Review: EnGenius ECW130 Indoor Wireless Access Point
EnGenius has always been good at coming up with easy to deploy and easy to manage WiFi, PoE, and networking products. And the EnGenius ECW130 Indoor Wireless Access Point certainly fits that bill. But what makes this a bit different is the price. I found it online for $214 CDN per access point which makes it more than affordable. And if you combine that with the features that I am about to talk about, this access point is a winner in my eyes. Let’s start with what this access point is capable of:
- Fast and reliable AP utilizing 4 spatial streams and MU-MIMO for any professional office
- Supports up to 1,733 Mbps in 5-GHz band & 800 Mbps in 2.4-GHz band
- 802.11ac wave 2 compatible with ax/ac/a/b/g/n client devices
One thing to note is that while there is an AC adapter plug as you will see in a moment, there’s no AC adapter in the box. Thus you have to be running Power over Ethernet or have an adapter like this one .
As for the physical aspects of the access point:
This is a ceiling mounted access point, and other than the LEDs at the top, there’s not a whole lot here to see. Speaking of being ceiling mounted, all the hardware you need to mount it is in the box.
You’ll note that there are two Ethernet ports. The main one is the one on the right which supports Power over Ethernet. The second one is to be used if you want to bring even more bandwidth to the access point. Or put another way, this access point supports link aggregation. You’ll also see the DC IN plug for power.
I should also mention the box that it came in. The box is made of recycled materials and has a pair of QR codes. One to allow you to download the mobile app, and one that gives you access to the quick start guide. That should help people to install this easily. Speaking of which, once you download the mobile app, it’s laughably easy to set up. As in scan a barcode on the back of the housing and spend a few minutes getting settings that work for you configured. You might also want to check for a firmware update to make sure that you’re good to go. And one other thing that I have to say is that the EnGenius cloud management is amazing. I’ve put their access points into a number of my commercial clients and being able to manage them from anywhere is a huge productivity boost as you can update firmware from your smart phone, or reboot a problematic access point from your living room while watching a Formula 1 race. And it doesn’t cost you anything to use.
So, how about the speed from this access point? Since it doesn’t do anything more than WiFi 5, I wasn’t expecting blazing fast speeds. But it doesn’t suck. Doing file copies, I registered an average of 100MB/sec at close range. When I move to the other end of my condo which I measured to be about 10 meters, the speed dropped to 75MB/sec. These are all respectable speeds and won’t cause complaints from anyone.
Now who would I recommend this access point for? A small business who needs WiFi, but doesn’t need the fastest WiFi because price matters more than speed to them. Alternatively a home user could put commercial grade WiFi into home at a low price point. And if either use case really needs WiFi 6, EnGenius will happily sell you their ECW230 which has everything that you just read about, but brings WiFi 6 to the party.
The ECW130 from EnGenius has a great price point and a lot of features packed in with a healthy amount of performance. This is an access point that’s worth your time to look at as long as you absolutely don’t need WiFi 6 in your life.
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