferably WiFi 6), but, if you don’t mind some occasional buffering, you can add a couple more.

Have all client devices managed to reach and maintain the 25Mbps limit? Not really because two client devices stopped at 24.9Mbps – not a terrible result, but it just confirms what we have already seen on the latency graphs.

Multi-Client Stress Test – 2.4GHz

After seeing how well the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 performed on the 5GHz radio, I decided to connect all the client devices to the 2.4GHz network, while keeping them in the same place as before. As for the multi-client test, I decided that the streaming would be too strenuous, so I simply ran simultaneous web browsing traffic on all clients at the same time.

The results are very curious because the two Lenovo Y520 laptops are the only ones to go above the set 1.5s limit, albeit for a very brief moment, but it is possible that the AX200 adapter may not play that nice with the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 router on the 2.4GHz – or that the router is not that great ion this regard. Even so, we do see a decent performance with the other clients – the Lenovo laptops deviated for 1% of the time.

As a conclusion before moving to the single-client iperf tests is that seeing the difference in performance when compared to the ASUS TUF-AX5400, we can say that this test doesn’t only check the limits of the client devices, it also paints a picture about how the router behaves as well.

The Wireless Test (5GHz)

The testing procedure is the same as with the other WiFi 6 routers: I connected three client devices to the 5GHz network, two are WiFi 5 and one is WiFi 6, first using the 160MHz channel bandwidth, afterwards switching to the 80MHz – the server device had a 2.5GbE port, so there was no Gigabit limitation in place.

And then I checked the throughput upstream and downstream at various distances, while also taking into account the attenuation (as shown by the client device). The same approach has been taken when checking the speed performance on the 2.4GHz network. That being said, I first checked the speed when the WiFi 6 client device was connected to the 5GHz network (160MHz) with OFDMA and MU-MIMO enabled and, upstream, I measured an average of 1,188Mbps at 5 feet and the over-Gigabit performance remained even at 30 feet, where I saw an average of 1,124Mbps.

Downstream, I saw an average of 480Mbps at 5 feet and an average of 427Mbps at 30 feet, all that while the attenuation varied between -36 and -51dB, so pretty impressive.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

There’s the QoS-focused Game Boost and the dedicated Gaming port, there’s the Open NAT and the VPN Fusion. The VPN Fusion is great to connect different client devices to different VPN services, but it does remain a very particular feature for very specific applications. Then again, a gaming router is a bit of a niche product after all. Besides the software features, the Asus TUF-AX5400 does have the mandatory RGB LED that will definitely increase your FPS in gaming (as all gamers already know) and I also noticed that the device is equipped with a 1.5GHz Broadcom chipset.

I looked a bit further and saw that it has 512MB of RAM and 256MB of flash storage. That prompted me to look even deeper, so I opened the router and yeah, as I already anticipated, this seems to be an Asus RT-AX82U. The six antennas do make me wonder whether there will be a difference in performance, but other than that, Asus has seemingly released two almost identical (WiFi 6) gaming routers. Both TP-Link and Netgear are guilty of a similar behavior (check the AX21 and the RAX10), but I still need to check whether there’s more to the Asus TUF-AX5400 or if it’s just an attempt from the manufacturer to dominate this small sub-niche by competing with itself.

UPDATE 08.01.2023: I have run a few multi-client stress tests on the Asus TUF-AX5400. And yes, it’s going to reflect the actual wireless performance a lot better than the single-client iperf tests.

Design and Build Quality

The TUF router series is meant to be more flashy and yes, the routers have a more aggressive design, but I was surprised to see that the TUF-AX5400 is a bit more conservative than the RT-AX82U which shamelessly covered almost half of its front side with RBG LEDs. I was initially unsure about the “made for gamers” approach, but it did eventually grow on me and I prefer it over the ‘more boring’ look of the regular router. The Asus TUF-AX5400 also has some aggressive design lines and there is a fairly large LED at the top with the TUF logo. The LED can be adjusted to any color you like and there are a few effects that you can apply if you like to be distracted when you’re working or playing games.

I noticed that the case is fairly compact, but it is a bit taller than other routers, as well as heavier (it weighs 1.32lbs / 600g). So, at 10.5 x 6.2 x 2.7 inches (26.6 x 15.7 x 6.8 cm), it’s going to take very little from your desk and there’s always the option to mount it on the wall, right?
Actually no, as for unfathomable reasons, Asus decided to not add any mounting holes on the bottom of the router – I get it with the vertical design of the RT-AX86U, but what’s the point of not adding it on the TUF-AX5400? I guess true gamers keep their routers on the desk or something.

The good news is that there are lots of ventilation holes all around the case, including at the top and the bottom of the router (in between the four silicone feet), so it’s going to be running at a proper temperature. These new chips from Broadcom are really great at keep the temperature low, so the TUF-AX5400 is running mostly at room temperature, which is great. The LEDs are positioned in such a manner as to not give any eye fatigue during the night and that made me take a closer look at the intricate design that Asus has decided to use on the TUF-AX5400. I think it’s a weird combination between an autobot and a blubberfish. Anyway, kudos to Asus for not getting rid of the array of LEDs (and shame on other manufacturers that use a single LED).

So, yes, we do get an LED for the Internet connection, four separate LEDs for each LAN port (as it should be), two LEDs for each WiFi band and a Power LED. Turn the router around and you’ll be able to see the block of ports and connectors sitting underneath the four rear-facing antennas (there are two other antennas, one on the left and one of the right side of the router). From the left, there’s the Power port along with the Power button, followed by a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, four Gigabit LAN ports and a single Gigabit WAN port (I liked that the ports are surrounded by a narrow metallic frame). Lastly, there’s a WPS button and a recessed Reset button.

Internal Hardware

As I said in the intro, the internal components are pretty much the same as on the Asus RT-AX82U, so let’s open up the TUF-AX5400 and see for ourselves. Be aware that Asus has added a warranty seal which needs to be removed in order to open up the case. If that’s fine with you, then go ahead and remove the four screws that sit underneath the rubber feet and yes, one of the screws is covered by the aforementioned easy-to-tear warranty seal. Next, use a prying tool to carefully detach the top plastic cover.

Asus made me doubt myself several times since I was sure that there must be another screw somewhere, but no, it’s just that the top cover is very tightly attached and you do have to insist in order to detach it. In any case, you will be greeted by a large metallic cover, lots of antenna connectors and you should be able to see the main components. But not before removing the top and bottom metallic heatsinks by detaching the antennas and taking out the five screws from the bottom of the PCB.
The Asus TUF-AX5400 is equipped with a tri-core Broadcom BCM6750KFEBG chipset clocked at 1.5GHz (Cortex A7), just like the RT-AX58U and the RT-AX82U. Next, there’s the 256MB of flash memory from Winbond (25N02KVZEIR) and 512MB of RAM from Nanya (NT5CC256M16ER-EK).

As for the wireless capabilities, the Asus TUF-AX5400 uses the Broadcom BCM6750KFEBG 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 chip (along with two Qorvo QPF4216 integrated front-end modules) for the 2.4GHz radio band and a Broadcom BCM43684KRFBG 802.11an/ac/ax 4×4:4 chipset (along with four Qorvo QPF4516 ATSJ front-end modules) for the 5GHz radio, which, unsurprisingly is the same as on the RT-AX82U. Lastly, the Asus TUF-AX5400 is an AX5400-class router (imagine my surprise), so it features a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 4,804Mbps on the 5GHz radio and a max rate of 574Mbps on the 2.4GHz radio.

Features and Performance

Being a ‘gaming router’, the Asus TUF-AX5400 does have quite a few features to mainly improve the online gaming experience, but that’s all dependent on some of the WiFi 6 features and the way they these are implemented. The most important one remains OFDMA which is great for improving both the bandwidth and the throughput. This is achieved by allocating multiple orthogonal sub-carriers (OFDMA stands for Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access) to multiple users instead of a single one, so yes, there’s far better efficiency. I did like that Asus has added OFDMA both ul and dl on both bands, but you do need to enable it from the Professional set of options underneath the Wireless settings on the web-based interface.

Next, there’s the MU-MIMO to help sever multiple clients at the same time (somewhat useful if you have multiple compatible client devices) and I do need to mention the Beamforming which helps pointing the signal towards compatible devices, reducing the impact of interference.
Besides these features, there’s the support for 1024-QAM modulation, 160MHz channel bandwidth (which usually work great with a multi-Gigabit port and the TUF-AX5400 is stuck with Gigabit) and the perpetual AiMesh compatibility. And no, I am not downplaying its importance because it is one of the best technologies ever developed by Asus and it makes for a very solid alternative to the dedicated mesh WiFi systems (which, after implementing some of the WiFi 6 tech, have gotten weirdly expensive).

I need to mention the main gaming features, the first being the Gaming port! It’s a QoS feature, where that LAN port will get the highest priority, so do connect your console or gaming PC to it if you’re relying on a cable. If you go wireless, then the Gear Accelerator will help prioritize your device, but I was surprised that neither the WTFast GPN, nor the support for the nVidia GeForce Now was present – it seems that it remains a feature on the RT-AX82U and the RT-AX86U.

Wireless Test (5GHz)

That being said, let’s check how well the TUF-AX5400 performed with some WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 client devices. Of course, I will start with the WiFi 6 client, which is a computer equipped with an Intel AX200 adapter and it does support both 80 and 160MHz channel bandwidth. So, while the client device was connected to the 5GHz network (80MHz), the throughput was not that different than what I saw with the RT-AX82U. It did seem to reach a little bit further, since at 30 feet, I saw an average of 381Mbps upstream and 147Mbps downstream. The router could go farther than that, so, at 45 feet, I could still see 233Mbps, with the signal strength dropping down to 75dB, so it remains perfectly usable for most applications.

The point where the throughput was no longer reliable was at about 90dB (somewhere around 70 feet away and a few walls in between the router and the device). If you decide to use the 160MHz channel bandwidth, know that it will work better near the router and not that great the farther you go from the TUF-AX5400. In any case, I saw an average of 874Mbps at 5 feet upstream and 417Mbps downstream, which is again fairly close to the RT-AX82U.

Going to 45 feet, it did behave a bit worse than on the 80MHz channel bandwidth, something that we fully expect, but the throughput was still more than usable (148Mbps up and 114Mbps down). The point where the signal for the 80MHz channel bandwidth offered an almost unusable throughput was unreachable on the 160MHz, so I had to get a bit closer, where the signal was about 84dB to get a semblance of Internet connection.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

The Zyxel SCR 50AXE is Cloud-managed, so it is supposed to work with other Nebula devices and the targeted audience consists of small businesses and I suppose tech enthusiasts, especially those that want to try their hands at the new 6GHz radio. What’s interesting is that the Zyxel SCR 50AXE is limited by Gigabit ports, all of them, so the point of the router is not really to push the WiFi speed to its limits, but to provide a very comprehensive set of security features for a smaller office (the 1GB RAM should help in this regard). So, the 6GHz is more of a bonus in case some client device will actually be compatible with it.

And it’s a bit of a mess considering that Microsoft forces its users to update to the Windows 11 version in order to make use of a WiFi 6E adapter, and we both know that both the software and the hardware upgrade momentum in the corporate world does not keep up with the current two-year cycle for the release of a new WiFi standard. Of course, a start-ups or tech enthusiasts will want to make use of the far cleaner performance of the 6GHz and the Zyxel SCR 50AXE should deliver.

That being said, let’s put the security-focused wireless router to the test to see how well it performs and to confirm whether the hype around the WiFi 6E is warranted.

Note: Like I mentioned before, be aware that the Zyxel SCR 50AXE is Cloud-based, so it can only be monitored and configured via the Nebula management platform.

IMPORTANT UPDATE 05.27.2023: Make sure to update the security router to the latest firmware because Zyxel has fixed some significant issues that I have experienced when testing the device.

UPDATE 07.27.2023: I can now set the 5GHz radio band to use the 160MHz channel width, so I retested the router to show the new data.

Design and Build Quality

The Zyxel SCR 50AXE was not designed to fit into a rack, so it did not follow the look of the other security gateways from Zyxel. Instead, it looks very similar to the mesh nodes of the Multy X mesh system. The case is made of plastic, has rounded corners and it’s covered by a white matte finish on the sides, but with a red frame cutting the device in the middle. In a way, it’s kind of a retro look, especially since you get a stand to keep the wireless router upwards, thus covering less space from the desk and I saw no silicone feet to put the device on its side.

The good news is that there are two dedicated mounting holes if you decide to install the Zyxel SCR 50AXE on the wall – that area can be hidden by a plastic cover provided by Zyxel, so it retains its minimalist look. The device measures 9.5 x 7.0 x 2.1 (24.2 x 17.8 x 5.4cm) and it’s worth mentioning that the stand attaches magnetically to the bottom of the router – the case does creak when squeezed. Obviously, this type of design does not support external antennas, so, similarly to the ceiling-mount APs, the antennas are inside the case.

I have seen that Zyxel has added numerous puncture holes on one side of the SCR 50AXE and there are a few very narrow ventilation holes at the top and bottom (within the red frame). But is that enough to ensure a proper internal temperature? The SoC and WiFi chips have gotten insanely power efficient, so it does seem that the space inside the case + the ventilation holes are enough to keep the temperature low. I have added a thermal photo for peace of mind.

Zyxel has added the array of LEDs on the front of the wireless router, embedded within the red plastic frame and from the top, there’s the Power LED, the WAN/Internet LED (with a very strange icon) followed by the Cloud indicator.

A bit lower, you can see a single LED for the WiFi (one for three..) and the last LED is for the WPS function. I initially thought it was for when the Reset button is pressed, but apparently, next to the recessed Reset button, there’s the WPS switch without an icon, so it’s easy to confuse the user. You can also check out whether you should still use WPS or if it’s better to rely on other means of connecting devices to the network.

