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  14 out of 14 members found this review helpful

  panagiotisdrakoulakos

  2022-07-29

  
  For the purpose it is intended, which is accessing wifi only for the room it is installed in and neighboring rooms with just one wall in between, it is excellent!
  The speeds on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz are excellent, and the Gigabit Ethernet is very helpful (assuming there is a Gigabit Switch on the other end of the cable, of course).
  One limitation it has is that it does not support channels above 48 on the 5GHz band.
  Specifically, it only operates on channels 36, 40, 44, and 48, without the ability to operate on DFS channels that go up to 136 like other 5GHz antennas. It also does not support Mesh, fast roaming, and generally lacks the capabilities that almost all other Tp-Link access points have for the Omada ecosystem. In simple terms, it is a very basic access point designed to transmit only in one room, and the only thing it offers is the convenience of being wall-mounted without bothering with cables, being dual channel, and providing the option for Ethernet cable like a regular RJ45 socket. Fortunately, it supports VLAN at least...

  The installation is very easy in a recessed standard plastic box on the wall, but if you have a double socket with a plastic frame (e.g. a socket right next to the Ethernet socket), they will not fit together as the external dimensions are somewhat large. It would be best to install it alone in a box a bit further away from the other sockets so as not to be bothersome. Otherwise, you would have to saw off the frame of the adjacent socket or come up with another solution like in the photo, which is likely to look bad. I should also note something that seemed very strange to me and unfortunately gave me a negative impression of TP-Link, which seems to have copied from UBNT or Apple:
  The two screws included in the package to screw the antenna onto the box are neither straight, nor Allen, nor Torx, nor Philips (crosshead), but triangular in shape! So if someone doesn't have the appropriate (and rare) screwdriver with a pyramid-shaped tip (or the appropriate width tester to come up with a solution), they won't be able to screw it in! I really don't understand why TP-Link decided to use triangular screws! Taking into account that the frame is much larger and does not fit next to any other socket next to it, it seems that they must really hate those who buy their products. Needless to say, I eventually bought normal screws from the market for a crosshead screwdriver and did the job.

  The installation/configuration was done together with a router, switch, and Omada controller from TP-LINK. The package does not include a POE power supply (48v), and this role was taken over by the switch with POE ports, and of course, all of this is on the necessary UPS. The configuration through Omada is very easy, and during their operation for the past three months, I never had to restart any of them (25 of them were installed in a hotel in combination with some external EAP225 V3 devices). I would buy them again not only for clients but also for my own use if they didn't have the following serious problem:
  2 out of 10 devices trying to connect to the hotel's WiFi from these antennas cannot do so (fortunately, they all work fine with the external EAP225).
  The Omada logs about 4000 errors per day with the message:
  "the specified Mac Address failed to connect to antenna No20 with SSID "Hotel" on channel 40 because WPA Authentication times out/failed. (1 time in a minute)
  Upon researching the above, I discovered that it is a firmware issue in some TP-LINK devices for years and they still haven't solved it!
  There are various "workarounds" to minimize the errors and allow someone to connect to the WiFi, such as changing the DTIM from 1 to 3, disabling fast roaming, changing the Beacon interval, etc. But in my case, none of them proved useful, not even resetting and reconfiguring the entire hotel from scratch without any unusual settings (for which you pay for Omada anyway) like AI Roaming, WPA3 support, etc.
  Firmware updates are released every 2-3 months, but there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
  Out of the affected devices, 70% are Apple and 30% are Android, and so far I haven't heard any complaints from laptops and Windows.

  Update: To restore TP-link's reliability (which has given countless reasons in the past), I would like to inform that the issue with mainly Apple devices' connection was not related to TP-link but to Apple devices themselves.
  In the latest AppleOS versions, Apple finally found the ambition and diligence to inform the device user about the reason why their device is not connecting to WiFi, and that reason was that it did not consider the WPA/WPA2 TKIP protocol (which TP-link obviously had set to "auto" for compatibility with old devices) as "secure," so the device itself decided not to connect at all.
  The ironic part is that in a WiFi without a password, the same device considered it "secure" and connected normally!
  Seems like they have the best stuff over at Apple!
  Since then, since the setting permanently changed from "auto" to AES, there hasn't been any issue with the device. Now, if someone with a 15-year-old mobile or laptop comes along, we'll see...

  Translated from Greek · Show original

  • Operational stability
  • Ease of installation
  • Speed
  • Range

  • Value for money

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