Amped Announces AC1200 Router

[jvrobert]

Hi - I'm in the market for a new router and was about to pull the trigger in the RT-AC66U but I see that Amped Wireless is coming out with their AC router in a few weeks.

What's the consensus on the Amped routers? Think it's worth the wait or should I pull the trigger on the Asus? I can find almost nothing except some generic announcements regarding the RTA15, which seems quite late at this point.

 

[stevech]

If you have no 11ac client devices, it's a good idea to not spend the premium on such

 

[thiggins]

At $190, it's very expensive for an AC1200 class (2x2) router.

Our testing has not confirmed Amped's increased range claims for its past products.

 

[remixedcat]

Well Amped Wireless added even more power to the RTA15 and my review for the R20G was excellent and you can read the R20G review here:
http://remixedcat.blogspot.com/2013/03/amped-wireless-r20000g-wireless-router.html

So it having even more power will be even better!

 

[Kamus]

At $190, it's very expensive for an AC1200 class (2x2) router.

Our testing has not confirmed Amped's increased range claims for its past products.

Wait, this thing isn't even 3x3? What a ripoff! more than a year ago high performance 3x3 routers came out at exactly that price point. So basically they charge last year prices, for a product with specs that don't even match last years products.

You would think that by now we'd start seeing routers 4x4 / MU-MIMO support instead of this crap.

 

[thiggins]

3x3 AC routers are sorta like N900's--only good if you are using them with a matching router operating as a bridge. Just as N600 routers are the sweet spot for N, so will likely be AC1200 for AC.

There aren't any 3x3 clients and unlikely to be any. The majority of AC mobile clients will be smartphones and tablets, which will be 1x1.

So it's not inherently bad that Amped has produced an AC1200 router, it's just the price. I'm sure they are hoping all those 10 amplifiers will help lure folks to pay the price.

 

[Kamus]

3x3 AC routers are sorta like N900's--only good if you are using them with a matching router operating as a bridge. Just as N600 routers are the sweet spot for N, so will likely be AC1200 for AC.

There aren't any 3x3 clients and unlikely to be any. The majority of AC mobile clients will be smartphones and tablets, which will be 1x1.

So it's not inherently bad that Amped has produced an AC1200 router, it's just the price. I'm sure they are hoping all those 10 amplifiers will help lure folks to pay the price.

Most (if not all) phones will be 1 antenna. A lot of tablets will be 2x2 though. But 4x4 isn't awesome just because of the number of antennas. The reason it's so desirable is MU-MIMO. Which will help all of the clients regardless of their number of antennas. A feature that i think is the biggest deal in the new standard.
If people want to see improvements all around. I think that routers supporting MU-MIMO are the first ones to justify the upgrade from 802.11n routers for mainstream users.

 

[thiggins]

I agree about MU MIMO. 4x4 isn't required for it, however.

 

[TonyH]

Well Amped Wireless added even more power to the RTA15 and my review for the R20G was excellent and you can read the R20G review here:
http://remixedcat.blogspot.com/2013/03/amped-wireless-r20000g-wireless-router.html

So it having even more power will be even better!

Hi,
Just more power or CLEAN more power?

 

[Razor512]

In my experience more power when the wifi radio properly handles it, does improve range, but mainly with lower end clients, (eg my old windows mobile pocket PC benefits noticeably from increased output power (it's wifi radio is not very sensitive.

but there is a tradeoff with high transmit power, it reduces how close you can get to an access point before the radio gets overloaded and either offers crappy performance or does not work at all, eg, bringing my windows mobile pocket PC too close to my WNDR4700 will cause it to disconnect to any network it is connected to (including the 4700) but if I go into the options and lower the transmit power then the issue goes away.

On my laptop I can be right against the router and it will not disconnect, but performance will drop considerably.

Using a 3rd party firmware and a wndr3700, I can get the router to act as a wifi adapter and connect to wifi networks that my laptop will not even to connect to because the signals are just too weak (it will just try to connect for a while and give up, but the router can connect and maintain a usable connection (then again, most wifi clients have yet to even break 100mw, while many routers are pushing around 600mw or more.


While there is a limit to how much increasing the transmit power can improve range, it does help by essentially moving any range bottlenecks from the router, thus allowing you to get the most out of the clients wifi adapter.

I would love to see an article doing a range test of a router with a standard wifi client (what ever is built into the laptop), an another range test of a 2 of the same high mw output routers forming a wireless bridge.

 

[Kamus]

I agree about MU MIMO. 4x4 isn't required for it, however.

I think it is required for MU-MIMO and beamforming to be possible at the same time. With 3x3 configurations you are limited to only one or the other.
Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[remixedcat]

Just got one of these and the range is improved from the R20G. I am so far, noticing a 10-15dBm increase on average some devices are seeing more.

Will test more on the .ac speeds later.

 

[remixedcat]

I finally got to testing more and here's my results:
http://remixedcat.blogspot.com/2013/09/amped-wireless-rta15-and-aca1-review.html