Underneath the aforementioned couple of buttons, there’s the dedicated ports area where you can see the Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, along with the four LAN ports, also Gigabit and the Power port. The 6GHz and Gigabit will raise some eyebrows, but it was a cost-conscious decision, so let’s hope that the Zyxel SCR 50AXE pushes close-to-Gigabit WiFi over a far larger area than the WiFi 6 and 5 routers in the same price category.

Internal Hardware (Zyxel SCR 50AXE Teardown)

If you thought there are no screws around the case, Zyxel has included four hidden underneath the label. I don’t think removing this label will cause the warranty to be voided, but still keep in mind that the manufacturers don’t like it when you’re prying open the case while the device is still in warranty, so tread carefully. That being said, after removing the screws and detaching the plastic case, I could see that there is lots of room for the heat to dissipate and there were two plastic arches as extra protection for the PCB (against possible shocks or were those creaks a lot worse before?).

All the antennas sit at the top of the Zyxel SCR 50AXE and I could already identify the 256MB of NAN flash memory from Winbond (25N02KWZEIR). I saw that there was a heatsink covering the main chip, so I decided to flip the board upside down and remove the screws that held it. There were no screws, the heatsink was soldered – just great. I still managed to identify the WiFi chipsets, which eventually lead to the identification of the SoC. We are dealing with a dual-core Qualcomm IPQ5018 (ARM Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1GHz) and, while the exact RAM brand remains incognito, we do know that the total amount is 1GB.

Also, I couldn’t identify the switch chip. That being said, for WiFi, the Zyxel SCR 50AXE uses a Qualcomm QCN6122 802.11ax 2×2:2 + 2x Sy6525DK front-end modules for the 6GHz radio and the Qualcomm QCN6102 802.11b/g/n/ax along with 2x K495 504HT 12130 front-end modules for the 5GHz. I am fairly sure that the Zyxel SCR 50AXE uses the same Qualcomm QCN6122 chip for the 5GHz radio band as well, so I was very curios whether they can be used at the same time, or in turn, as it was the case with the Zyxel NWA220AX-6E (especially since both are built on the same platform and use the exact same SoC).

Thankfully, it’s not and I could see all three radio bands at the same time, so it is a true tri-band wireless router. Lastly, for those that are interested in the theoretical maximum data rates, know that on the 6GHz, it’s 2,402Mbps, as well as on the 5GHz, also 2,402Mbps, while on the 2.4GHz, it’s 574Mbps. In total, it amounts to the advertised AXE5400.

Zyxel SCR 50AXE vs NWA220AX-6E vs EnGenius ECW336

The WiFi Features

The most important WiFi feature of the Zyxel SCR 50AXE is the support for the 6GHz radio band that will behave miles better than the 5GHz which, although wider than the 2.4GHz radio, it has become overcrowded and very much prone to interference. We don’t even need to mention the 2.4GHz radio because at this point, its role has been reduced towards keeping low-power IoT devices connected to their mother servers. And yes, you can use the 160MHz in a more reliable way since you should experience no channel interference with other APs for two reasons.

One, there are no wireless access points that support this radio band in your area and it will take years before you encounter a few; the second reason is because you gain far more non-overlapping channels to choose from. At the moment, the only issue is that there are very, very few compatible client devices on the market and the vast majority of the older devices aren’t compatible – yes, the 6GHz is not backwards compatible. I saw that the Zyxel SCR 50AXE should does support the 160MHz channel bandwidth on the 5GHz as well (it says so in the Nebula controller), but when I tried to set it up, I kept getting a weird error. and, while before it did not function, it has been enabled with the latest update.

I assumed that maybe the 5GHz or the 6GHz can be used one at a time on the 160MHz, which I guess could make sense, but even after disabling the 6GHz radio, it still didn’t work. This is one bug that Zyxel needs ironed out. I spoke with Zyxel and they have confirmed that there is indeed a problem which they have promised to fix by June 2023.

Since there is support for the 802.11ax standard, I assume that the wireless router can make use of the OFDMA (I saw no setting to enable it) which should help in a very crowded area with lots of access points. Otherwise, you won’t really see it in action and that’s assuming that you have compatible client devices.

Same as MU-MIMO and Beamforming which also need compatibility, otherwise they’re pretty much unused. Furthermore, I could enable 802.11k/v Assisted roaming, as well as 802.11r Fast Roaming in case you want to use the wireless router along with other Zyxel access points and prefer to give the user a seamless roaming experience between devices.

The Wireless Test (6GHz)

The Zyxel SCR 50AXE broadcasts all three radio signals at the same time, so I could connect a couple of client device immediately, a computer equipped with an AX200 WiFi 6 adapter and another PC that was equipped with a TP-Link AXE5400 WiFi 6E adapter.

And I would have liked to connect the two WiFi 5 client devices, but I set the radios to operate in 802.11ax mode only, to check how well the router performs with perfectly compatible client devices. Also, I chose a separate computer for the WiFi 6E because I could only connect to a Linux machine, and that’s because Microsoft has been gatekeeping the access to WiFi 6E networks only for Windows 11 – there is no chance I’m upgrading to that ad-filled excuse of an operating system.

Not that Windows 10 is that much better, but I digress. I made sure that the server was connected to the router via cable and then I connected the Linux machine to the 6GHz SSID (160MHz) – the Zyxel SCR 50AXE did initially refuse to enable the LAN ports, but I dedicated an entire section to the bugs I encountered. That being said, I could see that upstream, at 5 feet, the average throughput was 938Mbps, while downstream, it was 799Mbps (-33dB attenuation).

I am sure that it could have easily gone above the Gigabit limit, but we have no multi-Gigabit ports available to test this claim. The performance remained solid even at 30 feet (-58 attenuation), where upstream, I saw an average of 709Mbps and downstream, it was 673Mbps. And it was really good even at 45 feet (-76dB attenuation, as shown by the client device) where I measured an average of 303Mbps up and 207Mbps downstream. At 70 feet (-83dB), the performance dropped to barely usable levels: upstream, it was 18.3Mbps and downstream, it was 9.6Mbps.

The Wireless Test (5GHz)

While the compatibility was set to 802.11ax-only, I checked out the wireless performance of the Zyxel SCR 50AXE when a WiFi 6 client device (AX200) was connected to the 5GHz network. The channel bandwidth was 80MHz, because I have been unsuccessful to switch it to 160MHz (kept getting this error: INVALID_RADIO_BAND50_CHANNEL_BANDWIDTH). That being said, at 5 feet, I measured an average of 795Mbps upstream and 661Mbps downstream, and I actually saw an even better throughput at 15 feet (despite the increased attenuation at -41dB).

At 30 feet, the performance was still excellent: I saw an average of 618Mbps up and 545Mbps downstream (-54dB). But the biggest surprise came at 70 feet, where there was a -79dB attenuation, but upstream, I measured an average of 107Mbps, while downstream, it was 36.9Mbps. That’s an excellent range and coverage. Moving forward, I changed the compatibility mode in order to allow the two WiFi 5 client device to connect, the laptop equipped with an Intel 8265 adapter and the perpetual Pixel 2 XL (I think I am going to end up using it for another decade, despite its near comatose existence).

So, while the Intel 8265 WiFi 5 client device was connected to the 5GHz network (80MHz), I measured an average of 648Mbps upstream and 294Mbps downstream, both at 5 feet, while at 45 feet, it was 143Mbps up and 89.4Mbps downstream (-74dB). At 70 feet, you could still run some online software and applications considering that upstream, I measured an average of 41.8Mbps and downstream, I saw around 16.5Mbps. Moving to the Pixel 2 XL, it performed surprisingly well.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

Obviously, any sys admin that manages a larger network could take advantage of most of the provided features, but TP-Link does have available the Omada Cloud controller specifically tailored for this specific audience. So, the TAUC is an ambitious move to enter a new branch of the US-based networking market and TP-Link decided to make available three devices, from which the EX920 is (currently) the only WiFi 6E router – the other two are WiFi 6.

Being a WiFi 6E router, the TP-Link EX920 is tri-band and does allow compatible client devices to connect to the 6GHz band. There is support for 160MHz, which I suppose can be considered mandatory for 6GHz, there’s also OFDMA and MU-MIMO, as well as WPA3 encryption.

Unlike other WiFi 6E routers (such as the SCR 50AXE), the EX920 AXE7800 does provide a 2.5GbE WAN port and a single 2.5GbE LAN port, the others being limited to Gigabit, so the provider can confidently push for data plans above 1Gbps. That being said, let’s put the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 to the test and see the wireless performance and whether the Aginet platform is a worthy competitor to the other systems on the market.

UPDATE 07.22.2023: I added the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 to the TAUC.

Design and Build Quality

The TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 follows the design of the mesh systems units, so it does have a very minimalist look, but without some of the main drawbacks. Yes, we get plenty of ports and there is no single LED nonsense, we get a proper array of status LEDs.

The router doesn’t occupy much desk real estate, but it’s a very tall unit, measuring 9.1 x 4.5 x 4.5 inches (23.2 x 11.5 x 11.5cm) and it kind of reminds me of the tower-like Linksys Velop mesh units (plastic rectangular case covered by a white matte finish). Still, despite being tall, you’re not going to be able to easily push the device on its side because TP-Link made sure that the EX920 has a low center of gravity.

Obviously, you’re not going to be able to install the WiFi 6E router on the wall or even insert it in a rack, but again, the advantage is that it has a small footprint and I suppose it will better blend in with the furniture due to the lack of any external antennas.

At the top of the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800, there is a narrow canal which I guess could have had an LED to shine through (I am glad they didn’t go this route), but it is used to push the heat away from the components. There are also some ventilation holes at the bottom, thus leaving the sides of the device intact. Is this approach enough to maintain a good inner temperature?

The passive cooling of the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 seems to be done right and, as you can see from the photos, the router operates at a proper temperature. Now let’s talk about the LEDs. There is a silver line on the front with eight status LEDs, the first lighting up when the router is powered on, the next three will light up if the 2.4GHz, the 5GHz and/or the 6GHz WiFi network are enabled. Further down, there’s the Internet LED (green when active, orange when the link is down), the Ethernet LED (one for all – still better than the single LED approach), the USB LED and the WPS LED.

Turn the router the other way around and you will see a fairly large black band that cuts through the case and contains all the ports and most of the buttons. At the top, we get the WPS and WiFi buttons, followed by the three LAN ports, from which only the third is 2.5GbE (the first two are Gigabit). Next, there’s the 2.5GbE WAN port, the USB 3.0 port, the Power button and the Power port.

All these ports are positioned on their side, which I guess is a cost-sensitive approach, not that there’s anything wrong with that – there are only four feet at the bottom, so don’t keep the router on its side in spite of the temptation to do so. The last button is for resetting the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 and it can be found at the bottom of the device, next to the silicone feet.

Internal Hardware (TP-Link EX920 Teardown)

Before opening up the device, be aware that if the router is still in warranty, TP-Link may void it even if there are no sticker seals. If that’s fine with you, carry on. The first thing I did was to check if there are any screws at the bottom of the device and, despite finding two holes underneath the silicone feet at the bottom, but there is no screw inside them. So, I just removed the top plastic piece (just pry it open) and afterwards, it’s necessary to take out the two screws that hold the plastic into place.

You won’t be able to slide out the PCB until you also detach the black plastic that surrounds the ports – it’s not glued, so just take it out using a prying tool. After removing the PCB, we can see all the antennas that are vertically mounted, same as the PCB, as well as the three metallic heatsinks covering important chipsets, so let’s remove them. After doing so, I could identify the quad-core 2GHz MediaTek MT7986AV (ARM A53) + MT7531A main chipsets, 512MB of RAM from Zentel (A3T4GF40BB), 128MB of flash memory from ESMT (F50L1G41LB) and 2x MXL GPY211 SLNW8 TK6W53 2.5GbE switch chips for the WAN port and LAN port. The WiFi chips needed some deciphering, so be free to correct me if I got it wrong.

I saw the Mediatek MT7976DAN 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 chip along with the two Qorvo QPF4216B integrated front-end module for 2.4GHz and the Mediatek MT7976AN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 chip along with four Skyworks SKY85743-21 front-end modules for the 5GHz radio band. There is also a Mediatek MT7916AN chip with two Skyworks SKY85780-11 WiFi 6E high-power WLAN front-end modules for the 6GHz radio band. It’s clear that TP-Link went with a full Mediatek build this time and we will see in the following sections if it paid off.

TP-Link EX920 vs Zyxel SCR 50AXE vs NWA220AX-6E vs EnGenius ECW336

But before moving forward, it’s worth mentioning the maximum theoretical data rate since a lot of you care a lot for these numbers for whatever reason. On the 2.4GHz, it’s 574Mbps, on 5GHz, it’s 4,804Mbps and on the 6GHz radio band, it’s 2,402Mbps. Sum it up to reach the AXE7800.

The WiFi Features

After having to troubleshoot various WiFi 6E routers and access points, it was a breath of fresh air to see how the TP-Link EX920 just worked properly out of the box. And I didn’t even have to connect it to any app, it can function just fine as a ‘regular router’ with a web-based interface + app. But we’ll talk a bit more about that in the dedicated section, now it’s time to check out some of the WiFi performance-enhancing features. Without a doubt, the main feature is the 6GHz radio which is a game changer not only because the channel bandwidths are wider, but also because it’s less impacted by interference.

And we have already sacrificed the 2.4GHz radio to the smart devices gods and now the 5GHz struggles to handle the huge amount of overlapping networks (in addition to the fact that network optimization is less common in residential spaces than in offices). Even so, the WiFi 6 did bring some features to alleviate some of the aforementioned issues and the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 seems to have implemented pretty much all of them. OFDMA is a standard on WiFi 6 routers, but no necessarily implemented on all radio bands, and not always both for dl and ul.

