Routers have basically become a product that every family needs to use, with the new round of "speed up and fee reduction" of the three major operators and the strong demand for remote office, online classes, live broadcasts, etc. in the past two years, many users have begun to consider replacing the router, of which the most popular star product is naturally WiFi 6 router. The router market in 2021 has not changed much compared with last year, but the continuous improvement of the product itself and the application of new technologies have intensified the competitive trend while improving the use experience, and the user's choice is also more abundant.
01, after the outbreak gradually stabilized, the price of entry-level routers rose slightly
We all know that 2020 is the outbreak period of WiFi 6, network equipment manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers have entered the market, and the increase in the number and promotion of WiFi 6 router products has made the concept of WiFi 6 deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. After a year of development, 2021 can be said to have truly entered the first year of WiFi 6 router popularity, according to ZDC statistics, in the first quarter of 2021, when netizens purchased wireless routers, the primary concern rate of WiFi 6 routers was as high as 51.09%, indicating that most users have the idea of upgrading WiFi 6 routers.
The WiFi 6 router market in 2021 has entered a relatively stable period, and the product lines of each company have not changed much, for example, this year's ASUS mid-range router has only updated the RT-AX68U and TUFF GAMING AX5400 two products, and the specifications are basically the same as the previous generation of products. Pulian, millet, Huawei and other domestic router brands of new products are also similar, in addition to Pulian updated several entry-level routers, other home in the sale of the main force is still last year's "outbreak" period launched products. From the end device point of view, the current new thousands of dollars of smart phones, notebooks, motherboards have supported WiFi 6, and a WiFi 6 wireless network card is more than 100 yuan, mobile devices to the desktop platform of the full line rolled out to stimulate the Market demand for WiFi 6 routers, after all, users do not have to consider the problem of device support when purchasing.
The products at the top of the sales list are basically the models of the 2020 model
It should be noted that this year, under the global "lack of core" crisis, routers are also facing shortages and price increases. In March this year, Broadcom announced that the delivery time of its communication chips has been extended to 50 weeks, and the price of chips has increased by 20%, MediaTek has raised the price of WiFi 6 chips by about 20% to 30% in this quarter, and Realtek also raised prices by 10% to 15% in October this year. The classic home all-gigabit router WDR5620 rose from 119 yuan in early July to 149 yuan, and the entry-level routers of other brands rose by more than 20%, but relative to the graphics card, the price of the router is still very "mild", and it has little impact on the small partners who really need it.
02. MESH routing and AC+AP networking fly together
With the popularity of smart home appliances and the Internet of Things, there are more and more wireless devices that need to be connected to the network, and they are all over the home, so the whole house WiFi coverage is necessary. At present, the whole house WiFi mainly has TWO schemes of MESH routing and AC+AP networking, and everyone is more familiar with the MESH router. After several years of development, the type and number of MESH routers have been relatively rich, and now the MESH routers are divided into independent and distributed from the perspective of deployment form, independent MESH routes are the same as traditional routers, but each route can be used as an independent MESH node according to user needs, and currently each router manufacturer has corresponding products, and most of the high-end domestic routers also support MESH networking.
Distributed MESH routers, as the name suggests, are composed of two or more MESH nodes, and users generally purchase and use them in the form of bundles. Distributed MESH routing has a more convenient networking process than ordinary routing, which can basically achieve "plug and play", and can get a good experience without complex tuning when using large apartments. Among the many Mesh technology sub-camps, we are more inclined to the Asus AiMesh camp, after years of precipitation, its successful iteration to AiMesh 2.0 and bring users a more stable and smooth network experience, networking is more convenient.
For example, asus Lingyao series of smart connected distributed routes have become the focus of people's attention when they first listed with their selling points of "small body and large coverage". We have evaluated the series of AX5400 this year, support AiMesh2.0 networking, wireless rate up to 4804Mbps, installation configuration is very simple, and provides a national free on-site installation service, after actual testing has a very good coverage effect and network experience, for ordinary consumers with whole house WiFi coverage needs, distributed MESH is a better choice.
Asus Lingyao AX6600 WiFi 6 Zhilian Distributed Routing supports tri-band full WiFi 6 technology
AC+AP solution was first mainly used in stations, large shopping malls, enterprises, hotels and other wireless terminal access to many places, stable performance but expensive, AC +AP solution is simply AC controller unified management of multiple wireless APs to achieve whole house WiFi coverage. In recent years, with the rapid development of WiFi technology, major manufacturers have launched AC+AP solutions for home use. Among them, there are many such cost-effective combinations as Fluorite whole house intelligent WiFi system, which is an ideal solution for the current large-scale whole house WiFi signal coverage, and the wireless roaming experience is not weaker than the MESH routing at the same price, and it is more beautiful to integrate into the home improvement environment. The limitation of the AC+AP solution is that it is necessary to plan the installation location and wiring of the AP in advance during the renovation, which is not as flexible as the MESH router, but it is indeed a major trend of home networking in the future.
