Review: EnGenius ECW336 WiFi 6E Access Point
Full disclosure: I was supposed to have this tested and reviewed about two weeks ago. But things beyond my control got in the way of that. Having said that, when I did get around to testing the EnGenius ECW333 WiFi 6E Access Point, I walked away impressed by what it could do. Let’s take a look at the access point:
It looks like every other EnGenius WiFi access point from the top with LED lights to indicate the stars at the top.
Underneath is a 12V DC connection for power, 5Gbps PoE LAN connection, and a reset hole. The 5Gbps LAN port is interesting as there’s not a whole lot of 5Gbps PoE switches out there. So this is clearly here for future proofing.
I am not sure if I simply never noticed this in previous access points from EnGenius that I’ve reviewed, or if this is new. But you get a Kensington lock slot as part of the deal.
The whole point of this access point is the 6Ghz band which is less crowded. Which as a result gives you more speed for your WiFi devices that can leverage this speed. But you get backwards compatibility as well. EnGenius claims that you get these speeds:
- 2.4GHz: 1148Mbps
- 5GHz: 2400Mbps
- 6GHz: 4800 Mbps
You can set this access point up and manage it via the EnGenius cloud, which I have to say is excellent as I can set it up for a client and teach them in a few minutes how to manage their network if they have EnGenius gear from end to end. Or I can manage it for them from anywhere as their cloud supports apps for your smart phone. If cloud management isn’t for you, doing it via a web browser works too. In either case, it’s trivially easy as anyone reading this will have this access point up and running in under 30 minutes. Finally for what it’s worth, if you want to give the public access to this without having to constantly hand out the WiFi password, it supports Facebook WiFi.
What I was really interested in was the speed. So I decided to test all three bands to see what sort of performance that I would get. So after assembling some devices that I could use to test each band, here’s my results:
- 2.4GHz Average at 20 feet line of sight: Downstream 270Mbps, Upstream 194Mbps
- 5GHz Average at 20 feet line of sight: Downstream 150Mbps, Upstream 44Mbps
- 6GHz Average at 20 feet line of sight: Downstream 665Mbps, Upstream 871Mbps
Now I am testing this in an insanely noisy environment where there are literally dozens of access points competing with each other. But having said that, these numbers are pretty impressive. Especially the 6Ghz numbers. If you plan out a deployment with a number these access points set up to do overlapping coverage of an office or even a large home, and it doesn’t have the number of access points that I have to deal with, I can easily see you getting much better numbers than what I have posted here. As far as I am concerned, this is a win.
The EnGenius ECW336 Access point is currently available at Amazon US for $895.00. If you want to set up a wireless network that is easy to roll out and has fast speed, and is future proof, this access point is very much looking at.
Leave a Reply