Using the web-based GUI, the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 offers the option to enable OFDMA on all three radios at the same time, but I don’t have the necessary tools to check the way it is actually implemented. Furthermore, the EX920 is one of those rare devices to also offer BSS Coloring which is as important as OFDMA, and its role is to limit the interference (especially the dreaded adjacent channel interference). Will that mean that you can now crank the channel bandwidth to 160MHz using the 5GHz radio and push the signal to the max because the interference holds no power over your network anymore? Not even close. The OFDMA and BSS Coloring are useful and noticeable in areas with a huge amount of overlapping WiFi networks, otherwise, it’s not going to improve the performance that much.

And no, unless you’re living in a detached home, I don’t think you’re going to be able to use 5GHz on 160MHz without suffering from bad WiFi. Then again, you can always just limit the transmit power to cover only your space, but will your neighbors do the same? Spoiler alert: they never do. I have already hinted that the 5GHz and the 6GHz can go up to 160MHz width and there are a few interesting mesh-related features that I could mention. There’s support for 802.11/v/r for seamless roaming, there’s the self-healing ability when the router is added within a mesh network. And yes, the TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 will inter-connect to all other EasyMesh routers and extenders which include pretty much all TP-Link WiFi 6 routers + a few WiFi 5 as well.

The Wireless Test (6GHz)

The TP-Link EX920 AXE7800 is a true WiFi 6E router, so it does make available all three radios at the same time and yes, you can set both the 5GHz and the 6GHz on the 160MHz. To see the throughput performance, I connected a compatible server computer to the 2.5GbE LAN port, so that there will be no Gigabit limitation and then I connected four client devices (yes, I got a new one), the first being equipped with a WiFi 6E adapter (the second is WiFi 6 and the last two are WiFi 5 client devices).

I made sure that the 6GHz radio was visible and that it was set to 160MHz channel bandwidth, and then I checked the throughput at various spots inside the house. 5 feet away, I saw an average of 1.8Gbps upstream and 879Mbps downstream (-33dB attenuation) and the over-Gigabit performance remained up to 30 feet, where I saw an average of 1.13Gbps up and 594Mbps downstream (-54dB).

The farthest I put the client device was at about 70 feet (-77dB attenuation) and even at that point, I saw an average of 97.1Mbps up and 82.6Mbps downstream, which is an excellent result. And it goes to show the importance of a low-interference medium which is now, for the most part, only possible on the 6GHz.

I have also added a longer-term graph to show how the throughput moves up and down over time, plus a comparison with the 5GHz radio on both 160MHz and 80MHz. The difference is striking, even if I did my very best to keep the interference low (I can’t move walls out of the way, but I can keep other APs from interfering).

The Wireless Test (5GHz)

Moving forward with the test, I set the 5GHz network to operate on the 160MHz channel bandwidth and I checked how well my WiFi 6 client device (AX200) performed. It did very well. At 5 feet (-32dB), I measured an average of 1.5Gbps upstream and 1.44Gbps downstream. This came as a surprise considering that on the 6GHz, I could not push the client device above 1Gbps (maybe it’s a WiFi adapter limitation, so I will investigate it). Again, the over-Gigabit throughput remained even if I put the client device as far as 30 feet, where I measured an average of 1.25Gbps up and 745Mbps downstream.

At 70 feet (-78dB), I saw an average of 196Mbps up and only 50.8Mbps downstream (the interference finally got it). Moving forward, I switched to 80MHz, but kept the same AX200 client device connected and yes, the performance was less impressive, but good nonetheless.

At 5 feet, I saw an average of 891Mbps up and 842Mbps downstream, while at 30 feet, I measured an average of 546Mbps upstream and 97Mbps downstream. At 70 feet (-80dB), the throughput was barely passable: 29.1Mbps up and 3.5Mbps down. We’re not done because I also connected two WiFi 5 client devices, a laptop equipped with an Intel 8265 adapter and a Pixel 2 XL (still alive).

And I noticed a curious behavior. Yes, near the router, the performance was good, almost as good as with the AX200, but I could not go farther than 45 feet with either client devices.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

The given reason behind the EnGenius ECW130 is to expand an existing network, increasing the coverage in a more affordable manner – in other words, it’s to add WiFi 5 nodes to a mesh network, where there are few to no WiFi 6 client devices. And here’s the thing, WiFi 6 is not as widespread as some manufacturer would want you to believe, most people have just barely completely migrated towards the 802.11ac standard. Don’t get me started with the WiFi 6E and WiFi 7; they’re great technologies, but have very limited applications at the moment.

So, what can the EnGenius ECW130 offer? The wireless access point has most of the features of the flagship APs of the last generation. There’s MU-MIMO, four spatial streams (4×4), the channel bandwidth rises to 80MHz (no 160Mhz) and I saw that it also supports link aggregation (for up to 2Gbps throughput). But, I have seen that Engenius has made some impressive progress towards ensuring both the security of the network and the easy remote management via the Cloud platform, so are these features also supported by the EnGenius ECW130?

Yes, it does seem that it does have a similar support to the ECW220 and the ECW230, but do bear in mind that there are some premium features that require monthly subscription. That being said, let’s put the EnGenius ECW130 to the test and also see how it performs alongside other wireless access points in a larger network.

Design and Build Quality

I assume that some will think that the EnGenius ECW130 is the successor to the ECW120 that I tested a couple of years ago but besides being part of the same WiFi generation, there is very little in common between these two devices, design-wise. I say that because both still have been built on the same platform – Qualcomm. The Engenius ECW130 has an all-plastic case covered by a white matte finish at the top and dark gray at the bottom. And we’re still dealing with a rectangular access point with rounded corners, but the ECW120 is much smaller than the EnGenius ECW130.

The latter measures 8.46 x 8.46 x 2.2 (21.5 x 21.5 x 5.6cm) and weighs 1.39lbs (630g), so, even if the white finish will help it blend in with the ceiling, the device is not going to go unnoticed. As you may have already guessed, the access point is designed to be mounted on the ceiling (or wall, although the coverage will not be as effective), so there are no silicone feet to keep it in place on a desk.

You do get two mounting ears for the bracket (provided in the package) on the bottom of the device and here, you can also see the ventilation holes. Are these enough to maintain a proper temperature? Although the manufacturer did not rely on a metallic bottom section, there is a metallic piece inside the case to take the heat away from the chipsets. But, to be sure, I used a thermal camera while the access point was a heavier load.

The top of the case is simple and only has the logo along five very small status LEDs. There’s the Power LED (becomes solid orange when the AP is connected to the Cloud), the LAN1 and LAN2 LEDs, as well as the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz LEDs for the wireless networks. As usual, the ports area can be accessed from the bottom of the access point and it’s designed in a manner as to allow cables to hang (for wall mounting) or come from the wall.

There is a DC-in port which is always welcomed since it offers an alternative to PoE, there are two Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports (a rarity nowadays) and a recessed Reset button. The first LAN port is PoE (802.3at), while the second is just for data pass-through, but you do get the option to aggregate them to gain a better throughput. What is missing is the power adapter and, I suppose an Ethernet cable would have also been a welcomed addition.

Internal Hardware (EnGenius ECW130 Teardown)

I always love to open up the EnGenius access points since usually all I have to do is to remove a few screws and then the bottom section just comes off easily. That’s also the case of the EnGenius ECW130 and no, there were no warranty stickers (which is great for any future needed repairs). After detaching the bottom section, I could see the large metallic heatsink and I could remove some additional screws to be able to detach the top side as well, revealing the antennas.

EnGenius went with a curious pattern of antennas which sit on top of a large metallic piece that covers the AP footprint in its entirety. That being said, these are the components that I was able to identify: there was a quad-core 1.4GHz IPQ8064 (two dual-core Krait CPU ARM7 CPUs), 256MB of RAM (DDR3L) from Nanya (2x NT5CC64M16GP-DI) and the Qualcomm QCA8334-AL3C Ethernet switch chipset, but I was unable to identify the storage chip. It’s worth mentioning that the IPQ8064 is a step up from the IPQ4018 chipset of the ECW120.

Furthermore, as for the WiFi, the EnGenius ECW130 uses the Qualcomm QCA9984 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 4×4:4 + two front-end modules (465F, maybe from Skyworks) for the 5GHz radio band and the Qualcomm QCA9985 802.11b/g/n 4×4:4 chip + two front-end modules (same 465F) for the 2.4GHz radio band. If you care for the theoretical data rates, know that it’s 1,733Mbps for the 5GHz band and 800Mbps for the 2.4-GHz band.

EnGenius ECW130 vs ECW120 vs ECW220

WiFi Features

Since the EnGenius ECW130 is a WiFi 5 access point, it cannot make use of the newer technologies such as the OFDMA, BSS Coloring or the extra 6GHz radio, but the question is whether the client device could actually benefit from these features to begin with. Unless you have lots of WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E / WiFi 7 client devices and access points in the area, then no, and statistically speaking, the existing high-end client devices only account for a very small percentage of the market. Yes, even the new ones.

If you read some of my other articles on WiFi routers and access points, I make a point on testing them with both the better equipment and with a slightly less advanced WiFi adapter. That is to show what you’ll get unless you physically change the adapters in all your WiFi devices to support the new features. If you do have a few WiFi 6 client devices, but the vast majority are stuck on the older standard, it is possible to create a mesh network and include APs of mixed WiFi standard (if the budget is important).

And this takes us to an important aspect, how well do the EnGenius access points communicate? And does the user get a seamless roaming experience between mesh nodes? To answer the first question, the EnGenius access points do connect between each other to form a mesh network. And yes, it does have the expected characteristics, which include the self-healing aspect (when disconnecting a node), as well as the auto optimization of the paths between the gateway and the mesh nodes. About the roaming aspect, it is possible to enable the 802.11r Fast Roaming over the entire mesh nodes, so the user should indeed experience a seamless transition between the access points.

Wireless Test (5GHz)

Since pretty much all WiFi access points and wireless routers that I tested in the last couple of years were WiFi 6 devices, I used a main client device that’s equipped with an Intel AX200 adapter and two WiFi 5 client devices (Intel 8265 and Pixel 2 XL). I decided to still keep the same three clients since I was curious whether the AX200 would perform better.

The results show that you don’t really get any meaningful advantage and the AX200 client will behave as any high-end WiFi 5 device when connected to a WiFi 5 AP or router, as expected. So, while the AX200 client device was connected to the 5GHz WiFi network (80MHz), I saw an average of 631Mbps upstream and 333Mbps downstream at 5 feet (-38dB).

At 45 feet, the attenuation was similar to other APs that I tested (-75dB) and upstream, I measured an average of 187Mbps, while downstream, it was 166Mbps. The throughput takes a dive after going at about 70 feet (-87dB), where I saw an average of 13.6Mbps up and 5.4Mbps downstream, which was not really usable for most applications. Switching to the Intel 8265 laptop, I saw a very similar performance to the AX200 at 5 feet, but things quickly changed as I got farther from the EnGenius ECW130 unit.

At 45 feet, I measured an average of 73.2Mbps up and 44.2Mbps downstream. At 70 feet (-88dB), you’re not going to do much with the average throughput unless you don’t mind having 4Mbps up and 2.7Mbps downstream (and most people do mind). I have also added a long-term graph to show how the speed fluctuates over about an hour when using the AX200 and the Intel 8265 client devices.

The Pixel 2 XL is still alive (and not really well) after all these years, so I keep using it as the third client device. It doesn’t have the best range, but it does show how a slightly older WiFi 5 client device will behave. At 5 feet, I saw an average of 474Mbps upstream and 315Mbps downstream.

I could already see that the maximum range was 45 feet since the attenuation went past -80dB (-85dB to be exact) and here, I measured an average of 31.7Mbps up and 9Mbps downstream. The client device would not connect to the access point at 70 feet.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

UPDATE 04.11.2023: The FS S2800-8T Smart Managed Switch has been added to the best Ethernet switches list.

 
QUICK NAVIGATION: UNMANAGED VS WEB-SMART VS MANAGED SWITCHES

QUICK NAVIGATION: FEATURES TO LOOK FOR BEFORE CHOOSING THE BEST NETWORK SWITCHES

An Ethernet switch is a networking device that connects a large variety of devices (like IP cameras, computers and even other switches) into a common network and it uses the packet switching technology to receive, process and eventually forward the data to the destination client.
Network switches are commonly used to create a business network (especially devices with lots of ports), but there is also an increasing tendency to include switches into a home network, especially since PoE surveillance cameras have gotten so much more popular.

On the market, you can find switches that use physical addresses for data processing and forwarding at the layer 2 of the OSI model, but there are also layer 3 switches that besides all the features of a L2 switch, have routing functionality (so, similarly to some traditional routers, they’re capable of hardware-based packet switching). Also, let’s not forget the multi-Gigabit switches which are getting far more popular in 2022.

Best Non-PoE Unmanaged Ethernet Switches

1.Zyxel MG-108 Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Switch	2. Netgear ProSAFE GS108 Ethernet Switch	3. Buffalo BS-GU2024 Ethernet Switch
Read More	Read More	Read More

Best Unmanaged PoE Ethernet Switches

1. Linksys LGS116P Ethernet Switch	2. TRENDnet TPE-LG80 Ethernet Switch	3. TP-Link TL-SG1008PE Ethernet Switch
Read More	Read More	Read More

1. Zyxel MG-108 Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Zyxel has been gaining more and more traction in the SMB market and it is currently adjusting its platform to support enterprise-level networks as well. I have tested quite a few Ethernet switches from Zyxel and, indeed, the Nebula platform has only gotten better over the years, but today, I wish to focus on a particular device. I know that the manufacturers are a bit reticent with the move towards multi-Gigabit hardware, mainly due to the cost, which would imply some cut corners that may annoy the potential customers.

But Zyxel was brave enough to add 2.5GbE ports to an unmanaged Ethernet switch, the MG-108 and yes, there is no support for PoE, nor is there any software, but you do get to experience speeds above 1Gbps at a somewhat acceptable cost.

