MikroTik MikroTik hAP ax2 US Version (C52iG-5HaxD2HaxD-TC-US)

I love the gear from Mikrotik. It isn't necessarily the easiest to setup, but it is very powerful. With multiple ethernet ports and wifi, it can support a large number of clients. When integrated with other Mikrotik gear, security is increased by having centralized control. I plan to purchase more of these.

It is small and capable. The 1st one 5g band worked less than 24 hr. The 2nd works great. Some learning curve for setting up 2nd ssid and time to get used to the interface. Recommend.

I love these routers. The haters don't get it because they don't understand networking. You can do just about anything with it. I have a WireGuard tunnel set up between two of them 2000 miles away and use queues to throttle my Internet addicted teenager when he needs to get off and read a book. Ease of setup? Maybe not, but if you want that, Quick Setup might work for you. This is a great home router for a network engineer on a budget. Excellent value for the money.

This isn’t your ordinary AP, it’s *much* more. If you’re a Network Geek or the Average Joe this will fit your purpose. I’ve used mine for two months now and love the capability this thing offers. It’s like a Swiss Army knife of WiFi & networking. That said if you just want a simple setup, choose one of the easy setup options. I can’t speak to range as I live in a one floor condo. However, I can anywhere between 700Mbps - 800Mbps thru my cable modem using a Mac or iPad with this thing. You can do VLANs (I have) and 802.3ad link aggregation (I have), bridging, routing, firewalling, etc. Like I said Swiss Army knife. Love it.

By chance, I ended up with two internet providers in my home. Having worked all my life in IT and with network gear, I know that load balancing between two WAN connections can be expensive. However, MikroTik offers a solution that even their cheaper versions can handle.When I saw the MikroTik WiFi 6 router priced under $100, I bought it without hesitation to replace my slow Netgear, which was incapable of managing two WAN connections. The hAP ax2 is designed to handle multiple connections, so I made the switch.The configuration process is by no means easy, but there is ample documentation and guides available online. After some effort, I successfully set up a configuration that load balances traffic equally between my two connections, allowing me to use both ISPs simultaneously.Overall, I am very pleased with the performance of the MikroTik hAP ax2. It has significantly improved my network's efficiency and reliability. If you're looking for an affordable router that can handle multiple WAN connections, I highly recommend this one. Just be prepared to invest some time in the setup process!

This Mikrotek router/gateway has been rock solid. It's fairly inexpensive but comes with way more configurability and options than your average prosumer router. The interface works well making this a great next step when you need more connectivity options than a basic big box WiFi router.

Hardware: Solid. 5 of 5 starsForward/Software: 0 of 5 starsMy goal was to use these in a mesh. One conflicted with another’s channel, software had it switch channels, but it conflicted with another’s channel (I bought 4 for my whole house). Even when manually assigning channels and signal strength per AP, garbage was the result (simply put).The good news, I finally tweeked it to work. Update comes through, everything went to crap (worse than a windows update).Want simple WiFi? Use ISPs WiFi router.Want mesh WiFi? Go TP-Link or other cost effective route. This company isn’t it.

I've been using MikroTik devices and RouterOS professionally and personally for almost 20 years. If you're a typical home user and not involved in IT, strongly consider if this is the right device for you. Even with the newer hardware and MikroTik's out-of-box defaults, RouterOS takes some advanced knowledge and skills.RouterOS v7 is a flash hog. After upgrading to the last few v7 releases, the disk space on my hAP ac2 got to less than 400kb free. After upgrading to v7.13 and transitioning to the "new" wifi package, I was left with even less free disk space, under 100kb. I could no longer run User Manager which I use for wifi and VPN authentication.The hAP ax2 is faster, has more RAM (1GB) and a larger flash (128MB). I can run User Manager once again without any issues.Moved my hAP ac2 to another part of the house as an access point only.The only thing I've noticed is that the ax2 wireless seems to have slightly weaker coverage than the ac2. I'm almost wondering if the metal heat-sink is a contributor to this. However, MikroTik did improve the antenna design a bit on the ax2 and it has slightly more gain (~2dB) than the ac2.Another pro for the ax2 is extended 5GHz band support. MikroTik received FCC approval for up to 5900MHz, so you can run a 5885MHz channel center frequency. However, some older 802.11n or 11ac devices may not support the 5850-5900 band. It would be really nice if they came out with another version of the ax2 with wifi6e (6GHz) band support, but I just don't see that happening, at least not any time soon.One last con for the ax2 is the lack of a USB port. MikroTik says this was *not* cost-cutting but a heat issue. A USB 3.0 controller can dissipate a decent amount of heat, so I can understand that. Unfortunately that means adding something like a LTE or 5G USB modem for a backup internet connection is not an option. I would argue that they should've done at least a USB 2.0 port which would be a lot less heat yet still fast enough at 480Mbps for a modem.