MikroTikhAP ax2

Bought this as I work a lot as a technician for events. Recently took across Europe when running a show and this ran our whole network flawlessly all 3 days with a lot of continuous large data transfers, each port in use as well as an 8 port switch through this. Wireless worked great in the space.So much configuration but easy enough to use.

If you want to have full control over your connections, this device is for you. On the cons side is windows-only app, but I managed to run it in wine. Antenna signal strength is lower than the vodafone adsl router, but I bet vodafone breaches the power limits set by law.

As a network expert was skeptical - excellent device. Complex comfig options - which I like - great online docs and help if required.

I grabbed this intending it to be a secondary access point for WiFi, but it ended up being my primary after I had to swap this one in.It's plastic on the outside but is noticeably heavy, mainly due to the big block of a heatsink behind the vent on the side / top. It can be placed in a tower orientation or horizontally using its stand. Alternatively you can use the same stand to mount it to a wall.It lacks the USB port the hAP ac^2 had but that doesn't matter too much to me personally.Despite its tiny size and lack of external antennas, it provides whole home WiFi with reasonable speeds. Granted my home is a bit on the small side, but the living room ceiling is concrete. That stuff is hard to get a signal through. My previous AP could not manage it.As a result, a lot of things that didn't work before now work very well.The big upside and downside is that it runs RouterOS. Great for people who know how to configure it, but it's not user friendly in the slightest. You should have some networking knowledge before you get one of these, such as what bridges are and what specific frequency each WiFi channel uses. If you know what you're doing, that's great.Overall great router / AP, but you need knowledge of networking to configure it.

Poor Wi-Fi implementation, massive amount of free ram used up to run DSP code for wifi near 400 meg gone, no USB!, this is not and upgrade its ruff around the edges, most things you can put up with but no upgrade path from the ac2 with very messy wifi setup and no wifi bridge! or psudo bridge, so how do you use this on the road! this is a 64bit arm device (quad core) but near 400 Meg of the ram is used without my con-fig even in it, no USB (really bad design flaw) sorry this is has no upside. only + point nice cooling design and case. De featuring products with a limited WIFI feature set makes this one of the few products I would not recommend from there range.

Only 4 stars as the documentation was not as helpful as it could have been thats all.The "Quick start" guide did not mention the input port.Yes "Internet" and LAN should be obvious, but POE in/out put me off until I asked a Tech friend.I currently cannot find any more useful guides.

Immediate regret: once I connected it to my PoE+ switch, I soon realised this stuff does not support standard PoE, neither 802.3af nor 802.3at.Also, hAP ax2 only enhanced its wireless protocol from Wi-Fi 5 (ac) to Wi-Fi 6 (ax), but as a trade-off, they removed the USB port (which could be used for a Samba and LTE dongle). And since it’s running WifiWave2, it is not compatible with your existing infrastructure that runs legacy CAPsMAN and CAPs.