The Zyxel MG-108 does have a rectangular case, made of metal and with the matte finish on top. Since not much can be made for a switch to stand out from the crowd, manufacturers have resorted to making the devices as compact as possible. This means that the Zyxel MG-108 measures only 9.45 x 4.13 x 1.02, which is about the same size as the long-range switch TRENDnet TPE-LG80.

So, you can position it pretty much everywhere in the room, but, if space is important (in offices), Zyxel also offers the option to wall mount the device (you can’t add it to a rack without using a tray).

The bottom of the MG-108 is plain, as well as the top, with only the Zyxel logo that livens up a bit the device. On the front, you are greeted by all eight Ethernet 2.5GbE ports (10M/100M/1000M/2.5G) positioned in a single row, and yes, I would have liked to see some SFP ports as well, but again, this was a cost-conscious omission. The eight Ethernet ports don’t have the usual two LED lights for Link/ACTivity and Speed, but there is a block of LEDs (one LED for each port) to show the status of the connection.

Further to the left, there is a PWR green light that shows if the unit is powered ON, while on the right side, there’s the Power port. This switch does not feature any fan (it uses passive ventilation), so there is no annoying noise and the heat dissipation is done by the series of holes on the left and right of the device.

In terms of internal hardware, I couldn’t see much after I opened the case, but I could identify the Anpec APW7313 buck converter, the couple of Anpec APW8713 converters and two 74HC164D 8-bit serial-in/parallel-out shift registers. Furthermore, the Zyxel MG-108 offers a 40Gbps switching capacity and 29.8Mpps switching forwarding rate.

Setting up the MG-108 is very simple, since this is a plug-and-play device, so you only have to connect your devices using an Ethernet cable and the switch will do the job on its own without needing any configuration from the user (don’t forget to also connect it to your router, so you do lose one 2.5GbE port).

Obviously, since this is a Zyxel device, there are lots of interesting features that run automatically and help creating a reliable network. Among them, there is the 802.1p QoS (Quality of Service), which senses the services that need prioritizing so you get a better network performance. I would have also liked to see the Loop Detection feature to avoid any possible broadcast storm (the network is overwhelmed by continuous broadcast or multicast traffic), but it doesn’t seem to be supported (no mention for it anywhere).

2. NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 Ethernet Switch

Netgear is a well known manufacturer of networking products, having a portfolio that covers consumer-level devices, as well as enterprise-type products. Among them, there are powerline adapters, routers (the Nighthawk series being incredibly popular), NAS devices, wireless VPN firewalls and ProSAFE switches.
Maintaining the theme of the article, I will focus on an entry-level unmanaged switch, the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108, which is suitable for home use, as well as for small business offices.

The NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 went through several revisions (the latest being v4), but it has kept the same design, looking very similar to pretty much every other switch on the market. It doesn’t really excel from the aesthetic point of view, but switches are all about practicability.

So, you can expect a metallic rectangular case, covered by a blue matte finish, with the Netgear logo and name written on top, as well as two series of vent grills on both the right and left side.

The switch itself is very compact, as expected from an 8-port device, it measures 6.2 x 4.0 x 1.1 inches and weighs 1.04 lb (it’s lightweight, but the four feet should give it more stability). In terms of positioning, the GS108 can be placed horizontally on a flat surface (just make sure not to obstruct the air vents), but it can also be wall-mounted. As expected, you can’t rack-mount it, this option being available only for the 16-port and the 24-port variants (JGS516NA and the JGS524NA).

On the bottom of the switch, besides the four feet and the two holes for wall-mounting, there is a label with printed information about the device (the version of the switch and the serial number). The front of the switch is occupied by the 8 10/100/1000 Base-T RJ45 Ethernet ports and a Power LED (if it’s ON, it means that there is Link, otherwise, if it blinks, it means that there is ACTIVITY).

Every port features two LEDs: the left LED lights up if there is a connection of 100Mbps, the right LED lights up for a connection of 10Mbps. If both LEDs are ON at the same time, it means that there is a connection of 1000Mbps.

Unfortunately, none of the ports support the PoE technology. The rear side of the switch is home to a Kensington lock, an OFF/ON switch and a Power port (12V – 0.5A). Overall, the power consumption is quite low and because it doesn’t feature a fan (it relies on passive cooling), the switch is quiet.

Furthermore, I saw some major improvements from the GS108v3 in terms of power conumption after Netgear added support for the latest IEEE 802.3az standard which should translate into reduced energy consumption (up to 50% less) when the cable is shorter than 320 feet (Auto Green Mode), when there is light traffic on any active ports or when no activity is detected (a features also called Auto-Power Down).
Inside the case, the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108v4 remains equipped with a Broadcom BCM53118 chipset. The advertised switching capacity of the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 is 16Gbps.

Since this is an unmanaged switch, the setup process is very simple (this is a Plug and Play device): you have to connect the power adapter to the back of the switch and connect the desired devices using Ethernet cables (Cat 5). For every added client, the corresponding LED should turn on and flash when activity occurs.

Despite being unmanaged, the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 has lots of built-in features that help crating a better LAN network. Among them, there is the support for Jumbo frames (9k), which has the ability to boost the throughput significantly, there’s also the Store and Forward and the 192 KB on-chip Packet Buffering forwarding modes.

Additionally, you get traffic prioritization and DSCP-based QoS, so, applications like VOIP and video streaming have a higher priority.
The NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 is compliant with the following standards: IEEE 802.3i, IEEE 802.3u, 802.3ab, IEEE 802.3x, IEEE 802.3az and 802.1p.
Note: Inside the package, you can find the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108 Gigabit unit, the AC Power adapter, the wall-mounting screws, an Installation Guide and the Warranty.

3. Buffalo BS-GU2024 Ethernet Switch

Buffalo Technology is a North American subsidiary of the Japanese company Melco Holdings Inc. The Austin-based company is a fairly popular manufacturer of networking products and a leading provider of NAS devices, wireless routers and access points, external hard drives, network switches (both unmanaged and smart devices) and many other type of networking solutions.

One of the more popular products from Buffalo Technology is the BS-GU2024, which is an interesting rackmount unmanaged switch, suitable for small business offices or for a home tech enthusiast. The Buffalo BS-GU2024 is part of the Gigabit Green Ethernet Switches group and, since this series lacks the PoE functionality and, you can have a look at the 16-port BS-GU2016P (but be aware that it will cost a bit more).

The design of the BS-GU2024 follows the same guidelines as most other switches on the market, which is a good thing especially because I am talking about a device that can be rack-mounted, so it has to have a rectangular case. Furthermore, Buffalo made the device fairly compact for a 24-port switch (it measures 11.8 x 1.7 x 7.0 inches and weighs 3.5 lbs) and the chassis is made of metal, therefore it’s a lot more durable than the plastic alternative.

The Buffalo BS-GU2024 can be positioned in multiple ways: you can put it horizontally on a shelf or desk (but, don’t forget to attach the supplied rubber feet), it can be mounted to a metal surface by using the BS-MGK-A Magnet kit (which is not included in the package – see the note below), it can be mounted on the wall using the supplied mounting brackets (use the mounting holes from the bottom of the device). Lastly, the switch can be installed on a 19-inch rack by using the mounting brackets and the provided screws (use the four holes on each side of the device).

Note: Inside the package, you can find the BS-GU2024 switch unit, an AC 100-240V power cable, a retainer band for the power cable, the 19-inch mounting brackets along with the screws, the rubber feet, the serial number stickers, user manual and warranty.

Since this device is marketed as a rackmount switch, the top of the device is plain and uneventful (except maybe for the vent holes from the top edges) and the same can be said for the right and left side. But, on the rear side of the BS-GU2024, you can find the AC-IN power port and a zone for the power cable retainer.

As expected, the front of the switch is the most eventful side. Here, you can find 48 LED lights, two for every port, each having three states: if the LINK/ACT LED is Off, the link has not been established, if it’s On, then the link has been established, otherwise, if the LED is blinking, it means that the data is being transferred and if the loop is blocked, the LED will blink once per second.

If the 1000 Mbps LED (green) is On, it signifies a 1000 Mbps link, otherwise, if it’s Off, it signifies either a 100/10 Mbps link or no link. If the LED blinks once per second, it means that a loop is blocked. Additionally, there are a couple of LEDs, one for LOOP and the other for Power.

On the right side of the LEDs, there is a small Loop prevention switch, which can turn On or Off this function. Next to the small button, there are two blocks of 12 LAN ports each (1000BASET/100BASE-TX/10BASE-T). Overall, the power consumption of the switch is 13.5W at full load and, since this is a fanless switch (possible because it’s unmanaged), the device runs silent.

The Buffalo BS-GU2024 is an unmanaged switch, therefore setting it up is very simple (as with any plug-and-play device): all you have to do is to connect your devices to the switch, using Ethernet cables and that’s pretty much it, you don’t need to configure anything. But, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some interesting features that help create a better and more secure network.

The BS-GU2024 is capable of Jumbo Frames (9K – Header 14 Bytes + FCS 4 Bytes inclusive), has a buffer memory of 512KB and a switching fabric of 48 Gbps. Furthermore, the switch features the 802.3az Green Ethernet technology, that scans which ports have connected devices and provides power only to the active ports, while also putting any transmitters in Sleep Mode if no data has been received or sent.

Also, this feature takes into consideration the length of the connected cable so it can adjust the amount of power it needs to supply. Additionally, the switch has the Loop prevention feature which will turn off any port where there’s a network loop detected (you will also be alerted by the dedicated LED if there is a network loop detected).
Note: The switch has an internal power supply.

4. Linksys LGS116P 16-Port Ethernet Switch

The Linksys LGS116P is an unmanaged 16-port network switch that is part of the Linksys’ Business Desktop Gigabit PoE switch series along with the LGS108P and LGS124P, an 8-port device and, respectively, a 24-port switch. The LGS116P is a great solution for your office network, but it can also be used in your home (since this is an unmanaged device, which means that you can’t really configure it, it just allows the connected clients to communicate with each other).

The LGS116P features a fairly large rectangular metallic case (but comparing it with other 16-port switches, it’s surprisingly compact), with two pairs of airflow vents on the left and on the right, and no internal fan (it relies solely on passive cooling). The top of the LGS116P is quite plain, with only the blue Linksys logo breaking the continuity of the black matte finish.

In terms of positioning, the The LGS116P can be positioned flat on the surface (its dimensions are 4.2 x 11.0 x 0.9 inches and it weighs 1.8 lb) and it can also be wall-mounted, but it’s not rack mountable (only the larger LGS124P has this feature). If you turn the device upside down, you’ll see that there are no airflow vents here, there are only three screws, four round feet, two holes for wall mounting and a label containing the information about the device (model number, serial number).

The front of the switch is home to all 16 Gigabit 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, from which only the first eight come with PoE+ support. The PoE+ technology allows you to transfer data and receive power over the Ethernet cable, so you can connect compatible devices without the need to have a power outlet in the vicinity (some of these devices can be access points, IP cameras, network hubs, intercoms, VoIP phones and so on). The entire dedicated PoE power budget is 80 W.

All of the ports have one green amber LED for Link/Activity/GB and the first eight ports have an additional green LED for PoE. On the left of the ports there are also two LED lights for Power (a blue LED) and for PoE Max (the LED will be amber and if it’s on, it means that the total power budget is over 67 Watts, otherwise, if it’s off, it means that the power budget is under 67 Watts).

In terms of hardware, the LGS116P is equipped with a Marvel 88E1685LKJ2 chipset and, since we get a total of 16 Gigabit Ethernet ports, there is a total bandwidth of 32 Gbps available.
Setting up the Linksys LGS116P is simple, all you have to do is connect the power adapter to your switch and into a power outlet and then connect your network devices to the switch by using Ethernet cables (you can also cascade your switch to another switch).

Since this is an unmanaged unit, you don’t get to configure the switch, but there are some interesting features that are worth mentioning. There is the Quality of Service Traffic Prioritization (QoS) which ensures that regardless of network congestion, certain data throughput is still maintained for some connected devices (useful especially for video streaming or VOIP). There’s also support for Jumbo Frames (up to 9K bytes of payload frames, which means less CPU cycles and reduced overheads).

Another cool feature is the PoE prioritization. What it does is it assigns the highest priority to the port 1 and as you connect devices, the higher the port ID, the priority will be lower. So, if only seven ports out of the eight are connected, but the maximum power budget is already maxed out, the eight device will be declined, since it will have exceed the power budget.

The Linksys LGS116P switch is compliant with the following standards: IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, 802.3x, 802.3ab, and 802.3az. Additionally, for PoE devices, it supports IEEE 802.3at and 802.3af standards. If a devices does not support any of these standards, it will not be powered ON.
Note: Inside the box, you can find the Linksys LGS116P unit, a Power Adaptor, a Wall Mount Kit, a Quick Start Manual and a CD with the documentation.

5. TRENDnet TPE-LG80 8-Port PoE+ Ethernet Switch

Read the full review

Most unmanaged Ethernet switches allow you to connect multiple devices in a plug and play manner and, since these devices lack any utility software, some do come with hardware means of offering some type of QoS. The new TRENDnet TPE-LG80 is built in a similar way, but it went a few steps further so, besides featuring the same plug and play approach, the switch supports PoE+ on all of its eight ports, it offers QoS and VLAN port isolation.

But most importantly, the PoE+ signal can be extended up to 656 feet (at 10 Mbps full duplex), instead of the default 328 feet (this way, it’s the first device from TRENDnet to make it to the best Ethernet switches list).

This ensures a more flexible outdoors deployment (or indoors, if you have a large area to cover) of PoE devices, such as wireless access points (for a better WiFi coverage), IP cameras and more. Besides the 8-port TPE-LG80, TRENDnet has also released the 5-port TPE-LG50 which is also part of the new Long Range series.
Similarly to other switches on the market, the TPE-LG80 features a rectangular metallic case, covered by a black matte finish all around and the only relevant touch of color is the green band on the front of the device (surrounding the ports), along with the red DIP switch area on the front.

