AP PoE advice

[murof]

I live in a house that was built in 2014. It's 2 story, 4 bedroom with an unfinished basement. The builder put a jack in the center of the second floor for an AP and included a TrendNet N300 poe AP. In the basement I had my verizon fios (50mb/50mb) router and I set them up to work off the same SSID and they were connected by cat5. This worked fairly well but I did not get great coverage outside my house and the handoff wasn't always seemless when moving around inside. Last week my power went out and it seemed to have fried my TrendNet AP.

I had been waiting for the Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO to come out to replace it but the failure has sped things up. I had decided on the Edimax 1200CAP pro as a decent replacement at $140 on Amazon. Then my cheapness got the better of me and I ended up purchasing an unreviewed Hawking Wireless -1200AC AP (HW12ACM) because it was on sale for just under $100. I have installed it and turned off the radio on the Fios router and seem to get decent house coverage but there are a few areas that I don't get full strength. Now I am wondering if I should have purchased the Edimax or just held out until the Ubiquiti came out to get full strength around the house.

I know I could turn back on the radio on the fios router but with the hand off issues I was hoping to avoid that and with the upgrade in AP was hoping it would provide enough coverage. Does anyone have experience if range would be better with the Edimax or Ubiquiti over the Hawking? Or maybe I should just be happy with what I have installed and leave it alone. Any suggestions are appreciated

 

[Trip]

*Must* you have AC right away? Why not just do a N-class UAP-PRO in the meantime, then upgrade and flip the N unit come the Holidays? UBNT is somewhat like the Apple of the WISP world: the stuff seems to have a sort of coveted heir to it, so it should hold its value quite well, even on FleaBay and the like.

 

[murof]

No, in fact I was planing on purchasing an "N" AP until I saw they were about the same price as the "AC" and figured I may as well future proof it if I was having to purchase one.

 

[Trip]

"Future proofing" is really somewhat of a myth, especially in regards to AC and N wifi. In many situations, it actually makes more sense to use N. Longer range at lower power, often equating to better fringe connectivity for mobile devices, assuming little or no channel interference. AC does have its use cases, but you actually may be better off with N for this project.

 

[murof]

Thanks for the info, I think that solves it. I will just purchase an N and return the Hawking AC. It seems to run very warm and my 2.4ghz speeds have been slow for some reason. I do get good 5ghz coverage through most of my house with it though.