HUAWEI AX3 Pro Router Review (Topic)

Electronics manufacturers use cutting edge technology to market their products. The HUAWEI AX3 Pro router is equipped with support for the Wi-Fi 6 protocol. It also provides stable coverage and has a competitive price.

Advantages of the new standard

Before routers started working with Wi-Fi 6, the devices associated with them were lined up. The more there were, the longer the waiting time lasted. 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6 has reduced those gaps significantly with several technical innovations.

This is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). The resources at the access point are now distributed intelligently, which facilitates the simultaneous receipt and sending of data packets. This reduces latency between devices and improves overall network efficiency.

The standard is equipped with a higher order modulation and coding scheme - 1024-QAM. Its throughput is 35% higher than that of the previous model. The Target Wake Time functionality made the communication of devices with the HUAWEI AX3 Pro smart, since requests are executed strictly on a timer, which leads to an increase in the autonomy of the connected devices.

Another technology - BSS Coloring allows you to ignore data packets that are not yours.

More powerful antennas

HUAWEI AX3 Pro has two modifications: standard and advanced. Outwardly, they differ in colors. The basic one is sold only in white, while the advanced one can also be black.

Their technical equipment is different. The more powerful version is equipped with a quad-core chipset and four amplifiers. It has twice the RAM.

Outwardly, this modification looks futuristic.

It has chopped edges, four non-removable antennas (with a gain of 5 dBi each), in the upper part there is an NFC module and an "H" button for instantly connecting devices (WPS function).

On the back there are four Gigabit RJ45 connectors: one WAN and three LANs. There are no USB ports.

In most cases, routers are placed on horizontal surfaces, so wall mounts are not provided. The HUAWEI AX3 Pro antennas fold up for transport. They fit tightly to the body, which minimizes the risk of damage.

The antennas are equipped with MU-MIMO and Beamforming to correct the direction of the signal. This is very handy, since they are not rotatable, which does not allow physically adjusting the direction.

High speeds

The manufacturer claims that the HUAWEI AX3 Pro has a maximum data transfer rate of 2402 Mbps in the 5 GHz band, and 574 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band.

To confirm this information, the testers performed a series of experimental measurements under the following conditions.

1. The process was carried out in a residential brick building with reinforced concrete walls, with at least 25 unauthorized access points.

2. During the tests we used: HUAWEI P40 smartphones, Wi-Fi 6, 2x2 MIMO and Samsung Galaxy A80, Wi-Fi 5, 2x2 MIMO, two HP Omen 15-dc1069ur laptops, Wi -Fi 5, 2x2 MIMO, iPad Mini, Wi-Fi 4.

3. The utilities used were iperf3 (Windows), Magic iperf (Android) and HE.NET (iOS).

Data transmission was performed in ten streams with an interval of 2 seconds between packets. HP Omen was used as a server, which was connected to the router via Gigabit Ethernet.

The baud rate was measured twice. For the first time, two meters from the HUAWEI AX3 Pro and 16 meters, when there were two walls between the devices, the HUAWEI P40, which supports the Wi-Fi 6 standard, achieved 1 Gbps near the router and 440 Mbps away from it.

With a channel width of 80 MHz, the speeds dropped by about 20%. If you use 40 MHz, then they will be even lower. This is not surprising as bandwidth settings directly affect throughput.

We used the Speedtest application to test the speed of the Internet. The provider claims that the speed is 200 Mbps. Close to the HUAWEI AX3 Pro, it is about the same, but in difficult conditions (at a distance) it drops to 82 Mbps.

Configuration and interface

For initial configuration, use the AI Life application, or the web interface. This process is not difficult, it consists of five steps.

After accepting the license agreement, the Wi-Fi access point (SSID and password) is configured and the network mode is selected. Then the router needs to be rebooted, and then just click the "Next" button.

The web interface is very clear. It is completely in USA and has a clear structure. In addition to the usual functionality, such as VPN or IPTV, the developers have implemented several interesting options. It is difficult to get acquainted with them in one review due to the large amount of data.

Specifications

The HUAWEI AX3 Pro router is equipped with a Gigahome Hi5651T processor. It has 4 cores with a frequency of 1.4 GHz, 256 MB of RAM and 128 MB of internal memory. It has four antennas, connectors: RJ45 10/100/1000 BaseT, WAN x 1 RJ45 10/100/1000 BaseT, LAN x 3. The features of the model include the presence of Mesh technologies, MU-MIMO, Beamforming, NFC, WPA3, IPv6 , IPTV.

Summary

The use of the Wi-Fi 6 protocol in the HUAWEI AX3 Pro router proves once again that it is the next generation of wireless communication. With its help, higher data transfer rates are achieved than in analogs of past modifications.

However, this technology will come to the masses only after gadgets that will be able to support it appear. So far, this is the lot of flagship devices only.

The Topic of Article: HUAWEI AX3 Pro Router Review.
Author: Jake Pinkman