Sure, the TPE-LG80 may not be as good looking as the Netgear Nighthawk S8000, but it has adopted the most practical design which allows you to place the router on a flat surface or mount it on the wall – for mounting it on a rack, you will need to use a tray since the manufacturer did not add any lateral holes for attaching rack mounting ears.

Usually, PoE switches aren’t as compact as the non-PoE counterparts, but, TRENDnet has done some magic and managed to include all the necessary hardware in a very small case. So, the TPE-LG80 measures 9.45 x 4.13 x 1.1 inches and it weighs 20.88 ounces (it has a smaller footprint than the TPE-TG81g which measures 10.5 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches and the OM S8 is about five times bigger).

Furthermore, PoE switches have a tendency of running at a higher temperature, so TRENDnet has added a set of ventilation cut-outs on the right side, as well as on the left side and on the rear, but it decided against including a fan, therefore purely relying on passive cooling. This ensures that the Ethernet switch will always run silently and, if you worry that it may overheat, rest assure that it won’t – it does get slightly warm on the top when put under some stress, but the TPE-LG80 never showed any signs of overheating.

On the front of the device, there’s a DC-In port, an On/Off switch, a DIP switch (with eight switches, each performing a different task on various ports), a PoE Alert LED (lights up when the PoE budget goes beyond the maximum 65 Watts), a PWR LED and two LEDs for each Ethernet LAN ports (the bottom LED will becomes green when a PoE device is connected and, the top LED becomes amber when the connection is established at 10/100 Mbps and it will shine green when the connection is at 1000 Mbps). Lastly, farther to the left, rest the eight PoE+ Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports.

As expected from an unmanaged Plug-and-Play switch, the installation process is incredibly simple and all you have to do is connect the TPE-LG80 to a power source, use an Ethernet cable to connect it to a modem / router and add any other devices using the front panel ports (besides the usual access points or computers, you can also connect 802.3af PoE cameras and 802.3af PoE+ surveillance cameras).

The TRENDnet TPE-LG80 lacks any type of utility for managing or configuring the device and the network, but, there are some interesting built-in features that will make a difference and, of course, I’m talking about using the DIP switch.

If you push the first DIP switch to the On position, the first and the second ports will extend the PoE+ distance up to 656 feet (limited at 10 Mbps) and, to put this to test, I connected two devices to the switch (using a 560-foot cable in between them) and saw an average throughput of 9.52 Mbps from the client to the server and 9.45 Mbps from the server to the client.

This indicates that TRENDnet has done a great job and the advertised throughput is close to what you’ll get in real life. The second DIP switch activates the long range ability to the third and fourth ports and the third DIP switch activates VLAN port isolation for the first to the fourth ports.

The fourth DIP switch activates QOS, while the fifth DIP switch activates the LR function on the fifth Ethernet port. The sixth and seventh DIP switch will enable the LR ability to the sixth and seventh port, respectively and, lastly, the eighth DIP switch activates the VLAN port isolation to the port 5, 6 and 7. It is important to not switch on the DIP switch three and eight at the same time.
Note: Inside the package, there is the TRENDnet TPE-LG80 Long Range switch, the Power cord and a Quick Installation Guide.

6. TP-LINK TL-SG1008PE 8-Port Ethernet Switch

TP-Link has gone a long way from its early days when it was only influential in the country of origin (China) and managed to achieve a top place among the best networking products manufacturers in the world. TP-Link’s interest spans over many type of products, including thepowerline adapters, wireless routers, ADSL modems, IP cameras and, of course Ethernet switches.
The product I’m going to focus on is the TP-LINK TL-SG1008PE, a 8-port PoE+ rackmount switch which is part of the unmanaged type of devices.

The TL-SG1008PE features a rectangular metallic case, covered by a dark blue finish and with a slab of plastic where the LEDs and ports reside. The top of the TL-SG1008PE is quite uneventful, the only thing that caught my attention is the carved-in TP-Link logo.

On the left, you can find a series of air vents that help deliver a better ventilation, but it doesn’t stop here, because TP-Link decided to go the noisy way and equipped the TL-SG1008PE with a fan (hidden under a hexagonal shaped vent hole pattern on the right side of the switch).

While other 8 and 16-port switches from this list were quite compact and could be easily placed anywhere, the footprint of the TL-SG1008PE is a bit large (it measures 11.6 x 7.1 x 1.7 inches and it weighs 5.5 lbs). So, you can definitely place the switch on a flat surface (like a desk or a shelf), but if you don’t have the space for it, you can’t mount the device on the wall. Fortunately, it can be mounted on a rack.

The front side of the switch is home to the eight 10/100/1000M RJ45 Ethernet Gigabit ports (all eight come with PoE+ support). On the left side of the ports, there are two main LEDs for PoE MAX (solid red means that the power of all connected devices is between 120 and 126W, otherwise, if the LED is flashing red, it means that the power of all the connected PoE ports is either equal or exceeds 126W.

Lastly, if the LED is off, then the power of all connected PoE ports is under 120W) and Power (if it’s flashing green, then the power supply acts abnormal).

Besides these two LEDs, there are three arrays of LED lights for every port, each showing the PoE Status (flashing green means that there may be a short circuit or that the power current may be overloaded), the Link/Activity and the 1000Mbps (if the LED is on, it means that the port connection runs at 1000Mbps; there is no distinctive color for the speeds under the 1000Mbps). On the back side of the switch, there is a power port (100-240V~ 50/60Hz 2.0A) and on the bottom side there four protruded feet and a label with printed info about the device (the serial number).

Furthermore, the TL-SG1008PE features a total PoE power budget is 124W, but there are two additional variations of this Ethernet switch which can also be added to the best Ethernet switches list: the TL-SG1008P, an 8-port Gigabit switch that is equipped with only four PoE ports and there’s the less expensive TL-SF1008P, also a 8-port switch with 4 PoE ports which lacks the Gigabit speeds (it uses older Fast Ethernet ports).

Since we are dealing with a Plug-and-Play device, the setup process of the TL-SG1008PE is quite simple, all you have to do is connect the power cable to the back of the switch and to a wall outlet (keep a safe distance from the other devices that may cause interference, such as powerline adapters) and then just add your devices using Ethernet cables (since this is a PoE+ switch, you can add 802.3af/at compliant devices, like IP cameras or IP telephones).

One interesting feature is the priority functions, that has the role to protect the system in case of power overload. So, if the power consumption is greater or equal to 124W, the eight PoE+ ports will receive a priority and the switch will cut the power from the port with the lowest priority (for example, port 1, 2 and 4 will use 30W, while port 3 will use 25W, so any port after the first four will have the power supply cut, as they will have a lower priority).

Furthermore, the TL-SG1008PE has a great energy efficient technology that detects if there is any unused PoE port, so it can reduce the power consumption by up to 75%. Additionally, the switching capacity is 16Gps and it supports Jumbo frames (16Kb).
The TP-LINK TL-SG1008PE switch is compliant with the following standards: IEEE802.3i, IEEE802.3u, IEEE802.3ab, IEEE802.3x, IEEE802.1p, IEEE802.3af and IEEE802.3at.
Note: Inside the package, you can find the TP-LINK TL-SG1008PE switch unit, a Power cord, the Installation Guide, four rubber feet and two mounting brackets, along with the fittings.

Unmanaged vs Web-smart vs Managed switches

As you have probably guessed, you will find three main types of switches: unmanaged, Web-smart and managed switches.
The unmanaged switches are the most basic from the bunch, as they require no configuration, no management and they work as plug-and-play devices (just add your devices one by one using Ethernet cables). But, this doesn’t mean that the unmanaged switches are devoid of any features.

Quite the contrary, because most come with a basic form of QoS, there is PoE port prioritization (if PoE support is present), but, everything is done automatically and works as you power on the switch until you turn it off, there is no way to configure these options in depth (some can still be monitored by LED indicators).

In terms of appearance, there isn’t a difference between an unmanaged and a managed switch, they can be positioned on a desktop, wall or rack mounted. But, is an unmanaged switch the best device for you? Well, if a plug-and-play switch that doesn’t require any configuration and works well by its own sounds good to you, then yes, you should go for it (also, take into consideration the built-in PoE support). Also, don’t forget that unmanaged switches are the cheapest out of the three variations.

The Web-smart switches are a form of managed switches, but with a more limited feature set (they fall between the unmanaged and the managed switches niche).
Smart switches are easy to set up and offer a web interface that allows you to configure a lot of features (a more basic set, comparing it with a full managed switch). You get Link Aggregation, Port Monitoring, VLAN, QoS, LAG and some other L2-level features, but, while most of the managed switches can be managed using a CLI (command line interface), a smart-managed switch lacks any console port, SSH or telnet support.

While some may argue that a web-smart switch may have a poorer management spectrum, less features and not enough security, technology has evolved a lot lately and some web-managed switches can now rival the full-managed ones. But, this will be reflected in the price tag (although, usually, smart switches are cheaper than the enterprise ones). But, do you need a Web-smart switch?

Since these type of switches are the middle ground between the unmanaged and the managed switches, it means that they will work great with small businesses, as they offer some degree of configurability (especially if the features of a managed switch may be overkill) and, usually, they come at a more reasonable price. If this are your needs, then yes, smart switches are perfect for you (again, take into consideration the advantages of PoE support).

A fully-manages switch (also known as enterprise switch) offers the most out of the three variants and the biggest difference between them is the level of control over the network. As expected, the fully managed switches provide the greatest amount of management and control. You also get access to more than one interfaces (including CLI, SSH and SNMP) and layer 3 features (routing capabilities).

Now, do you need a fully managed switch? There is an IT joke that if you wonder if you need a managed switch, then chances are you that don’t. And there is a bit a truth into this, because a managed switch gives full control over the network and the manager can see everything that is going on and adjust it in such a way that the network will be perfectly optimized.

This requires a clear understanding of how things work and a steep learning curve. Usually, medium to large enterprise-level networks would need such high-end switches, but lately, even small businesses seem to take an interest for the fully-managed switches.

What Features Should You Look For Before Choosing The Best Network Switch?

1. Number of Ports
One of the most important factors to consider is choosing the switch with the right number of ports (the Ethernet switches, usually come with 5, 8, 10, 16, 24, 48 and 52 ports). For example, if you have 4 or 5 devices to connect, then a 5 or 8-port switch would fit the bill.

Also, if you have 15 devices, then a 16-port will handle them, but if you want to expand the network in the future, you may want to consider purchasing a 24-port switch. At the same time, if you have over 50 users (a small business), then you may have to consider purchasing two switches to handle your network.

2. Gigabit or Fast Ethernet
The Fast Ethernet is a term that refers to a traffic rate of 100Mbps (an upgrade over the usual 10Mbps rate), while the Gigabit Ethernet is a term that refers to a traffic rate of 1000Mbps.
Obviously, a Gigabit switch is preferred, but depending on your network setup, it may not really be a necessity. You need a Gigabit switch if you need to push 1000Mbps per port and it’s ideal if you need to transfer large volumes of data and have a fast performing network with a low latency.

Obviously, there will be more stress on the link, but you get a better performance, more bandwidth and less congestion, but if your network focuses on Internet access or just for the transfer of low volume of files, then a Fast Ethernet switch (100Mbps) will be more than enough. Regardless, you should still consider a Gigabit switch, simply because the technology got less expensive than before and it’s clearly future-proof.

3. PoE
The PoE (Power over Ethernet) technology refers to any system that passes electric power along with network data on an Ethernet cable.
This technology helps to reduce the cost (since you don’t need to install any power cables), is safe (has protection for overloading or underpowering) and is flexible (compatible devices can be installed anywhere, without worrying about having a nearby power outlet).

Some of the devices that use the PoE technologies are VoIP phones, IP cameras and wireless access points. The last two types of devices are the reason why PoE switches are becoming more popular everyday. Nowadays, people value a lot more a flexible network infrastructure and a PoE switch allows you to connect any type of devices, but recognizes the PoE-compatible devices (such as IP cameras) and it enables power automatically.

The PoE technology obviously offers a series of advantages and can be found implemented on unmanaged switches and on the managed ones, but will definitely increase the price (and sometimes even the size of the switch).

4. With Fans or Fanless?
This one may seem simple, because everybody prefers their devices to be as quiet as possible, so a fanless switch is the preferred one. Unmanaged and Web-smart switches are usually fanless, simply because they don’t emanate a lot of heat (due to a less powerful setup), but, if switches have the PoE tchnology and are managed (therefore a better performance), then the passive cooling may not be enough, so when things get heated, the fans can come into action to cool the situation down.

If you have a server room, having a noisy switch won’t really make a difference, but if you keep your devices on the desk or wall-mount them, then a fanless switch will be the preferred option.

5. Desktop, Rackmount or Wall-mount
Ideally, a switch will feature all three options, but, depending on the size, the rack-mounting option may not make much sense. A desktop switch will have the default position horizontally, with four feet on the bottom, but, usually, you can also wall-mount it.

The rackmount switches, on the other hand, will feature only this position (on a rack) as the only one available (the case will have no screen or LED on top) and some switches will also have the rackmount ears built into the body of the switch.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

Furthermore, the access points are built on different platforms (Qualcomm vs MediaTek), and it was curious to see that the Ubiquiti U6-LR was unable to fully utilize some of the features of the new WiFi standard. The OFDMA was only enabled on the 5GHz radio band – the U6-Pro had no such limitations.

This can have an impact in areas with lots of access points and client devices, but in most cases, the user would barely see any benefit from OFDMA. It’s worth mentioning that the U6-LR does support a slightly higher transmit power, potentially allowing it to reach farther, offering a better range (then again, LR stands for Long Range).

Other than that, the U6-Pro is also more compact than the U6-LR, but both devices have the same number of ports and yes, unfortunately neither has a multi-Gigabit port. That’s a privilege left to the U6-Enterprise. That being said, let’s put the Ubiquiti U6-Pro next to the U6-LR and see which of the two WiFi 6 access points is the better device.

