After spending the Spring Festival with their families and enjoying the wonderful Winter Olympic Games, it was time for the students who had finished the winter vacation to pack up their moods and return to school. At this time of year, many students have plans to buy electronic products, one is the new year and new atmosphere, and the other is that during the New Year, they have also accumulated a lot of pressure money issued by their elders. Nowadays, no matter what kind of electronic products, from desktops and laptops to mobile phones and smart speakers... To play with them is inseparable from the Internet. Most school dormitories have long been connected to high-speed broadband, and students in the same dormitories have more or less electronic products that need to be networked, so wireless routers have become a must-have product in the dormitories. So, how to choose a wireless router suitable for campus use environment? We will analyze from many aspects and sort out the key points of purchase for the students.
Look for Wi-Fi 6
We recommend that students first look for Wi-Fi 6 products when purchasing wireless routers. After nearly two years of continuous development, Wi-Fi 6 routers have entered the fast popularization channel. On the one hand, the Wi-Fi 6 certification program launched by the Wi-Fi Alliance is conducive to the promotion of Wi-Fi 6 products. On the other hand, upstream companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Intel have fully rolled out Wi-Fi 6 chips. Reflected in the terminal products, that is, the price of Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers has dropped rapidly, coupled with Huawei, Xiaomi and other brands with their own traffic continue to launch new Wi-Fi 6 products, suddenly pulling the price of Wi-Fi 6 routers to the point where ordinary consumers can also accept it. The current wireless router market has formed a complete product matrix covering different price segments of high, medium and low to meet the needs of various consumer applications.
The various key technologies in Wi-Fi 6 are actually more helpful for the experience of daily use.
Wireless routers are just one part of building a Wi-Fi 6 wireless network environment, and support for a variety of end devices is equally important. If you have purchased a new mobile phone or laptop in the past two years, you can buy a Wi-Fi 6 router with confidence. Because from 2020 onwards, most new mobile phone products have provided Wi-Fi 6 support, and the new laptop products are also generally built-in Intel AX200/201 wireless network card, to achieve Wi-Fi 6 support.
▲ With the popularity of Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers, its premium has disappeared, and students should first consider Wi-Fi 6 products when purchasing.
At present, there are still many Wi-Fi 5 wireless routers on sale in the market, and the price is concentrated within 200 yuan. For students, if the budget for buying a wireless router is limited, there is no problem in buying Wi-Fi 5 products within 100 yuan. If the budget is in the range of 150 yuan to 200 yuan, then we recommend considering Wi-Fi 6 products. There are already optional Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers within 200 yuan, although the number is not much, but it can still be bought. Second, the Wi-Fi 6 wireless router in the range of 200 yuan to 300 yuan has a wider choice, and the budget is slightly increased, and you can enjoy various technologically more advanced products, which is helpful for the network experience in future use. In general, at present, the words "Wi-Fi 6" have basically no premium, and they can be assured to start.
Speed isn't the only one
When purchasing a wireless router, many people will first look at the speed of the wireless router, and manufacturers also like to emphasize the dual-frequency concurrent speed as the selling point of some products. But for most students, just need to pay attention to whether the wireless router meets a certain gigabit standard on both the wired and wireless ends. This is a conclusion that combines the current level of popularity of broadband networks with the speed of the network supported by the devices in most hands.
In the broadband network part, the current 100 gigabit broadband is basically the starting level, first-tier cities are vigorously promoting gigabit broadband, for the router's wired network port, from the WAN port to the LAN port are gigabit is the basic requirement, this specification requirement is not much of a problem in most of the current commercial products. Current Wi-Fi 6-enabled phones generally have a maximum speed of 1.2Gbps in the 5GHz band, while laptops are mostly at 2.4Gbps. Therefore, from the perspective of the wireless network speed of the adapted terminal product, when purchasing a wireless router, the focus should be on whether the maximum speed of the product in the 5GHz band reaches 2.4Gbps. When manufacturers promote the wireless speed of products, they generally emphasize the dual-frequency concurrent speed, and students need to pay attention to whether the speed of the 5GHz band in the specification meets the speed needs of the device in hand when purchasing.
▲ Students should rationally choose the speed of the wireless router according to the equipment in hand, and do not blindly pursue high specifications.
