What will Redmi's flagship router look like? I believe that many friends who have used Redmi's K series models will be curious. And at the K50 esports edition launch on February 16, they brought us a Redmi esports router AX5400, which is known as the "flagship route of esports", so what is so special about its experience? Let's take a look.
As an e-sports router, this time the Redmi e-sports router AX5400 has come to a huge change in the appearance of the design, compared with the previous Redmi router generally simple style, it uses more complex lines, more facets, even if there is no power, can make people see its highlight of the "e-sports style".
After plugging in, the front of the Redmi AX5400 will also light up to show its connection status, it supports white, orange and blue status information display, where white often represents its connection status, while orange indicates that the configuration is complete but there is no parent network, and blue is the meaning of normal activation. In addition, it actually supports 16 million colors of display, which also means that it will be very "esports" style.
On the top surface of the router, we can see a cut-out area that is convenient for heat dissipation of the fuselage, and there is also a similar air inlet design on both sides, and in the middle of the open area, there is a "Redmi" logo to show that this is a product from the Redmi brand. In addition, there is actually a row of eight small lights below this logo, which can display the status of the router when configuring the route, which is also a small design that is convenient to configure.
▲Redmi G 2021
Having said what these esports-style looks like, let's look at its functional design. Behind the Redmi AX5400 there are four antennas, and there is a 2500 megabit WAN interface and 4 1000 megabit LAN interfaces, and the LAN interface on the far right is its main "esports dedicated line".
As for the right, the AX5400 also provides a MESH button and a reset button, which is also a convenient function button that is convenient for users to configure with one button.
Of the five network interfaces, the LAN1 interface on the left can also be set to align with the WAN interface, which is still convenient for configuration - although in general, the use of a 2500 megabyte WAN port can take advantage of high-speed bandwidth.
Of course, after all, the general home network bandwidth is also the gigabit level, for friends who have built a NAS at home, switching the 2.5G interface to the LAN interface, so as to achieve faster NAS transmission rates may also be a good choice.
▲It can be configured in the router management interface
If you have a dual broadband plan, or a friend who uses a bandwidth plan of more than 2500 megabytes, you can also consider using its dual WAN function, but considering that the average family does not use this function, I will not elaborate here.
In addition to the LAN port support and WAN port swapping, the Redmi AX5400 also supports the link aggregation function of lan2 and LAN3 interfaces, if the NAS device supports dual upstream, it can enjoy the aggregated 2G bandwidth for transmission, so that the efficiency of the home NAS is improved.
Connect the Internet cable and power supply, only need to be simple configuration, Redmi AX5400 can turn on the Wi-Fi 6 experience, by the way, it will turn on the dual-band integration, MU-MIMO and invigorating function by default, which is a more convenient configuration, generally do not need to adjust additionally; and Wi-Fi 5 compatibility mode will be turned off by default, friends with needs can consider adjusting it themselves.
I connected it to the 500M Unicom broadband in my home for some simple rate testing, using the Xiaomi Mi 12 to test its speed. The screenshot below, from left to right, is its test score in three scenarios: extremely close, middle distance separated by a wall, and long distance separated by one floor.
▲From left to right, they are extremely close, medium and long distances
It can be seen that its rate performance at very close distances is still very good, the downlink rate reaches 618Mbps, which means that it can easily run the upper limit of 500M, and even run the margin given by the operator to run full; and at medium distance and long distance, its performance is also good, and it can run 211Mbps and 42.3 Mbps downlink rates respectively.
In this regard, for home users, even if it is a slightly larger apartment, the use of the AX5400 can basically cover the use of the whole family; but if it is a duplex or a more blocking and interference structure, it is more appropriate to buy a router for mesh networking.
Speaking of mesh functions, as mentioned earlier, Redmi AX5400 supports MESH functions, which is consistent with other Xiaomi or Redmi route meshes, and only requires simple steps to complete networking, which is also quite convenient.
As for other features, although the Redmi AX5400's web setup interface is as simple as ever, for users who like toss routers, such as DDNS's intranet penetration service, it can be quickly configured in the web interface. This is really good news for me, who is building a NAS that can be accessed from the Internet.
If you want to experience more features, it is more convenient and faster to use the Xiaomi WiFi app to set up, and there are also common functions such as speed measurement, Internet protection, smart speed limiting, Wi-Fi optimization and game acceleration.
Let's talk about the concept of "routing mobile team" created by Xiaomi routers. What we received this time is not only the router itself, but also a huge peripheral gift box, which contains a lot of peripheral products, including notebooks, custom keycaps, badges, mouse pads, masks and badge cases.
That's why the AX5400 we received had an extra set of cases with her image on the exterior packaging, which is not available on the standard version.
In addition to the protagonist AX5400, which is somewhat similar to the image of the D.Va, there are other Xiaomi router product images on these peripheral products, and it can be seen that Xiaomi has made a lot of efforts in order to promote its own router products. Perhaps in the future, there will be other router members who will join this cartoon image, and even launch more trendy play products according to this.
Finally, let's summarize the Redmi AX5400 that we started this time. Frankly speaking, when I first saw the configuration and price, I was a little surprised, after all, if you roughly search for "AX5400" on the e-commerce platform, you will find that this time Redmi did not show too obvious cost-effective advantages, even if it is 549 yuan under the first offer, it does not seem to have much advantage.
But if you consider its 2.5G extranet port, game dedicated network port and Qualcomm chip with NPU, the product that is really in the same configuration as it, the pricing often really has to rely on thousands of yuan, or even more than a thousand yuan - if you look at it from this point of view, the cost-effective advantage of the Redmi AX5400 is indeed more obvious.
But then again, as an advanced product of Wi-Fi 6 routers, the AX5400 is often more prominent in theory when selected by users, and the theoretical upper limit of the Redmi Gaming Router AX5400 does not look much different from these "similar products"; on the other hand, there are not many users who will build NAS at home or choose more than gigabit broadband, and it is difficult to really play its full interface strength.
The existence of these conditions makes it a little difficult to show its product advantages, and even when compared to the Xiaomi AX6000, it is not so competitive. As for whether Redmi and even the entire Xiaomi router department can solve these problems and better show the strong points and charm of Redmi AX5400 in the field of segmentation, it depends on how much effort they will make in the follow-up.