Note: You can also check out the individual analysis of each WiFi 6 access point here: Ubiquiti U6-LR and Ubiquiti U6-Pro.

Design and Build Quality

Ubiquiti is well known for its iconic saucer-shaped wireless access points and this design has been used for the U6-Pro and the U6-LR as well. But there is a fundamental difference: the size. Ubiquiti got a bit anxious when developing the U6-LR, so it increased the size of the device to 8.66 x 1.89 inches (while the nanoHD was way smaller).

Then, the developers have regained some of the confidence and with the switch to a new architecture (to Qualcomm), the Ubiquiti U6-Pro is a bit smaller, measuring 7.76 x 1.38 inches. There is more because the Ubiquiti U6-LR is entirely made of plastic, relying on internal metallic plates to guide the heat outwards (this way, the case doesn’t get hot to the touch, but more heat remains inside).

The U6-Pro went with a similar approach to the EnGenius ECW220S and it made the bottom section metallic to quickly take the extra heat out, while the top is plastic. Yes, the case will be seemingly hotter, but it doesn’t matter when the device is mounted on the ceiling.
I didn’t leave this to interpretation, so I got the thermal camera out to confirm that indeed, both access points have a good thermal management. The photos speak for themselves.

I have mentioned that the APs will end up on the ceiling, but is it possible to leave them on the desk? No, both the Ubiquiti U6-Pro and the U6-LR are designed to be mounted on the ceiling – you can put them on the wall, but the range will suffer a bit. What about the status LEDs? As with the previous generations, both access points use an LED ring to show the status of the network, connection and the device itself. When the LED is blue, it means that everything is working fine, and it will stay white before you adopt the AP to the controller.

When the LED flashes blue every five seconds, it means that the access point has lost its connection to the network. The curious thing is that Ubiquiti has initially advertised the U6-Pro (and, apparently the U6-LR as well) as having RGB, but they later removed that feature due to supply issues.

The ports are positioned in the same area on both devices, so, if you check the recessed spot on the bottom of the U6-LR and the U6-Pro, you should see a single Gigabit Ethernet port (PoE 802.3af) and a Reset button. That’s it.

I understand that the PoE is the superior option, but I am not a fan of removing additional possibilities, so I would have liked to either see a power connector or a PoE adapter in the package, otherwise how exactly Ubiquiti expects the user to power up its access points?
Lastly, I would like to mention that the Ubiquiti U6-Pro and the U6-LR are IP54-rated, so you could technically mount the devices outdoors, but I would make sure that they’re still not completely in the open since neither are built like actual tanks (I do have an article with proper outdoors access points).

That being said, considering that it’s the smaller device, the U6-Pro is the better built and designed access point.

Internal Hardware (Ubiquiti U6-Pro vs U6-LR Teardown)

I have recently revisited the old Ubiquiti nanoHD which was the first time the manufacturer experimented with the MediaTek platform and it seems that they were confident it would work fine with the Ubiquiti U6-LR as well. And it did up to a point, but they got some issues covering the main WiFi 6 features (OFDMA), so the Ubiquiti U6-Pro uses the Qualcomm platform instead.

Indeed, the Ubiquiti U6-Pro is equipped with a dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm IPQ5018 chipset, 1GB of RAM from Kingston (2x D5128ECMDPGJD) and 4GB of storage memory from Mouser Electronics (THGBMNG5D1LBAIL). Furthermore, the access point uses the Qualcomm IPQ5018 as the chip switch and, as for the WiFi, it relies on Qualcomm QCN9024 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 for the 5GHz radio and the Qualcomm IPQ5018 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 for the 2.4GHz radio band.

The Ubiquiti U6-LR relies on the dual-core 1.35GHz Mediatek ARM MT7622AV chipset, has a bit less RAM since it’s equipped with 512MB from Winbond (2x W632GU8NB-11) and it sports only 64MB storage from Winbond (25Q512JVFQ). Furthermore, the WiFi 6 access point uses the Marvell AQrate AQR112G switch chip and, as for WiFi, it relies on the Mediatek MT7975AN and MT7915AN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 chips for the 5GHz radio band and the Mediatek MT7622 802.11a/b/g/n 4×4:4 for the 2.4GHz radio.

Note: A lot of users like to see the maximum theoretical data transfer rate, so here it is. The Ubiquiti U6-LR can go up to 2,400Mbps on the 5GHz and up to 600Mbps on the 2.4GHz radio band. The Ubiquiti U6-Pro goes up to 4,800Mbps on the 5GHz and 573.5Mbps on the 2.4GHz radio band.

The Main Features

The Ubiquiti U6-Pro and the U6-LR share pretty much the same set of features which includes OFDMA, but Ubiquiti decided to implement it a bit differently. Unlike the U6-Pro which uses OFDMA on both radio bands, ul and dl, the Ubiquiti U6-LR only implements it on the 5GHz radio band. Will this have a big impact? It depends on whether you’re going to use OFDMA at all because in most cases, the regular user will not be able to see any significant difference in performance.

That’s because OFDMA improves latency and only in very crowded networks will you see an actual perceptible improvement. MU-MIMO is also present and the U6-LR uses a 4×4 WiFi chip for the 2.4GHz radio, while the U6-Pro went for a 2×2:2 chipset, but again, while a few client devices may be able to fully take advantage of this feature, most devices only go up to 2×2. Also, lots of them aren’t even compatible with MU-MIMO in the first place.

Both the Ubiquiti U6-LR and the U6-Pro make use of the 160MHz channel bandwidth which will work great with DFS channels, otherwise the network will actually perform worse due to extreme sensitivity to interference. Ubiquiti has been using its proprietary version of mesh and, while it calls it Uplink, it pretty much works in the same manner as other access points.

It allows the inter-connection of multiple access point to form a larger network and, thanks to fast roaming technologies, the client device should move seamlessly between nodes. I suppose I could also talk about the power consumption. Both WiFi 6 access points rely on PoE to power up and the U6-LR needs a maximum of 16.5W, while the U6-Pro requires less, going up to 13W.

Wireless Test (5GHz)

To make it easier to create these comparison articles, I test the wireless access points in the same manner using the same equipment in the same place.

The Ubiquiti U6-LR and the U6-Pro were connected to a powerful switch (the Zyxel XS1930) which was then connected to a router/gateway for gaining access to the Internet. Then, each was set up to broadcast two WiFi networks, the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz, the latter being first configured to use the 160MHz channel bandwidth, then the 80MHz one.

For the actual tests, I used three client devices, the first is a WiFi 6 computer equipped with an Intel AX200 adapter, while the other two are WiFi client devices (Intel 8265 and Pixel 2 XL).

Lastly, I made sure that the server would not be a bottleneck, so I used the 2.5GbE port, even though a Gigabit connection is the maximum any of the two access points can go up to. That being said, I connected the WiFi 6 client device to the 5GHz network of the Ubiquiti U6-LR (160MHz) and at 5 feet (-35dB attenuation), I saw an average of 888Mbps up and 546Mbps downstream.

At 45 feet, the access point was still going decently well, reaching an average of 181Mbps upstream and 153Mbps downstream. Considering the Long Range claim, I was curious about the throughput at about 70 feet. The attenuation was brutal, reaching -88dB and the speed was 14Mbps up and 1.4Mbps down, so, while you do get a connection, your options are still going to be limited (not much can be done with 1.4Mbps).

Moving to the Ubiquiti U6-Pro, I connected the WiFi 5 client device to the 5GHz network (also 160MHz) and, at 5 feet, I saw an average of 934Mbps up and 625Mbps downstream, which is an excellent performance and better than the U6-LR. But, at 45 feet, things fell apart hard because I saw an average of 43.9Mbps upstream and 12.7Mbps downstream. The problem is that the range doesn’t even reach 70 feet because the client device disconnected from the AP way before that point. So, better at close range, worse farther away.

On the next step, I switched to the 80MHz channel bandwidth on both access points, and it was interesting to see that both the Ubiquiti U6-LR and the U6-Pro performed so similarly at 5 feet.

But the U6-LR still performed better at 45 feet and beyond, even though the U6-Pro did reasonably well at 45 feet. At 70 feet, the client device once again failed to connect to the U6-Pro, so that’s a bit of a bummer, especially when other access points from the competition did not have this issue. Afterwards, I connected the WiFi 5 client devices, the laptop equipped with an Intel 8265 and the Pixel 2 XL.

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Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

www.mbreviews.com

UPDATE 03.25.2023: I have added the Meraki Go GR12 WiFi 6 AP the best wireless access points list

UPDATE: The Xclaim Xi-3 AP has been removed from the list because the manufacturer decided to announce that the entire series has reached EOL in 2021.

Zyxel WAX650 WiFi 6 Access Point	TP-Link EAP660 HD Wireless Access Point	EnGenius ECW230S Wireless Access Point
Read More	Read More	Read More

Ubiquiti U6-LR Wi-Fi 6 Access Point	Meraki Go GR12 Wireless Access Point	Linksys LAPAC1750C Wireless Access Point
Read More	Read More	Read More

It’s true that the wireless access point has the role of converting the data received from a wired Ethernet cable into wireless signal (2.4GHz, 5GHz or 6GHz) but a wireless router can do pretty much the same thing, so one my ask why would you need a separate access point?
The routers can definitely do a great job at serving all the close-by clients, but, there are always WiFi dead spots where the signal just won’t reach and so, if you have a rather large house, you may need at least one additional wireless access point to help with your network.

While the main purpose of an AP is to extend your network, some manufacturers have taken up to a new level, adopting the mesh networking technology, so you can use one or two small devices in your home (which are usually very easy to set up) or you can use a bunch of them and create a mesh network, where your clients can seamlessly roam the building and have uninterrupted access to the Internet and a steady, strong signal.
Note 1: If you have an old router laying around, you may try to convert it to an access point and save some money in the process.
Note 2: I purposely left out the Outdoor Access Points, which will be the subject of another article.

CHECK OUT: THE BEST OUTDOOR WIRELESS ACCESS POINTS

Best wireless access points brief comparison

Which is the fastest wireless access point

After I tested all six wireless access points, the TP-Link EAP660 HD dethroned the Zyxel WAX650S on the 80MHz, and in terms of price, it’s absolutely unbeatable at the moment of writing. It’s not surprising that the WiFi 6 access points take the lead considering that they makes use of a few new technologies, as well as some improved features from the previous WiFi standard. All devices were tested in the same space and the client device for the WiFi 5 APs was either a computer equipped with an Intel 8265 adapter (the older one was equipped with an Asus PCE-AC88 PCIe), while the WiFi 6 access points were and will be tested using a computer equipped with a TP-Link TX3000E (AX200) adapter. Furthermore, since most WiFi 6 APs have multi-Gigabit ports, the server device will also have a multi-Gigabit port, as to not throttle the performance of the wireless access point.

Be aware that being the fastest access point doesn’t necessarily mean you have the best device for your network, because the software and other features, as well as the price can weigh just as heavy on the value of the access point. For example, the security features of the EnGenius ECW230S puts it way ahead all of its competitors and the extra tools that help the system admins makes this device one of the best wireless access points for system administrators since it’s far easier to get an accurate idea of what happens on the network even from outside the site.

While the distance may seem like a decent enough objective way of comparing the performance of the best wireless access points, the attenuation is a far better point of reference since it’s easier to also reproduce these results at home or in the office. The 45 feet in my office will differ than those in your home. But a -70dB attenuation will make it clearer about what to expect in terms of WiFi speed at a certain spot in your home.

That being said, I did test a few WiFi 6 access points that did support the 160MHz channel bandwidth and we do have a few different models taking the lead. But be aware that the 160MHz width is very sensitive to interference (less non-overlapping channels), so, to get these type of results, you need to have little to no amount of walls and preferably no other WiFi device to interfere with the data transfer. In a crowded area, it’s actually best to downgrade to 40MHz since not even the 80MHz can show decent results.

As you can see, the Xyxel WAX650S retakes its top place, but the TP-Link EAP670 gets very uncomfortably close at 5 feet, although losing momentum immediately after. The U6-Pro and the WAX630S are very similar in performance, while the U6-LR showing an advantage after 15 feet and forward (especially at 70 feet).

The wireless access point with the best coverage

As you can see the focus was towards the 70 feet, which is why the two TP-Link access points remain at the top even at the 45 feet mark (because it means that you get a better speed farther from the wireless access point). And yes, TP-Link is again towards the top when checking the throughput with a limited amount of client devices connected at the same time (two WiFi 5 and one WiFi 6 as seen in the individual analysis of each device).

1. Zyxel WAX650S WiFi 6 Access Point

Read the full review

The Zyxel WAX650S is currently one of the best WiFi 6 access points on the market and yes, it’s a bit more expensive than the other devices from this list, but this is a device which competes against enterprise-level access points, so its performance is on a different level. Sure enough, it does make use of the OFDMA technology, it has support for MU-MIMO, Beamforming and 160MHz channel bandwidth, but what I found the most interesting is the support for PoE++. It seems that you will need a powerful PoE Ethernet switch (such as the XS1930-12HP) to be able to use the most out of this access points and yes, the WAX650S does come with a 5GbE port to allow you to go beyond the old Gigabit limitation.

Additionally, I do appreciate that the device can be used in stand-alone mode in a proper way (there is a sufficiently comprehensive software), as well as with the NXC controller or, if you have a larger network, it will work just fine with the Cloud Center platform.
The Zyxel access points are usually designed on the larger side and the WAX650S is definitely out there as a bulky networking device. Indeed, at 9.25 x 9.06 x 2.11 inches, this is an access point that you’re going to see as soon as you enter the room, so perhaps mounting it on the wall would be more aesthetically pleasing than on the ceiling. That being said, I know that some other manufacturers have opted for some aluminum or zinc alloy, but Zyxel decided to keep the budget for the inside of the AP, so it made the case entirely from plastic.

