Review on EnGenius Technologies EAP1300 Wi-Fi 5: Quad-Core Processors, MU-MIMO, High Powered 23dBm, GigaE Port | Indoor Wireless Access Point by Micheal Wright

After reading all the positive reviews I decided to give it a try hoping to increase my radio range. My current Cisco AP covers the house just fine, but there is a dead zone outside that I want to cover. Unfortunately, this access point did not keep what it promised. Attitude. Mine actually came with DHCP which worked out of the box. The installation guide says that when you first set up the access point you need to set the PC to a static IP address, so I figured it came in DHCP client mode. Area. It is said to be 26 dBm, but with the latest firmware it only increases to 23 dBm. Ultimately, my real-world testing showed it to have slightly less range than the Cisco WAP 581, so my dead zone outside the home is still dead. So far, Asus home routers have had better range than anything I've tested. This is also visible in the FCC tests as Asus typically puts out 990mW per transmission compared to everyone else who is under 500mW. Reference: EAP1300EXT (FCC ID: A8J-EAP1300) 2.412-2.462GHz - 288mW 5.18-5.24GHz - 273mW 5.755-5.825GHz - 320mW RP-AC1900 (FCC ID: MSQ-RTACHC00) 2.412-2.462 GHz - 5.93 mW 5.24 GHz - 766 mW 5.745 - 5.825 GHz - 993 mW (Your client has enough power to transmit back or the access point has enough sensitivity). You may also notice that EnGenius didn't advertise the EXT model separately, so they either cheated or it doesn't have a significant change in wireless performance. Particularities. This is a typical consumer access point. There are no fancy ACLs (MAC address filtering only) and not many WiFi settings. No rogue hotspot detection or anything like that. The latest firmware supports WPA3, so that's a plus. Perfomance. Can't really comment on that as I only have about 50 clients and have never had a problem with consumer routers. After all, the price of this access point corresponds to that of a typical home router from NetGear. Asus/Linksys/tp-link/etc so I'm not entirely sure why you should buy this combo and not a router and access point combo considering they are just as good if not worse (smaller radius actions ) works and only provides wireless communication. Maybe half price. But $100 is way too much for a consumer hotspot.