ᐅ Wi-Fi Access Points – Which Ones to Choose?

Created on: 20 Jan 2020 07:07
G
Grantlhaua
Good morning everyone,

I completely forgot to plan for Wi-Fi access points, which is a bit annoying now. I need to retrofit something and am looking for the right access point to meet my needs.

I’ve read a lot about Ubiquiti access points, which would actually be quite good for my requirements since they support PoE (Power over Ethernet). However, what I don’t like is that I want to set up a nightly shutdown that I can also disable easily via an app when needed. Unfortunately, I can’t find this feature on Ubiquiti devices.

As alternatives, there are various Fritz!Box access points or the TP-Link Deco M4.

How have you solved this?

Best regards
N
ntsa86
21 Jan 2020 09:36
One more word about power consumption. I have two UAP-AC-PRO units and one CloudKey Gen1 running via PoE.

The power consumption for all of them is between 3.1W and 3.9W with nearly 20 active Wi-Fi devices.

Good luck!
A
apokolok
21 Jan 2020 12:43
@rick2018 Which devices actually use 4x4 MIMO?
To be honest, I believe the AC Lite is more than adequate for home use.
rick201821 Jan 2020 12:52
The Lite model also has a lower transmission speed (only half the speed on 5GHz) and doesn’t even have 3x3 MIMO. Many devices already use 3x3. My iPhone (11 Pro Max) has 4x4 MIMO. All newer devices will support this. Access points are not replaced every year anyway... The biggest advantage of the Lite was its range. However, this is limited outside the EU.
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apokolok
21 Jan 2020 13:02
rick2018 schrieb:

My iPhone (11 Pro Max) has 4x4 MIMO. All newer devices will support this.

It does have 4x4 MIMO, but only for LTE.
For Wi-Fi, it uses 2x2 MIMO.
Sure, in the long run that will change.
However, I think that a typical user won’t even notice the difference between a good 2.4 GHz network with 300 Mbps and a 5 GHz network with significantly higher bandwidth.
Is it still possible to increase the range on the Lite model simply by changing the region settings?
rick201821 Jan 2020 13:25
MacBook has 3x3
I’m not sure if switching is still possible. But I think some wireless channels were blocked then...
I wouldn’t buy a new access point with just about 900 Mbps on 5 GHz when around 1800 Mbps is the standard today. The MIMO feature is also important if you have multiple mobile devices.
If the lites are already available, I would install them and replace them at some point.
rick201821 Jan 2020 13:27
The average user doesn’t even understand the difference between 2.4 and 5 GHz. They are overwhelmed by Unifi anyway (channel management and other settings). They are just happy to simply plug in the router or the provider’s box.