It’s a hard plastic, so it’s fine and the heat management is also well made considering how crammed up everything is on the inside – there are some fairly hot points, but it’s mostly just warm to the touch.
If you turn the device upside down, you can clearly see the two dedicated areas for mounting the device on the ceiling (or on the wall) and in between them, there’s a carved in area where you can find the 12V DC-In Power connector (to power up the AP via a power cable), a 5GbE Uplink port (which can work in 1GbE and 2.5GbE mode), a LAN1 Gigabit Ethernet port (to connect wired clients) a recessed Reset button (press it for about 10 seconds to return the AP to factory default settings) and a grounding screw. I also opened up the case of the WAX650S and I could see that it went with the quad-core 2GHz Qualcomm IPQ8072A, 512MB of RAM and 512MB of flash memory, which is excellent.

I have already praised the Zyxel WAX650S for having a great wireless performance and, when I tested it, I used a MacBook Pro + a QNAP QNA-UC5G1T adapter as the server (to get that multi-Gigabit connection) and a computer equipped with an AX200 WiFi adapter as the client. This way, on the 5GHz (160MHz channel bandwidth), I saw an upstream throughput of 1,1650Mbps at 5 feet and 351Mbps at 30 feet. Using the 80MHz channel bandwidth, the speed went down to an average of 884Mbps at 5 feet and 338Mbps at 30 feet. The 2.4GHz performance (40MHz) was also very good, so I managed to measure an average of 241Mbps at 5 feet (upstream) and an average of 122Mbps at 30 feet.

If you intend to use only a single Zyxel WAX650S unit (or two), then you can use the stand-alone user interface (accessible by going to its IP address – can be found using the ZON utility) and just like the NWA1123-AC HD, it does offer a satisfying experience, offering more than the few basic options that we got with the NAP303. But the Zyxel WAX650S will also work great with the NCC and you can connect to it by using either the Nebula app (Android or iOS) which does make the process very painless or using the Nebula Control Center which will require a few more steps.

The Dashboard will display blocks of info for every type of device connected including the AP area (which shows the number of Online APs, the Total number of APs and the Heavy Loading) or the AP Client area, but, to monitor and configure the access point, you need to go to the AP area (from the top menu) and, if you click on it, it will summon a small drop-down menu with options grouped into two categories: Monitor and Configure. Under Monitor, you can view all the adopted APs and by clicking on any of them, it will take you to a dedicated page which includes more in-depth details about the device (as well as some Live tools to help you diagnose any connection issue); there’s also the Client list (click on any to view more details about that specific client), the Event log, the Summary report (general AP stats) and more.

The Configure group of options includes the SSIDs where you can set up general SSID settings for all the APs on the current Site (every new adopted access point will receive these settings); you can also configure the Radio settings (maximum output power, the channel width or the DCS setting), the Port setting (can be set for each individual AP), the Authentication settings (includes the WLAN security, enabling the Captive Portal), the Assisted roaming, the U-APSD, the Walled garden, the Layer 2 isolation or the Intra-BSS traffic blocking), the SSID schedule or the possibility of personalizing the Captive Portal (which is very useful especially for hotels or airports).

2. TP-Link EAP660 HD WiFi 6 Access Point

Read the full review

TP-Link has been one of the main providers of affordable consumer-friendly wireless access points and, ever since the WiFi 6 standard was launched, pretty much all manufacturers of SMB-suitable hardware raced to quickly release networking devices that could take advantage of the newer technologies. I am familiar with the EAP series (the EAP245) that was using an early version of Omada and it seems that in the meantime, TP-Link has made some serious advances and it now includes both gateways and switches (besides the WiFi APs), so what better time to showcase these advancements than with a new WiFi access point, specifically the EAP660 HD.

Similarly to most other ceiling wireless access points, the TP-Link EAP660 HD went with a simple design, the case having a circular shape and the entire device is covered by a white matte finish. But, despite keeping everything as minimal as possible, the access point is still very large and substantially thick, measuring 9.6 x 9.6 x 2.5 inches, so it’s going to be very much visible on the ceiling. As I have seen with some Ubiquiti access point over the years (such as the UAP-AC-PRO), the wireless access points that are designed to sit on the ceiling have a tendency to run fairly hot, but it seems that TP-Link has taken the necessary precautions against such behavior. Indeed, the full-plastic case and the multiple openings will help the AP to remain only a bit warm in the middle of the case.

Just like the EAP245, the TP-Link EAP660 HD has a single fairly small LED sitting at the top of the case and it’s supposed to properly show the status of the access point. The LED indicator will quickly flash when the AP is upgrading the firmware, it will become solid when the device is working properly; the LED will be flashing red and blue if the device has experienced an error. If you’re looking for the ports area, you’ll find it at the bottom, in a dedicated section. From the left, there’s a recessed Reset button which, when pressed and held for 5 seconds, returns the AP to factory default settings; further to the right, there’s the Power port and a single 2.5GbE port (to connect to the router – it’s PoE compatible).

Yes, unfortunately, TP-Link decided to not add an additional Ethernet port for wired clients (since the AP is going to end up on the ceiling or on the wall), so, only wireless clients will be able to connect to the EAP660 HD – unless you use a multi-Gigabit PoE switch (such as the Zyxel XS1930 or the Zyxel MG-108). Inside the case, the EAP660 HD is equipped with a quad-core 2GHz Qualcomm IPQ8072A SoC, backed by 512MB ESMT RAM (2x M15T4G16256A) and 128MB ESMT F59D1G81MB-AZM1P0H9N storage. Also, there’s the Qualcomm Atheros IPQ8072A 802.11b/g/n/ax 4×4:4 chip for the 2.4GHz radio and a Qualcomm Atheros IPQ8072A 802.11a/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 for the 5GHz radio.

Now that we had a look at the hardware, let’s see what kind of performance this wireless access point can deliver. To do so, I connected a computer to a multi-Gigabit switch, the Zyxel XS1930-12HP which was then connected to the EAP660 HD and then a WiFi 6 client (AX200) was connected to the 5GHz network (80MHz). Upstream, I measured an average of 979Mbps at 5 feet and 562Mbps at 30 feet; from the server to the client, the WiFi 6 access point delivered 882 Mbps at 5 feet and 546 at 30 feet. Afterwards, I connected the wireless client to the 2.4GHz network and, from the client to the server, at 5 feet, I measured an average of 368Mbps and, at 30 feet, the speed went down to 179Mbps. From the server to the client, I measured and average of 337Mbps at 5 feet, while at 30 feet, the throughput decreased to 172Mbps.

The TP-Link EAP660 HD can either be run as a standalone device (the usual choice for home users) or as part of a larger environment by using the Omada controller. To do the former, you need to run an instance of the controller on your hardware (a PC, a Raspberry Pi or using a dedicated device, such as the OC300). The Chinese-based manufacturer has been pushing back against Ubiquiti’s dominance for years and, after some questionable decisions from the latter company, it does seem that TP-Link may be able to persuade some of the users that felt neglected. I am saying that because the Omada controller has the same feel as the UniFi, as well as very similar interface and controls.

3. EnGenius ECW230S WiFi 6 Access Point

Read the full review

The EnGenius ECW230S is the upgraded version of the ECW230 which has now received extra antennas for WIPS and Zero DFS radios that were needed to make full use of the improved Diagnostic Tools. So, because of all these new features, the EnGenius ECW230S is essentially the best security-focused WiFi 6 access point at the moment, having a clear focus towards detecting rogue APs, every type of interference, as well as making the sys admin life a whole lot easier.

And it also helps with the budget because you no longer need to go to the site as often because the ECW230S allow you to see everything that happens within that network (what the client are doing) in actual real-time. It’s quite fascinating to see how EnGenius managed to add all the powerful components (plus the new antennas), while still keeping the EnGenius ECW230 incredibly compact (especially when compared to one of its competitors, the Zyxel WAX650S).

And it’s also one of the most elegant wireless access points that I have tested, sporting a flat minimalist plastic case covered by a white matte finish. The bottom side is metallic, but the ECW230S will most likely end up on the ceiling and it’s going to look great. Of course, EnGenius has included everything that’s necessary for mounting the device on the wall or ceiling, but since there are no silicone feet, you won’t be able to keep it on the desk.

On the front of the wireless point, there’s a fairly subtle bar of LEDs (which are quite bright, but can be turned off) and, from the left, there’s the Power LED, the LAN LED and the two LEDs for the WiFi networks (2.4GHz and 5GHz). Turn the access point around and you’ll be able to see a carved-in area that contains a recessed Reset button, the 12VDC power port and only one Ethernet port. It makes sense to use only one port for ceiling wireless access points, but it’s still annoying if you want to put it on the wall next to a printer (which may have used a secondary port).

The good news is that it’s a 2.5GbE port that supports 802.3at PoE Ethernet switches or PoE adapters (the same as on the ECW230). I also opened the case to check its components and it does make use of the same quad-core Qualcomm Atheros IPQ8072A chipset (clocked at 2.0GHz) that the ECW230 uses, as well as the 256MB of flash memory, but the RAM got a bump from 512MB to 1GB. For the WiFi, there’s the IPQ8072A chip (QCN5054) for the 5GHz radio and the IPQ8072A chip (QCN5074) for the 2.4GHz radio, so it’s the same as on the ECW230 again.

In terms of wireless performance, the ECW230S did really well and, using a WiFi 6 client (AX200) on the 2.4GHz radio band, I measured an upstream speed of 302 Mbps at 5 feet. Then, it decreased a bit to 283 Mbps at 15 feet and it managed 243 Mbps at 30 feet. Even at 45 feet, the 131Mbps throughput is perfectly usable for most applications. Furthermore, I tested the wireless access point using the 5GHz radio band (80MHz – the maximum channel bandwidth available) and the upstream throughput was 774Mbps at close range, 656Mbps at around 15 feet and a decrease to 435Mbps at 30 feet.

The EnGenius ECW230S allows you to access a very basic web-based configuration utility by entering the IP address of the AP into a browser of your choice, but this is a Cloud-managed access point, so you’ll get far more by adopting the device to the EnGenius Cloud platform. The point of all Cloud platforms is to allow an easy management for more than a single access point, Ethernet switch or gateway, as well as a quick configuration deployment to one device, a group of devices or all at the same time.

So, the ECW230S wireless access point will work great along with other EnGenius products. Of course, GUI is feature-packed, so I will mention a few: there’s the Captive Portal with the Splash Page (as well as various Authentication types, including by voucher or RADIUS), in-depth radio settings and more. But the stars of the show are the AirGuard and the advanced Diagnostic Tools. To get a brief idea about what to expect, well, you get to see the user activity in real-time (Live Clients) and you can also check for interference – the type of interference, also in real-time.

The AirGuard is also incredibly useful for detecting Rogue access points, as well as RF Jamming, Malicious Attacks and more.

4. Ubiquiti U6-LR Wi-Fi 6 Access Point

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The Ubiquiti U6-LR is currently, one of the best WiFi 6 access points that’s still limited by a Gigabit connection from the new WiFi 6 series. And this shows that Ubiquiti didn’t really care to compete with the other brands yet (the WAX650S has a 5GbE port) and focused more towards making a smooth and fairly inexpensive transition for the SMBs and enterprise clients towards the newer technology without a radical change in the infrastructure.

Whether it was the right choice or not is up to the customers, but the truth is that the U6-LR is a very capable wireless access point, more than able to hold its ground against its main competitors, even if it’s much cheaper. Then again, we’re not going to ignore the phenomenal advancements that EnGenius did in terms of security with its ECW230S and ECW220S.
While Ubiquiti made the nanoHD much more compact than the UAP-AC-PRO, this isn’t really a trend that the manufacturer followed, so the Ubiquiti U6-LR is again on the larger side, measuring 8.66 x 1.89 inches.

But the look is pretty much the same as the other APs, so the case has that saucer shape, it’s covered by a white matte finish and at the top, there is a narrow canal that circles around to let the LED to shine through.

The LED is bright and it has the same functions as on the nanoHD: white means that the access point is not yet paired, solid blue means that the AP is added to the network and flashing blue means that the device is searching for the uplink. The plastic case on the UAP-AC-PRO was completely sealed, allowing the user to mount it outdoors and it seems that the U6-LR is built in a similar manner, being IP54-rated. So yes, you can mount the Ubiquiti U6-LR outdoors, but I would avoid putting it into the open since it can’t really compare to the properly rugged access points available on the market.

There are no ventilation cut-outs anywhere on the case of the U6-LR, so water and dust cannot enter the enclosure. Despite that, the wireless access point does not seem to get hot, unlike its predecessors (the UAP-AC-PRO). One design choice that I’m not really fond of is the removal of the secondary LAN port which means that on the bottom of the Ubiquiti U6-LR, you only get a Reset button and a Gigabit PoE+ Ethernet port (802.3af).

Considering that Ubiquiti didn’t give any option to power up the device using a power cable, you either have to use a PoE switch (you can read here a list of the best Ethernet switches on the market) or a PoE adapter. All Ubiquiti wireless access points make use of the UniFi Controller software in order to undergo any configuration changes to the device and to the network. The UniFi has been long regarded as the best controller for SMB equipment and it has created a blueprint which has been followed by many other manufacturers (TP-Link is replicating the experience very well with the Omada controller).

As a quick overview (you can read more by checking out the dedicated review), the interface has a left vertical menu, with the first option being the Dashboard. Here, you can see a graphical representation of the download and upload latency / throughput, the number of devices on the 2.4 and 5Ghz channels, the number of devices, clients and the Deep Packet Inspection. Then, there’s the Map, where you can view or create a graphical topology of your network and the Devices which display a list of all the UniFi devices discovered by the Controller.