Fluorite whole house intelligent WiFi system HAS APs with various types to meet different WiFi coverage needs
03, three gigabit ecology gradually become just needed
The three gigabit networks proposed by the three major operators last year have also entered the popularization stage. Three gigabit refers to "gigabit 5G + gigabit WiFi + gigabit broadband", using 5G mobile phones outside to enjoy fast and flexible 5G networks, relying on gigabit broadband at home to obtain the same high-speed Internet experience, to achieve "fixed and mobile at the same speed". Since the beginning of this year, many friends around the home broadband have been upgraded to gigabits, and now the largest dual-band AC1200 specification router on the market has been unable to play the full network rate of the existing broadband package. On the other hand, high-bandwidth applications such as augmented reality/virtual reality and ultra-high-definition video have accelerated into production and life, and Station B recently began to support 8K resolution video with a peak bitrate of 180Mbps, and it is imperative to upgrade a faster WiFi 6 router.
100 megabit routers are not enough to support 8K video playback
The three-gigabit network not only changes the user network environment, but also lays the foundation for cloud games, security monitoring, network social networking, smart wear and other applications, which not only conforms to the general trend of network development, but also relies on "package" services such as 5G tariffs, broadband, and mobile phones, which are favored by operators. Of course, it is not only broadband that has been upgraded, we are also very happy to see that this year's entry-level routers no longer have pseudo-gigabit routers such as Gigabit WAN and 100 Gigabit LAN ports, and high-end products have begun to be equipped with 2.5G network ports, completely lifting the gigabit network seal.
The ROG GT-AX6000 Radio Router is equipped with dual 2.5G ethernet ports and supports port aggregation
In addition to the network port rate upgrade, another welcome change in the router in 2021 is that from the entry to the high end, most new products have supported IPv6. IPv6 improves the forwarding efficiency of the router, with better security, and IPv6 has a larger address space, can reduce the NAT translation link, two devices with IPv6 addresses can be directly connected without server transit, truly realize the Internet of Everything, which is no less significant than the three gigabit network.
04, the ease of use of routers has been upgraded, and joint products have become new hotspots
It is worth noting that in the past two years, domestic routers have not only occupied an absolute advantage in sales, but also introduced many practical innovative functions for the actual installation/use of users. For example, remote scan code configuration, one-touch networking, blind insertion of network ports, automatic migration of broadband account passwords, and even the ability to share files for off-site networking, although these functions can not directly improve the performance of the router, but in terms of ease of use to give users great convenience, reduce the learning cost of users to upgrade the router.
Although the APP supporting different brands of routers has its own characteristics, the ASUS routing APP with firmware development experience in this regard is obviously more mature, not only has a convenient AiMesh networking wizard, but also has rich and practical additional functions, and users only need to use the APP to complete most of the settings. Of course, the built-in NetEase/Tencent game accelerator continues to be a major feature of ASUS Routing, and the function is delegated to many more entry-level products, allowing users to enjoy game acceleration services online, effectively improving the game experience.
Asus Routing's app and game acceleration features are quite mature
Not only that, the increasingly mature router market has also spawned many unique products that have opened up a different path in appearance and function. Now the co-brand culture has penetrated into the hardware circle, including routers. Asus RT-AX88U Gundam co-brand router is a typical representative of it, which integrates the animation IP elements well in the appearance of the router and the product UI design design, which is a powerful router with strong performance and a single product of faith sought after by fans.
The faith-filled RT-AX88U Gundam co-brand router supports 4×4 MU-MIMO, and 160MHz bandwidth
What is more interesting is that intelligent products developed on the basis of routers such as JD Cloud Wireless Treasure can provide enterprises with low-latency and more efficient high-quality cloud computing services with low latency and more efficient cloud computing services through the built-in edge computing capabilities of wireless wireless routers without affecting the user experience. At the same time, users can get the corresponding points according to the degree of contribution, and the points can be directly exchanged for Jingdou and E cards in the Jingdong Mall. In simple terms, it is to buy a router to ensure the stability of the network at home while sharing idle resources, surfing the Internet, "making money" two mistakes, interested users can pay attention to it.
JD Wireless Baoyun Router Luban 64G Enjoy Edition has built-in 512MB of storage and 64GB of storage
05. Summary: A new round of competition is ushered in in the steady update
If you look at it from the perspective of products, the router market in 2021 is stable in terms of update frequency and update range, and although the mainstream products of each family have been strengthened and upgraded, they are some routine upgrades. However, we also noticed that after three years of market development, users' acceptance of WiFi 6 routers has been quite popular, and in the context of gigabit broadband upgrades, even if the price of routers rises slightly, it will not fundamentally affect the user's willingness to upgrade. On the other hand, the additional functions of joint circle breaking and enhanced experience have become a hot spot for the development of new routers. It is believed that driven by the multiple needs of technology and smart home, home storage, etc., we will see a more diversified router market in 2022.