Xiaomi Mi Router AX1800 — An Inexpensive Router
Tags: Sales, Xiaomi, Review, Discount, 2020

Review Xiaomi Mi Router AX1800 — an inexpensive router with Wi-Fi 6 support. 2021

I have long wanted to take some kind of router with Wi-Fi 6 support — it was interesting to see what it gives. Expensive routers of this type have been on the market for about a year, but I was more interested in more affordable models. And then, just in May of this year, Xiaomi released the Mi Router AX1800 model with interesting characteristics and a very attractive price, and I decided to order it first.

What is offered to us in the Mi Router AX1800 ? Wi-Fi 6 support, dual frequency bands, two independent Qorvo amplifiers to increase coverage, OFDMA and IPv6 support, Mesh Networking support and up to 128 devices simultaneously! And this for the budget price — in my opinion, very interesting! Well, let’s see what it is and how it works.

Specifications

Processor: Qualcomm APQ6000 a separate module NPU

Operating System: MiWiFi, based on OpenWRT

Integrated memory 128 MB

RAM: 256 MB

Wireless: 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi: 2 × 2 (IEEE 802.11ax, 574 Mbps); 5 GHz Wi-Fi: 2 × 2 (IEEE 802.11ax, 1201 Mbps)

Wireless standards: IEEE 802.11a / b / g / n / ac / ax, IEEE 802.3 / 3u / 3ab

Antennas: 2 built-in dual-frequency

LEDs: 2 (System , Internet)

Ports: 3 10/100 / 1000M LAN ports (Auto MDI / MDIX) and 1 10/100 / 1000M WAN port (Auto MDI / MDIX)

MU-MIMO technology: MIMO-OFDM: BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM , 256QAM, 1024QAM

Additionally:OFDMA, Ipv6, MESH

How many devices support: up to 128 devices

Operating temperature range: 0 ~ 40 degrees

Dimensions: 222 × 97 × 97 mm

Prices:

Contents of delivery

Packaging.

The delivery set is very simple: a router, a power adapter (it is for Chinese sockets, but they will attach an adapter, whichever you choose), an RJ-45 network cable and instructions in Chinese.

Appearance and features

The router looks very unusual — a kind of black column that looks more like a speaker than a router. The antennas are hidden inside the case.

On the back there is a Reset button, a power adapter input, three Gigabit LAN ports and one Gigabit WAN port.

On the front panel of the router there are two LED indicators: power and Internet.

How will I test it all

To test a router with Wi-Fi 6, you will reasonably say, you need to have equipment that supports work with Wi-Fi 6, because otherwise — what’s the point?

Initially, I did not have a smartphone with Wi-Fi 6 support, so for testing I decided to purchase a Wi-Fi 6 adapter for my PC. Moreover, I have been planning to buy a stationary adapter for a long time: I used to use a USB adapter, but this is not very convenient.

I studied what is there on the market now and chose the TP-Link Archer TX3000E adapter . Not cheap, yes, but if your home PC doesn’t have a wired connection and you want top speed, you’ll have to fork out.

And after a while, I finally got an ASUS Zenfone 7 Pro smartphone: it supports Wi-Fi 802.11a / b / g / n / ac / 6, dual-band protocols.

Well, now this router can already be tested both on a PC and on a smartphone.

Initial setup

Initial configuration of the device can be carried out in two ways: in the browser through the router’s admin panel and using the Mi Wi-Fi mobile application, which is available for Android and iOS .

In this case, the router does not need to be directly connected to the computer: when it is turned on, it creates a wireless network Xiaomi_E250, when connected to which the configuration wizard will open in the browser.

The most convenient way to configure the router is via the Mi Wi-Fi app. Install the application, in the smartphone settings, connect to one of the two router networks (one 2.4 GHz, the other 5 GHz), launch Mi Wi-Fi and select the “Connect a new router” item.

The primary connection will be in Chinese with hieroglyphs, because this is the Chinese version, there is no global version yet, but don’t let that scare you: first you need to press the blue button from below, then in the second window set the network name and a password (everything is quite clear there and with hieroglyphs), then press the blue button below.

Everything, the initial setup is done, after that the interface language of the Mi Wi-Fi application will correspond to the language set in the smartphone system, and English is supported there.

The application in the smartphone allows you to fully configure the router and network parameters, but if you still want to administer it through the browser on your PC, then you need to install the RuMiWiFi extension for the Chrome browser , and then the admin interface will be in English.

Router administration

Before we start measuring the speed of the router, let’s see what administrative options for its administration are provided by the Mi Wi-Fi program (well, and, accordingly, the admin panel of the router through the browser).