Of course, for students who have previously purchased 3×3 or 4×4 specification Wi-Fi 5 wireless network cards, when choosing a Wi-Fi 6 router, you can also consider products with faster wireless speeds, after all, the Wi-Fi 6 standard is backward compatible, and it can still play the performance of these high-end Wi-Fi 5 wireless cards. On the other hand, from the perspective of reserving space for future devices, students with a good budget can also choose Wi-Fi 6 routers with faster wireless speeds, and when there are more Wi-Fi 6 mobile phones, laptops, and wireless network cards with faster wireless network speeds on the market, it can give full play to the wireless performance of these products.
When choosing a Wi-Fi 6 wireless router, it is not the only important point to pay attention to whether its speed can meet your needs. Because many of the related technologies in the Wi-Fi 6 standard, including key technologies such as ODFMA, MU-MIMO and 1024-QAM, are related to improving the experience of multi-user access, it may be more practical for students. Judging from the new Wi-Fi 6 wireless router products that have been listed so far, whether it is an entry-level product or a high-end new product, it basically provides support for these key technologies, and we can generally find relevant introductions on their product introduction page. As for the controversy over whether the early Wi-Fi 6 wireless router supports 160MHz bandwidth, it is actually relatively clear at present, both products are available on the market, and students only need to choose according to whether the device in their hands supports the 160Hz band.
Pay attention to the functions of the product according to your own needs
I believe that many students will pay attention to the wireless signal coverage of wireless routers, especially the performance of through walls. This part of the capability of the product is related to its transmit power, but it is not as large as possible, after all, there are national standards that regulate the transmit power. In fact, if you only use the bedroom as an application scenario, the requirements for wireless signal coverage are not high, after all, the bedroom area will not be too large, and there is no problem of being separated into different rooms by load-bearing walls. Therefore, for students who are only using in the dormitory, don't pay too much attention to this.
However, for the situation that there may be two or three bedrooms sharing a broadband line and sharing the cost of network use, you can consider mesh distributed mesh router products, which can well solve the problem of signal coverage in a large space, and if the user is using a mobile device, the experience of using it within its signal coverage range is good, and it can be seamlessly switched on different Mesh devices. Although the one-time investment may be greater than that of a traditional router, if it is shared by multiple bedrooms, the amortized purchase cost is actually acceptable.
There is also a solution, now many brands of wireless routers provide networking functions between the same brand products, the effect achieved and mesh distributed mesh router products are the same. Since the products under the same brand have different specifications and grades, students can choose or cheap or expensive products according to their own budget to achieve networking to expand the wireless signal coverage. You can also buy a product to see if its wireless signal range can meet the requirements, if the signal coverage is not good, then consider adding a router for networking, the overall flexibility will be higher.
▲Choosing a wireless router that can support networking of multiple devices can leave room for future expansion.
Although for students, serious study is the first priority, but now is no longer the era of dead reading, daily appropriate entertainment is also very necessary. For most students, playing games in the dormitory during their leisure time should be the most common relaxation activity. Whether it is on mobile phones, tablets and other mobile devices, or on PCs and laptops, online games are the mainstream of the moment, because wireless routers are also related to everyone's experience when playing. Nowadays, many routers have built-in network optimization for gaming applications to ensure that users can get a good experience when playing games online, and even esports routers have become an important segment in the current market.
Therefore, for students who value this part of the experience, you may wish to pay attention to whether the product is optimized for the game when purchasing a wireless router, such as game acceleration, adaptive QoS and other functions can improve the game experience to the first extent. Similarly, chasing dramas, watching movies, and brushing videos should also be the leisure methods that students are currently accustomed to, and many routers also provide video priority and other functions for video applications, and students who value video and audio entertainment can also pay attention to the relevant functions provided by the product.
▲ The game acceleration function is a noteworthy additional feature on the wireless router for most students.
In order to better manage the router, but also so that the students can easily share files, music, videos in the hands of various devices, you can choose to provide products with supporting Apps when purchasing a router. After all, mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets have largely replaced desktops as IT products that everyone uses more often, so it is necessary to be able to set up routers on mobile devices through apps. In addition, you can also pay attention to whether the App is good to use, whether the functions are practical and rich? In these aspects, students can first look at the evaluations of other users on the Internet, and then choose after reference. In addition, if you need to share files on multiple devices through the router frequently, you can pay attention to whether the corresponding app will be available on the product. For example, some router products will provide apps specifically for these applications.
For students who have access to gigabit high-speed broadband in the dormitory, and have a NAS storage system in the dormitory, if the NAS used has 2.5G, 5G or even 10G ports, then when choosing a router, you should also consider products that can be matched in the wired network port to meet the needs of various high-speed data transmission applications. At present, there are more and more products with 2.5G network ports, and 10G is relatively small, and the positioning is generally higher. For most students, there is no need to pay for this part of the function.
