The manufacturer ZTE has launched a new router for home users, the new model is the Miracle WiFi-6 ZTE AX3000 Pro, a mid-high range device that offers its users high wireless speeds thanks to Wi-Fi 6 technology, and will also allow us to obtain high wired speeds thanks to its Gigabit Ethernet ports. The price of this router is only 100 euros, a very good price on paper, but then we will explain why you shouldn’t buy this new modelFurthermore, it does not add anything new at all.
Features of this new router
This new router is Simultaneous dual-band with Wi-Fi 6 AX3000 class. Being AX3000 class means that we can achieve a speed of up to 574Mbps in the 2.4GHz band, thanks to its two external antennas in MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration. In the 5GHz band we can achieve a speed of up to 2,402Mbps, thanks to its two external antennas in MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration, and to the 160MHz channel width that this wireless router has. We must remember that a router with 160MHz of channel width in 5GHz is very good, since we can achieve a real speed of more than 1Gbps with real WiFi cards that support this feature. The antennas have a gain of 7dBi, very good for houses that are very wide horizontally, but if we live in a duplex or in a chalet, the vertical coverage will be lower than other routers with similar characteristics since they usually have antennas with approximately 5dBi.
This model has the functionality Easy Meshso we can use more routers like this ZTE and form a complete WiFi mesh networkto bring wireless connectivity to any corner of our house, however, we will only have very basic management options related to WiFi Mesh.
This ZTE incorporates an NFC chip, this will allow Android smartphones to connect easily and quickly to the WiFi wireless network. However, this does not contribute absolutely anythingbecause currently there are QR codes that do this same function. In addition, that inside we have an NFC chip could make it possible for any user with physical access to the router to connect to the wireless network, something that could be a risk to our security. Guest WiFi networks serve precisely to provide us with security when our visitors connect.
Regarding the wired network, this router has one Gigabit Ethernet port for Internet WAN and a total of 3 Gigabit Ethernet ports for the LAN. Unfortunately this new router does not have any USB 3.0 portsomething that would allow us to share files and folders on the local network and the Internet, as well as play multimedia content on the smart TVs in our home.
Regarding the price of this router, it is €100, a fairly high price if we take into account the technical specifications that we have available compared to other clearly superior models.
Why you shouldn’t buy this new router
Although this new ZTE router has just been released, the truth is that at the hardware level it is not worth it for this price, we must bear in mind that this Miracle WiFi-6 ZTE AX3000 Pro is physically the same as Huawei Wi-Fi AX3 that came out quite a while ago. This Huawei model is worth exactly half, about 50 euros on Amazon and other stores:
The technical characteristics of the ZTE and Huawei models are exactly the same, they have dual-band WiFi 6 AX3000, Gigabit Ethernet ports, no USB port and a Quad-Core processor. In addition, the HONOR brand has also launched a router that is physically very similar, although in this case it is Dual-Core.
The characteristic of having 160MHz of channel width in 5GHz It is perfect for devices that support it, however, only high-end smartphones, tablets and WiFi cards have this functionality, therefore the vast majority of devices will not be able to take advantage of it. A router with Wi-Fi 6 class AX1800 (without 160MHz) that is compatible with Mesh networks to extend coverage is the ASUS RT-AX53U, a router much more complete than the ZTE and cheapersince it is available for about 75 euros.
This model has a USB port to share files and folders, and a really complete firmware compatible with the Movistar FTTH triple VLAN, a very advanced QoS, VPN servers and much more.