The main page displays statistics on the current speeds, there is a section for connecting Mesh network devices (to create a single seamless Wi-Fi network), which is supported here, and connected home and guest devices are also shown.

You can perform various manipulations with each connected device: block access to the Internet (including on a schedule), create black and white lists of Internet addresses for it, and adjust the channel bandwidth (QoS).

Toolbar, firewall.

Settings. Wi-Fi, of course, can be spread over two bands so that these are different channels, or you can make one dual-band channel to automatically connect to the optimal range.

VPN settings.

LED and notification settings.

Router operation

First of all, we check the channel speed of the router itself, without reference to the speed of my Internet (because the router’s speed should be higher).

How do I do it? I connect the laptop to the router with a cable (there will be practically no loss of speed). I install OpenSpeedTest on my laptop and run it. The program displays the corresponding address in the local network, which can be used to check the speed.

I connect the smartphone to the router, then in the browser it remains to set the address issued by OpenSpeedTest, and run the built-in speed test there.

Listen, this is cool! It gave this average speed under 800 megabits, and during the test the speeds went up to gigabits. Gigabit wireless — that’s impressive!

By the way, the ASUS Zenfone 7 Pro smartphone shows which networks support Wi-Fi 6 and which network is connected at the moment.

Now we measure the speed of the Internet on my home wired network on a PC.

And now there is the speed of the wireless network through this router.

The download was even faster than the wired network.

I connect my smartphone to the router via a 5 GHz wireless network and measure the Internet speed.

Next to the router.

The opposite end of the third floor through two closed doors (about nine meters in a straight line from the router).

The opposite end, but one floor below (second floor) — while the 5 GHz network.

There is also a 2.4 GHz network (but it must be borne in mind that I have a house, the range is almost free).

“Bear’s Corner” on the second floor. That’s really good.

On the first floor from the third to finish off and should not, but still went to check.

Oddly enough, it finishes, and not bad. But this is me in the middle of the living room, approximately under the router (two floors).

Well, the farthest corner of the first floor is already on its way. But he also flutters somehow .;

Overall, I’m impressed.

Now test for streaming video playback.

A PC, laptop and tablet are connected to this router, all of them from YouTube show the same video in 4K 60 fps resolution.

No brakes, all devices show clearly.

Well, now let’s try to fill the channel properly.

First, I started downloading a large file in the torrent. The initial speed was 19–22 megabytes per second — the maximum for my Internet channel.

After that, on the same PC, I started downloading a large file from the cloud and on my laptop I started downloading a large file from the cloud.

After a few minutes, the torrent speed dropped to about 11–13 megabytes per second.

The file download speed on the same PC is about 15 megabytes (the channel was shared with the torrent).

File download speed on a laptop is about 22–23 megabytes per second.

This is noticeably faster than the Redmi AC2100 router that I recently tested.

Well, now we disconnect from this router (let me remind you that both computers were connected to it wirelessly) and connect the PC and laptop to my home network via a wire.

Torrent is almost the same speed.

The downloads on the same PC have increased markedly.

The load on the laptop decreased slightly.

The overall speed difference was somewhere around 5–6 megabytes per second, but we are comparing two wired and two wireless connections.

Observations at work and conclusions

During the testing period, the router worked clearly and stably: no disconnections from the Internet, no disconnections of Wi-Fi networks were recorded. Even under good loads, the router practically did not heat up.

Its shape is successful, it looks good, and most importantly, despite the fact that it does not bristle with antennas in all directions, because of which it is not even immediately possible to understand that this is a router in general, its signal level is perhaps the most powerful of all routers that I had, because it is enough to confidently finish off from the third floor to the first — this is the first time I’ve seen this.

Wireless speeds are also good. But, however, I will not argue that the support for Wi-Fi 6 here gave some kind of very noticeable increase in speed (my Keenetic’s real maximum speeds are very slightly lower), but in general, this router showed itself very worthy : both in coverage, and in speeds, and in channel distribution.

And that he also supports Mesh, it’s just great! At first I thought of buying two of these routers at once to check how they create a seamless network, but I already have two Redmi AX5s with Wi-Fi 6 and Mesh support on my test, so I’ll check them.

Well, and besides, if you need to make a Mesh network, then for this purpose I would still recommend using Keenetic routers, on which I have built my home network . It will not be more expensive (there is a good line of models — from simple and cheap ones that support Mesh networks to very cool ones), but you will get a lot more possibilities! All links is affliate.