▲Students with higher requirements in wired transmission can pay attention to whether the router has a network port with 2.5G or even higher specifications.
Recommended products
Huawei routes the AX2 Pro
Reference price: 199 yuan
For students with limited budgets, Huawei Router AX2 Pro is one of the few Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers that can be bought within 200 yuan. It supports 2×2 MIMO, and the maximum speed of the 5GHz band reaches 1201Mbps, which is enough to meet the current Wi-Fi 6 support mobile phones. Its 4 Gigabit ethernet ports support WAN and LAN interface adaptation, and can be used on any interface that can be connected to the network cable. At the same time, it can also support multiple networking, which can easily expand the wireless network coverage without much cost. In addition, Huawei Router AX2 Pro also supports mobile game acceleration, which can be automatically sent into the high-priority channel in the game state, reducing the game delay, and if students use Huawei mobile phones, they can support game acceleration up to thousands. Although the price is cheap, there are many practical functions of Huawei's router AX2 Pro, which are worth considering.
Network standard: IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax
Wireless specifications: 2.4GHz (300Mbps), 5GHz (1201Mbps)
Antenna: External antenna
Memory: 128MB (RAM), 128MB (ROM)
Port: 10/100/1000M adaptive Ethernet interface×4, support WAN, LAN interface adaptation
Size: 205mm×120mm×39mm
Redmi Router AX6S
Reference price: 279 yuan
Redmi router AX6S is a new Wi-Fi 6 router released at the end of last year, using a dual-core, 1.35GHz MTK MT7622B processor and MT7915A wireless chip, the maximum theoretical wireless transmission speed is 800Mbps (2.4GHz) and 2402Mbps (5GHz). Both its 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands support 4×4 MIMO, with a 5GHz bandwidth of 80MHz. AX6S supports mesh networking with Xiaomi's other Wi-Fi 6 routers, making it easy to expand wireless network signals in the future. At the same time, Xiaomi Changxinglian, QoS speed limit, NetEase UU game acceleration, Xiaomi/Redmi mobile phone exclusive acceleration channel and other functions related to daily use and game experience are not absent. Less than 300 yuan AX6S in today's lack of core environment cost performance is good, suitable for multiple devices at the same time access needs, the pursuit of stable connection without tossing, and the Wi-Fi 6 terminal equipment in hand does not support 160MHz bandwidth students.
网络标准：IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax，IEEE 802.3/3u/3ab
Wireless specifications: 2.4GHz (800Mbps), 5GHz (2402Mbps)
Transmit and receive: 2.4GHz 4×4, 5GHz 4×4
Antennas: 6 external antennas
Processor: MT7622B (Dual Core 1.35GHz)
Memory: 256MB
Ports: 10/100/1000M adaptive LAN port×3, 10/100/1000M adaptive WAN port×1
Size: 284mm×186mm×186mm
ASUS RT-AX56U Hot Blood Edition
Reference price: 389 yuan
As the main battle of ASUS in popularizing Wi-Fi 6 products in the router market, the RT-AX56U hot blood version is not expensive, but there is no shortage of highlights that make consumers "blood boil" from the inside out. The red and black color scheme combined with the new design brings a visually impactful external look and feel, and the wireless network data transmission speed of 574Mbps (2.4GHz) and 1201Mbps (5GHz) in dual frequencies can be well adapted to the mobile phones, laptops and other devices that currently support Wi-Fi 6. At the same time, many of asus's unique features are not absent on the RT-AX56U Hot Blood Edition, AiProtection, all-scenario network optimization, game acceleration function... In particular, the support for AiMesh makes the RT-AX56U hot blood version a networking choice with outstanding cost performance. One year for the new, three-year warranty after-sales to make the use of students more assured, worth recommending to everyone.
Network standards: IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax, IPv4, IPv6
Wireless Specifications: 2.4GHz (574Mbps), 5GHz (1201Mbps)
Transmit/Receive: 2.4GHz 2×2, 5GHz 2×2
Antenna: External antenna × 4
Processor: Broadcom 1.5GHz quad-core processor
Memory: 128MB (ROM), 256MB (RAM)
Ports: 10/100/1000M adaptive LAN port×4, 10/100/1000M adaptive WAN port×1
Size: 230mm× 134mm×56mm