Recently, catching up with the 618 activities of Tmall and JD.com, many friends have updated their mobile phones with Wi-Fi 7 related firmware, so many friends are considering adding Wi-Fi 7 routers and want to set up a high-speed home intranet to experience the new features of MLO first.
But they were dumbfounded when they really clicked on Jingdong,The same is Wi-Fi 7 router,ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+And XiaomiBE6500 ProThe price is 599 yuan (618The price fluctuates during the period,As of press time,ZTE has a greater discount)。
It just so happens that I have ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ (I wrote a detailed evaluation before, and if you are interested, you can turn it on my homepage), so I simply bought Xiaomi BE6500 Pro, and I will give you a detailed horizontal review and comparison, for your reference, I hope it can help you.
1. Design
两款路由器的造型都挺帅，咱们先看看中兴问天BE7200Pro+。
ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ adopts a spaceship shape design as a whole, and the eight antennas support horizontal rotation and folding, which is very wild.
The edges of the two heat dissipation holes on the front are sprayed gold, and in the middle is the router status indicator, which is angular and technological.
There is a mecha-like logo on the top of the machine, which is the logo of ZTE's high-end product line, which is fine-tuned from Oracle's "Xing". The meaning of "Xing" is very good, erect and prosperous, making people think of the grass growing and the warbler flying, and the clear spring bubbling. According to reliable sources, ZTE hopes to make the "Xing" word LOGO of the router into a high-end logo at the level of ASUS loser's eye.
ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ is equipped with two 2.5G network ports, three Gigabit Ethernet ports, a USB 3.0 interface, and a MESH networking shortcut key. The USB interface can be plugged into a U disk or a mobile hard disk, and it can be expanded into LAN storage, and the specific speed and experience will be discussed later.
The Xiaomi BE6500 Pro's exterior is a completely different style, as it's more like a next-gen gaming console, or a NAS, than a traditional octopus-shaped router.
The router has an NFC touch on the top of the router, allowing visitors to quickly connect to Wi-Fi via NFC.
Xiaomi BE6500 Pro has vertical strip decoration on three sides, of which the front is covered with a glossy acrylic layer, which is quite textured.
The Xiaomi BE6500 Pro has four 2.5G adaptive Ethernet ports and a MESH button on the back.
Both routers have excellent exterior designs, but the styles are very different, with the ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ leaning more towards the traditional octopus style, and the Xiaomi BE6500 Pro being more concise and restrained.
2. Configure parameters
The main similarities and differences between the two routers in the core configuration are as follows,ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+7200M wireless rate、8High-gain antenna、USB interface and Mesh threshold customization have no small advantages,And Xiaomi has an additional NFC one-touch connection function。 It is worth mentioning that,In the 2.5G network port,ZTE's two 2.5G interfaces can run full independently,And XiaomiBE6500 Pro's four 2.5G interfaces share5G bandwidth,So at the same time, up to two network ports。
3. Comparison of rate and signal
In order to avoid the interference of external network fluctuations, and to show the actual rate of the router as much as possible, I will enable the iperf3 server through a soft router, and both routers will enable the exclusive MLO of Wi-Fi 7 for the intranet stream pulling test. This test is basically a representation of the maximum LAN speed that the phone can run.
The network topology used for the test is as follows:
The router is placed in my studio, firstly, to avoid the Switch Pro Bluetooth handle receiving 2.4G interference, and secondly, to increase the strength of the two high-end routers to see the actual performance of the two routers under non-ideal conditions.
ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+The results of the intranet speed test are as follows,The whole house has maintained a good rate,The studio、Bedroom and living room have exceeded Gigabit,It can run full of gigabit broadband in ordinary families。
During the speed test on the balcony, I observed that the router automatically switched from the 5G band to the 2.4G band, and the signal became full. It can be seen here that ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+When encountering a weak network state, it will be more active in MLO band switching, giving priority to ensuring signal coverage and basic rate, so that I can have a good lower speed limit when watching videos and playing games.
ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ When pulling streams on the intranet, the peak speed can be measured at 1.90Gb/s, that is, theoretically, its Wi-Fi is almost enough to run 2000 megabytes of broadband.
The results of the Xiaomi BE6500 Pro's intranet speed test are as follows, and it can be found that its speed is slightly weaker than that of the ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ in strong signal scenes such as the studio and bedroom, and slightly stronger in weak signal scenarios such as kitchen and balcony.
Xiaomi's on-site strategy is different from ZTE's, and it prefers to maintain the 5GHz band connection as much as possible to ensure the ultimate speed rather than network stability. This strategy will be more popular in download scenarios, but it may occur in daily life that even if the signal in the 5G band is not good, it will still maintain the connection, resulting in packet loss and lag in the game.
The maximum connection rate between the two routers and the Wi-Fi 7 mobile phone vivo X100s is as follows, and the handshake rate of the ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ is slightly higher, but the overall difference is not large.
The following is the signal coverage distribution map of ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+, the weakest place is -62dBm, the strongest place is -16dBm, and the average signal strength of the whole house is -41dBm, which is enough to support smooth gaming and movie viewing.
