Has anyone compared the speeds of Huawei A2, Huawei AX3 and Huawei WS5200 as AP? I saw xiaofan’s speed test on WS5200 as AP (100 to 400Mbps subject to range).
When considering setting up a WiFi mesh system, apart from speed, how important is it for a model to have any of these specs – WiFi 6, quad-core, tri-band? If I have to compromise, which specs are non-negotiable?
Do not take my speed test data as the real performance of the router as I do not have a very good client and the router location may not be the best.
All my clients are 2*2 AC except one "fake" 3*3 USB AC1900 Adapter (TP-Link T9UH) which performs like a 2*2 AC client. The best phone client is iPhone X, it performs similar to the T9UH at close range. T9UH performs better in far range. My Huawei P20 and Nova 5T perform much worse than the iPhone X or 7+.
I will say the posted performance of AX3 Pro here is outstanding, with WiFi 6 clients like iPhone SE or Intel AX200.
Single router performance:
A3 Pro > A2 WS5800 > Q2 Pro > WS5200
If you want Mesh with wireless backhaul, I think tri-band is good to have. Only Huawei A2 WS5800 is tri-band. You can have one of the 5GHz band as the dedicated wireless backhaul.
Huawei Q2 Pro 3 pack (3 base) is another interesting option, because it combines power line and wireless backhaul. Huawei claims 1867Mbps link speed between two bases, (1000M PLC + 867Mbps 5GHz WiFi). However it is a dual band so the 5GHz band is not dedicated. Then the 1000M PLC is usually only 200Mbps in reality. So the benefit is more on the coverage and less on the speed.
Ref:
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/q2-pro-3pack/
I tend to think AX3 Pro (main) + AX3 Mesh will have the best price performance, the speed on the AX3 Mesh unit side may be lower due to no dedicated wireless band as the backhaul.
If you favor coverage over speed, Q2 Pro + 1 Satellite will be a good option. Satellite is limited to 200Mbs due to PLC backhaul.