Further down, you can see the Clients which display a list of the network clients and allows you to configure them, the Statistics (number of Clients, the Top Access points, a Quick Look over the most active AP and client, as well as Recent Activities) and Insights. I have tested the Ubiquiti U6-LR using a couple of computers, one as the server and the other as the client (I have actually used three different clients, one equipped with an AX200 WiFi 6 adapter, one with an Intel 8265 WiFi 5 adapter and the last was a smartphone, a Pixel 2 XL).

As you can see, from the client to the server, I saw an average of 888 Mbps at 5 feet on the 5GHz network using the 160MHz channel bandwidth and 757Mbps on the 80MHz mode. Using the Intel 8265 client, the throughput at 5 feet was considerably lower at 661 Mbps (80MHz), with the Pixel 2 XL offered a maximum of 375Mbps. At 30 feet, I saw an average speed of 377Mbps using the client equipped with the AX200 client device (on 5GHz, at 160MHz) and an average of 314Mbps using the 80MHz channel bandwidth.

Using the Intel 8265 adapter, the throughput was very similar, scoring an average of 311Mbps, while the Pixel 2 XL couldn’t really catch up, offering only up to 185Mbps. I have tested the Ubiquiti U6-LR a lot more in depth in the dedicated article, where you can also see the signal strength, the long-term speed fluctuations and the downstream performance.

5. Meraki Go GR12 Wireless Access Point Review

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Ubiquiti has been the default manufacturer of SMB-suitable networking devices to offer an accessible alternative to the enterprise-level products, but Cisco didn’t want to miss out on such an important growing market, so it has made available a few new wireless access points (WiFi 6) to compete with the existing players.

But do know that the Meraki Go series, despite being a branch under Cisco, does focus a lot more on user-friendliness and simplicity. Also, other brands such as EnGenius, Ubiquiti, TP-Link and Zyxel do offer Cloud-based controllers which can handle multiple types of devices. But the Meraki Go line is not yet as diverse, so only the APs can be managed and configured using a Cloud application app.

In terms of design, the Meraki Go GR12 follows a minimalist look and it’s one of the few in this list that isn’t a ceiling-mount type.

Indeed, the wireless access point can be mounted on the wall thanks to its dedicated mounting holes or you can just leave the device on the desk since it does have some silicone feet to keep it in place. The case is made of plastic and it’s covered by a white matte finish, and the device is also fairly compact, measuring 7.95 x 5.55 x 1.02 inches. Yes, it’s a rectangular case, so it didn’t follow the common saucer shape.

I suppose it could have added a few LEDs for the status, but the developers have decided that the single LED approach is the better one. When it’s orange, there are issues with the hardware and, when the LED becomes blue, then it has access to the Internet, as well as some connected client devices. Now let’s talk a bit about the heat management. The case of the wireless access point is made of plastic, but the manufacturer has included some metallic pieces inside to dissipate the heat.

I used a thermal camera to check out the temperature and it showed that the Meraki Go GR12 doesn’t get hotter than the average WiFi 6 AP.
Moving to the bottom of the Meraki Go GR12, we see an info label and next to it, the manufacturer has dedicated an area for the ports: there’s a Power port, followed by a Gigabit Ethernet port (802.3af PoE) and a small recessed Reset button (to return the device to factory default settings).

I have also opened the device to see the main components and the wireless access point uses a quad-core 1GHz Qualcomm IPQ6010 chipset, has 1GB of RAM, 256MB of storage and uses the Qualcomm QCA8081 as the switch chip.

I have mentioned that the Meraki Go GR12 uses an application for monitoring and configuration purposes, but I haven’t mentioned anything about a web-based interface. And there is one available, well, kind of because the layout and the settings are pretty much identical to the mobile app. And yes, both rely on the Cloud to gain access to the interface. The app will show a healthy amount of status information and you can also configure the WiFi networks, although not that many advanced options are available (there is support for WPA3).

I saw that the app would also allow me to set up a Landing page (useful for hotels, hospitals and airports) and, despite the seemingly simplicity, it’s still necessary to adjust the default settings if you want the client devices to communicate between each other. Now let’s have a look at the wireless performance of the Meraki Go GR12.

Since it has a single Ethernet port, I had to rely on a PoE switch (I chose the Zyxel XS1930 multi-Gigabit PoE++ switch) and, after creating two SSIDs, one for the 2.4GHz and the other for the 5GHz connection, I used multiple WiFi clients (both WiFi 5 and WiFi 6) to test the throughput.

That being said, first, I connected the WiFi 6 client to the 2.4GHz WiFi network and, from the client to the server, I measured an average of 198Mbps at 5 feet and an average of 153Mbps at 30 feet; next, from the server to the client, I measured around 172Mbps at 5 feet and an average of 108Mbps at 30 feet.

Afterwards, I connected the WiFi 6 client device to the 5GHz WiFi network and, from the client to the server, I measured an average of 791 Mbps at 5 feet, while at 45 feet, the speed decreased to 110 Mbps. From the server to the client, at 5 feet, I got around 438 Mbps and, at 30 feet, I measured an average of 129Mbps.

6. Linksys LAPAC1750C WAP

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The Linksys LAPAC1750C is part of the new wireless access points that support the Cloud controller out-of-the-box, but besides this new software, the device is still identical (in terms of hardware) to the five year old LAPAC1750. Despite that, the LAPAC1750C is still suitable for today’s exigence (they rarely change that much in this market), so, it still respects the design trend of compact circular or hexagonal-shaped devices that can be easily positioned anywhere (even on the ceiling). The case of the LAPAC1750C is basically identical to any other from the LAPAC series, so we’re dealing with a hexagonal shape, but not with sharp angles, adopting soft, rounded corners instead (everything covered by a white matte finish). On the top you can find the Linksys logo, along with the model and a small bar for the LED lights just underneath. There’s also a narrow canal surrounding the top of the device and from this place, the case flows from the narrower top side towards a larger footprint.

When compared to the likes of Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO or even the Zyxel NWA1123-AC HD, the LAPAC1750C is among the largest I have tested so far, measuring 9.57 x 9.33 x 1.72 inches but it does weigh a bit less than the Zyxel AP (1.12 lbs). The LAPAC1750C is meant to be positioned on the wall or on the ceiling, as it comes with the whole kit for mounting (including a drill layout template), but, if you decide to keep it horizontally on a desk, there are four small round silicone feet that should ensure a reasonable level of stability.

Turn the wireless access point upside down and you’ll be greeted by lots of punctured holes which ensure a proper airflow along with a carved-in area where you can find the ports and connections: there’s a Power port (only use the adapter that came with your AP), a single Ethernet Gigabit port (PoE+) and a red Reset button.
The LED light from the top of the case will glow a solid green if the system is normal and no wireless client is connected (it will blink when the device is booting). The LED indicator will also blink a blue light if there is a firmware upgrade in progress and will be solid blue if at least one wireless client is connected; lastly, the LED indicator will be solid red if the booting process has failed or the firmware update was unsuccessful.
Note: While some other wireless access points come with a PoE injector, Linksys has decided to not include one in the package.

Generally, the access points focus on different things than routers (like multiple SSIDs with multiple VLANs), so it won’t come as a surprise that the LAPAC1750C may not outshine a AC1750 router in terms of wireless performance, even though the access point itself is branded as AC1750. Despite that, the LAPAC1750C Pro is a worthy performer and the test results are really good.
To test the wireless performance, I took two computers, one as a client (ASUS PCE-AC88), the other as a server and, first, I connected them to the 2.4Ghz radio band. This way, from the client to the server, the LAPAC1750C reached an average of 133 Mbps at close range (5 feet) and it slowly decreased to 120 Mbps at 30 feet. From the server to the client, I measured and average throughput of 104.9 Mbps (at 5 feet) and afterwards, I got 94.2 Mbps at 30 feet.

After I connected the computers to the 5GHz network, things were a lot better. At close range, from the client to the server, I measured an average speed of 564 Mbps and then, the speed decreased to 243 at 30 feet. From the server to the client, the access point managed to deliver an average of 302 Mbps and around 185 Mbps at 30 feet.
In terms of wireless performance enhancing features, the LAPAC1750C is quite bare-bones, lacking the MU-MIMO technology which has the ability to serve multiple clients at the same time, instead of letting them compete for the bandwidth, but it does come with support for the 802.11k Roaming technology which negates the need for re-authentication every time the client roams to a new node (Fast Basic Service Set Transition).

The reason of existence of the LAPAC1750C is the centralized management system which allows the creation of access points clusters that can then be managed by a single controller. The Linksys Cloud Controller, as its name suggests, is Cloud-focused, but the manufacturer has made it free for 5 years – you can still use the LAPAC1750C in the offline mode, where you simply enter the IP address of the device and do the necessary configurations. To access the Cloud controller, you’ll need a Linksys account and to simply pair the AP to the software (the process is very simple and painless). Some of the main features that the controller offers are VLAN tagging, Bandwidth Limit, Splash Page (offers a very comprehensive way of creating a splash page: you can modify the styles, the login instructions, the terms of use policy, the authentication type (password-only at this time) and more), Client Isolation, 802.11k and some Tools (which includes a Ping Tool and the Rogue Access Point Detection).

The local web-based utility will only work for one access point at a time (while the controller allows for a mass deployment of APs with fast an easy monitoring and configuration process), but it does have some additional features, such as WDS, Workgroup Bridge, SSID Isolation and RADIUS support for the Splash Page. I do expect that Linksys will make the Controller a more complete solution and I do hope that more types of devices are underway to be added under a single software.

What should you take into account before choosing a wireless access point?

Wireless Performance and Range
Obviously, the most important aspects of a wireless access point is the downlink and uplink throughput and how far can the signal reach. For example, if you use the 2.4GHz radio band, chances are that the signal will go for a long way, but the speed won’t be strong, while if using the 5GHz radio band, the speed will be greatly improved, but don’t expect huge distances to be covered.
Also, you need to take into account the interferences, the number of clients, the surface that needs to be covered and if you need more than a single access point.

The Web Interface/App
This is also a very important aspect, because you need to be able to configure and, if needed control a large network. Ideally, a good interface is easy to navigate, the settings are clear and intuitive and the AP should have as many features as possible for you to fiddle with.
Also, you need to check out whether you can access the interface through an Internet browser or you need to use an app (or both) and if the software allows you to remotely control the network.

Price
Lastly, we have the price to worry about, because you need to know where you stand based on your budget. Usually, the consumer-type access points are cheaper, but they lack a lot of the features of an enterprise-level AP.
You should also keep in mind that some popular products can be overpriced (because of their popularity) and that there could be some rare gems from yet-unknown or rising networking manufacturers that could deliver the same experience at a lower price.

What features should you look for in wireless access points?

PoE
The Power over Internet is quite a simple concept (but extremely important) that allows your access point to receive power through a twisted pair Ethernet cabling (so you get both electrical power and data, using a single cable).
Why is it useful? Many organizations like to place the wireless access points on the ceiling in order to help the wireless clients achieve the best possible range, but they have to rely on extension cords (which have an ugly appearance and require a qualified electrician to install them).
That’s why it’s better to use the PoE system, as you can install it yourself and it protects you devices from underpowering or overload. Some of the access points on the market have a PoE injector included in the package, while other do not (you will have to buy it separately), so be sure to check it out before purchasing, if this is a mandatory feature for your network.

Concurrent dual band
You may be surprised that some access points call themselves dual band, but, despite expectancies, it allows you to choose only one band at a time. A good example is the Linksys WAP300N, which has both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz radio bands, but you can only use one or the other.

Load-Balancing
I’ve touched the subject of load-balancing when I talked about the more popular dual-band routers on the market and the importance of this feature was clear for any business owner that values a stable network. Is this function also relevant for wireless access points? Absolutely yes.
First of all you need to understand that the load-balancing feature was created to be used with more than one access point. This is because its role is to diminish the network congestion by spreading the sessions among the existing APs in such a way that they share the client load.
So, if you have a large number of clients in a smaller space, instead of overloading a single access point, the load balancing spreads all the connected clients over all the APs, therefore there will be less interruptions and more bandwidth available.

The Man in the Middle (Defence against rogue access points)
A rogue access point is an unauthorized WAP installed (usually with malicious intent) on a secure network. Therefore, the network becomes vulnerable to different types of attacks and can be accessed either from inside the facility or remotely (the more common occurrence).
That is why it is very important that the access point to have a reliable wireless intrusion detection system which audits all the APs on the network on a regular basis to see if they are on the managed list and if they’re connected to the secured network or not.

Beamforming
The Beamforming technology allows your access point to focus the signal towards each client and to concentrate the data transmission towards a specific target, instead of broadcasting it all over the room, therefore minimizing the data waste.
If a few years ago this technology was optional and exotic, nowadays, almost all devices have this feature implemented (still, make sure to check before the purchase). Also, you need to know that every major manufacturer will have its own way of using this technology and it may have a different name and different performance, but the functionality should remain basically the same.

Mesh Networking Support
The mesh network support is one of the most important features to look for when buying an access point because it allows you to add other APs and create a network where all the nodes (APs) cooperate with each other when distributing the data.
An interesting characteristic of a mesh network is that the data is propagated along a path and it travels from one node to the other until it reaches its destination. This way, it has to find the best road and, if needed to reconfigure itself in case of broken paths (using self-healing algorithms).
It also allows for an interrupted experience when travelling into a large building, by automatically switching from AP to AP so you won’t notice any disconnects.

802.11n or 802.11ac?

Future-wise, an investment into Access points that feature the AC standard should be the better choice. If you want to create a network using APs compatible with the 802.11n standard, you don’t have to worry, because, if needed you can replace them in time and the N-access points and AC-access points are compatible with each other and work great with clients of both breeds.
Now, if you are curious about the technical differences between the two standards, let’s just say that the 802.11ac standard delivers up to 3 times faster speeds and, while a N-access point can handle no more than 30-35 clients in order to maintain a reasonable bandwidth for all, an AC-access point has no such limitations.
Lastly, the price could make a difference, because, as expected, the AC technology is way more expensive than the N technology.

Mark B

Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.

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