XiaomiBE6500ProThe whole house signal coverage distribution map is as follows,Strongest-19dBm,Weakest-70dBm,Whole house average-49dBm,Slightly weaker than ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+,Here you can intuitively reflect the difference between 8FEM high-gain antenna and 6 antenna。 Of course, this signal strength is also completely smooth enough for smooth gaming and movie viewing.
Fourth, heat dissipation comparison
Friends who have read my last review of the whole house Wi-Fi solution should know that if you want to run stably for a long time, the router needs to have good enough heat dissipation, so I also took out thermal imaging and took pictures of the surface temperature of the two routers under the same working conditions.
ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ adopts the "10,000 households" router heat dissipation architecture, and the internal structure design is also self-developed by ZTE, with a total of 64546 mm2 of fin heat dissipation area, and the actual thermal imaging results are shown in the figure. The maximum temperature on the surface of the router is 43.7 degrees Celsius, which can be considered very cool under the high load of my continuous intranet streaming. Considering the small size of the router itself and the lack of heat dissipation space, the heat dissipation design of ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ is very good, which is enough to ensure the stability of long-term operation.
The thermal imaging results of the Xiaomi BE6500 Pro are shown in the figure, with a surface maximum temperature of 35.3 degrees Celsius, which is surprisingly low. For example, if you take an athlete, you can run 100 meters without breathing. This is also the unique advantage of the Xiaomi BE6500 Pro's larger body size. Even in the summer, this router doesn't have to worry about heat dissipation at all.
5. Functional comparison
After the basic network experience is guaranteed, we need to consider more flexible and diverse router gameplay, which depends on the router's Web/APP management function and external interfaces.
1. Comparison of router APP functions
ZTE Wentian BE7200 Pro+'s APP supports most common functions, such as speed measurement, youth protection, safety protection, etc. In addition, it also empowers Wi-Fi deployment simulation, and after obtaining the floor plan, the software can calculate the most suitable placement of the router through AI. Its plug-in center supports two game accelerators and a broadband booster, making it easy for console gamers to play online games. As for advanced operations such as USB LAN sharing, IPTV, and dual WAN aggregation, ZTE has put them on the Web.
I won't go into detail about the regular functions of Xiaomi BE6500 Pro, the more unique thing is that it supports NFC one-touch connection and Mi Home Hub Gateway function, which is more friendly to Mi Home ecological users, and you can save a gateway. In terms of application, it also supports two accelerators, and there is one less broadband acceleration plug-in than ZTE. Xiaomi's side has basically deployed all the advanced functions to the APP side, which is obviously very confident in its own user base.
2. USB interface play
Thanks to the USB 3.0 interface on the back, ZTE Wentian BE7200 Pro+ can also convert external USB flash drives or mobile hard disks into small home cloud disks through SMB or FTP protocols for some basic intranet data sharing.
ZTE Wentian BE7200 Pro+ is plugged into a USB flash drive, as shown in the figure.
I measured that the USB interface rate is within 30MB/s, and the exFAT format USB flash drive and NTFS format mobile hard disk on hand can be recognized normally, which can meet the basic LAN file sharing needs. Of course, if you want to set up a local video library or even do film and television scraping, then its interface bandwidth is not enough, it is better to buy a 2.5G NAS like me, and make perfect use of ZTE WentianBE7200 Pro+Dual 2.5G network ports。
3. Mesh networking
Both routers support Mesh networking with routers of the same brand/model, but what is more special is that ZTE Wentian BE7200 Pro+ supports Mesh threshold setting, which can effectively avoid the problem that the mobile phone hangs on the weak signal node for a long time when multi-router Mesh networking.
It is worth mentioning that when initializing the router and configuring the network, I accidentally connected the ZTE Wentian BE7200 Pro+ to the Nebula Sunny Whole House Wi-Fi Package, and the router automatically completed the wired MESH networking throughout the whole process and became a sub-routing node. This kind of automated networking without human intervention is very friendly to Xiaobai.
6. Summary
Finally, I will briefly summarize,ZTE WentianBE7200Pro+The material is very fierce,In the signal coverage、Peak rate and expansion of the gameplay are fully full,Considering the minimum price of Jingdong's self-operated549Yuan,The quality-price ratio is extremely high。 If you're considering buying a mid-to-high-end Wi-Fi 7 router, the ZTE Wentian BE7200Pro+ is my first recommendation.
XiaomiBE6500 ProHeat dissipation is invincible,Built-in Mijia gateway,And in signal coverage、Peak rate also has a pretty good performance,Considering the price of Jingdong's self-operated 599 yuan,It is suitable for Mijia ecological users with a higher budget to buy。
It's June 2024, and it's already summer. Two-gigabit home broadband is gradually becoming popular in major cities, and virtual reality products represented by Apple Vision Pro are also facing wider applications (I recently bought a Thunderbird Air2s XR glasses, interested partners can squat for a review), and mobile phone models are increasingly relying on real-time cloud computing power.
All of these network requirements will rely on a solid hardware foundation.
Therefore, taking advantage of the right price of 618, it is also a good thing to buy a Wi-Fi 7 router in the future and experience the new MLO technology first.
I am detached
Have fun