EnGenius EWS357AP WiFi 6 AX1800 2x2 Gigabit Wireless Access Point with 1Gbps Port, OFDMA, MU-MIMO, PoE+, WPA3, 1GB RAM, License-Free Management Tools (Power Adapter Not Included)

I bought three of these along with a matching switch with built in controller I will likely have to replace in the future because these access points are capable of more than the 1G ports on the only reasonably priced switch that powers these.They are fast, as in hitting speeds between wired Realtek and wired Intel NICs! Over 900Mbit's in perf. The coverage is remarkable, even on the back side of the unit you get decent speeds.Now the bad, not sure if i's these units specifically OR endemic to 802.11ax but these access points don't like Apple Macs with the 802.11ac wave 1 adapters. they are constantly dropping and reauthorizing. This isn't happening with Apple iOS devices or seem to happen with cheap IoT devices. I've found no solution to this, though disabling fast roaming seems to have helped some.

Covers 2500 Sq ft of traditionally framed office space, single floor. Handles at least 120 devices including guest access. No one complains of coverage or speed anymore. POE deployment was a snap. I have one minor complaint and that is the lights (there probably is something in the firmware to control this, I honestly haven't looked). Anyway the lights look like a miniature Christmas light display, with Red, Green and Blue. It was easier to get a small piece of white/cream colored tape and cover them as this AP is deployed int he central hub of the building.

I can strongly recommend this for a technical audience. If you know what a spanning tree is, the difference between a router and a switch, and how to configure a static Windows/MacOS/Linux network interface, why an AP might wish to convert multicast to unicast, then this is a product for you. If not, expect a learning curve.I got the EnG 30W PoE injector with this. Simply plug in the laptop (or computer) into the PoE LAN port, the AP into the PoE port, configure the ethernet interface to 192.168.1.10/24 and connect a browser to 192.168.1.1. No internet access needed; fully configurable in isolation. Go through the settings; Basic for LAN setup (you want the AP to use DHCP to get an address for its management interface; it's still a switch however). Switch to Wifi and set up the dual radios, 2GHz and 5GHz. Enable AX. Enable beam steering (yes!) if you want. Enable spanning trees. And of course change the admin password. Hit all the saves and apply buttons. Watch it generate Linux files (it will show you Linux config diffs!) and restart services. Unplug the ethernet from your laptop, plug into LAN and done. Just works. Then go find its DHCP lease on your DHCP server (for the management interface) if you want to access it again. I will probably give it a static address on my 10 net outside the DHCP range.It's an EXCELLENT product for a technical user. Straight to it, no marketing mumbo-jumbo. And for a $130 with the PoE injector added. That's a good price IMO. Assuming it's reliable it'll be one of those infrastructure piece that just works until it's retired because it's technically obsolete rather than fraught with an endless parade of problems (Netgear, looking at you here).They do seem to also offer integration with more IT-friendly management platforms/tools, since obviously if you have 20 APs in a building you can't realistically manage them using a laptop and ethernet cable. But for us techies, ethernet and a browser is just right.It can sit on a surface like a shelf when used with a tablet stand. I attached an image where it's on an Amazon Basics tablet holder (the Amazon part is B006ZT4VA0; go to any product listing and paste it into the URL in lieu of the one you're looking at).

I've had this access point up and running for a couple months now and I finally think I'm comfortable writing a review for it. The headline sums it up pretty well... it's a good access point, but it's not great.It will pass many of the standard metrics people are concerned about when it comes to Wi-Fi, like speed and range, well enough. This is actually my second Wifi 6 (802.11ax) device. This one doesn't perform quite as well, or have quite the same range, but it's within 90% of the other most of the time. Sustained speeds (on 5Ghz) in excess of 600Mbps, between two 11ax devices, is "typical" for the Engenius... With occasional spikes higher and lower depending on other factors.However, it's some of the things you may not frequently think of, where this AP loses a star. These include:Latency is higher with this device than with other access points. A ping to my router is double/triple (from sub 1ms with another AP to 2 to 3ms with this one) my other access point, with no other changes to network configuration. My instinct says this is probably caused by underpowered hardware, but the problem doesn't seem to get worse as the load increases, so that may not be the case. While an additional 2ms of ping isn't going to cause much harm for most applications, it bothers me knowing it's not as good as it could be.Compatibility with older devices is poor. We all have one or two devices that don't have a good upgrade path. In my case, it was a MyQ garage door opener. While the device isn't that old, it is a very basic 801.11n implementation. While it has connected to other 11ax access points, it will NOT connect to this one. I attempted everything from disabling WPA3 and AX support on the 2.4 band, to setting a completely unsecured secondary network with all but the most basic features disabled. No joy. An older laptop and a Surface 3 both refused to connect with the device in WPA2/WPA3 hybrid mode, where other WPA2-only devices connected without issue. The other 11ax AP I've used was also in WPA2/WPA3 hybrid mode... and these devices all worked fine.The user interface, while revealing a decent amount of control/options, is incredibly slow. This was originally what led to my assumption above that the device was using underpowered hardware, but the performance of the web UI is so inconsistent that I believe it has more to do with poor design (or extremely low prioritization) than with the actual performance of the hardware.Overall, this is a pretty decent buy for the $100 price point. If all of your clients are relatively new (802.11ac or newer) you'll like be very satisfied. But if you have older devices, (or recent devices, made poorly, by a garage door opener manufacturer) you may have some frustration.

Switching my home from a mesh system to several access ports has made the Wi-Fi connection blazing faster in my house. Engenius access ports are often used in businesses, poor work great in homes as well. You may need a little bit of help with the AP’s settings.