Mikrotik hAP AX2 quick router review and electronics

I just received my router about 3 months ahead of my estimated ship date so I'm pretty excited. I only use this as a home wireless access point and a few ethernet cables to my game system and cell spot. It's a nice upgrade from my original hAP AC model. Someone on an online forum got me into Mikrotik many years ago, starting with their RB951G-2HnD model, then my hAP AC and now finally the hAP AX2. My first two have been rock solid stable which is why I love this brand so much for home routers. Big box routers need constant reboots which is crazy! Some models even have a "reboot nightly" option, and to me, this is insane. With these, you never need to reboot, the internet stays up, and I hope the AX2 will follow the same path.
As a home user, I don't know many of the advance settings, but I would love to learn how to update the firewall better. There are countless settings though, and out of the box works great with quickset and a few small tweaks such as frequency settings. It runs wifiwave2 out of the box. I know it can do IPv6, but I don't have this set up because it needs better firewall rules also from what I understand, and I don't want anything open where I can be easily hacked. The wireless signal is really good for such a small box, it's the same as my hAP AC as far I can tell, reaches everywhere I need it to around the house and to my outside wireless cameras. The inside seems to be built really well, the PCB and heatsink are solid and sturdy. There is now a hAP AX3 which is releasing, but I'll stick to this one since it works for everything I need it to. Love having wifi6 finally after all this time, but waiting for a Mikrotik version was worth it and I wouldn't have really benefited from it before anyways.

[@manny_f]

I love the black case however I kinda preferred the older boxier design, I certainly prefer opposite faces to be parallel as it makes stacking of devices easier. Nevertheless, a great piece of kit this little router.

[@iamthearmul]

Thanks. This is probably the only english lang review of this device on YT, appreciate it. I just put my order in, just looking for an wifi 6 AP to living room for my router board that sits with cable modem in metal cabinet. This will replace my old Asus. There are many wifi 6 AP options, but prefer Mikrotik for the familiar interface and it's made in EU. Not going to configure much just separate vlan for IOT devices and a guest network. Just have been loving stability of my routerboard after horrible router perf in Sagemcom cable modem.

[@Quettesh]

As a family IT support, I deploy Mikrotik routers if I want something that will work for the next decade without any issues. It took me some time to get deeper into deeper options. but it was worth it. Also the community is pretty big, and there are always good guides.

[@danman132x]

This. I never have to reboot this router, or any other microtik I've had before. Consumer grade routers suck so bad in comparison

[@aliancemd]

​@@danman132x Depends on what "consumer" router you buy. Routers like TP-Link usually have this problem that they ended up adding a nightly system restart in all their newer versions. I had Orbi RBK50 and Orbi SXK80 - both ran non-stop. In the case of RBK50, it ran over 5 years non-stop, without issues - now being used by my parents, also without issues. Mikrotik is good but if you don't buy the cheapest routers, those don't have stability issues either.

[@kobial8406]

I have both of them. hAP AC was amazing router and served me really well. They are very stable. Currently using AX2 and I can confirm that it's also very stable. The only downside with AX2 is, it gets really hot because of it's powerful ARM processor. I have it in vertical position because I don't want dust to cover the board. Thanks.

[@FinlayDaG33k]

3:42 "Skip DFS channels" basically means that it will *not* use DFS-enabled channels (UNII-2 5250-5720MHz) when selecting channels. This causes your AP to not temporarily turn off its radio (or move to a different channel, interrupting wifi for a small moment) when something like a weather radar becomes active. Generally, I don't recommend the use of UNII-2 for this exact reason.

[@4givenoxygenbarez]

May i ask how did you disable the poe in/out in port 1?

[@mariusmotea]

My router has a thermal adhesive that i don't see in your video. Under the white label are the pads of a USB 3.0 port that i identified to be Amphenol GSB31D12021HHR. I installed that USB port but it is still not working, probably some filters are still missing or the USB tracks where cut to avoid users having this enabled. I also replaced the U900 that is the 128MB EMMC flash with Kioxia TH58BYG3S0HBAI6 to upgrade it to 1GB of storage. It required lot of heat to swap that chip and the radiator need to be removed.

[@danman132x]

Do you have a picture of where the thermal pad should go? Seems like a big oversight, don't want it overheating a chip

[@mariusmotea]

@@danman132x Will open it probably next days since i will try to figure where the USB tracks are ending.

[@mariusmotea]

I paste here the image links from my NextCloud instance but seams the comments are automatically deleted.

[@danman132x]

@@mariusmotea oh dang, yeah I think KZbin doesn't like certain links

[@DimitriPappas]

​@@mariusmotea were you able to figure out how to access the usb tracks ?

[@Bonjour-World]

Never assume: Is the router management via a web interface or dedicated application ? If it is a dedicated application then what OS does it require ?

[@jackblah5842]

Web interface, WinBox app is optional and available on Window and is finally native MAC OS in beta. I'm running the beta w/o issue.

[@MaxUgly]

I agree, Mikrotik is rock solid, they also have enough features to easily break stuff if you dont know what you are doing, dont ask how i know.... i have learned so much about networking just messing with my CRS306-1G-4S+IN. It was a happy mistake when i bought it. I just wanted local 10GbE and it was cheap on amazon. Since then I have really gotten into learning about networking. I probably have spent 100 hours playing with routerOS and Swos. So much cheaper than equivalent cisco or juniper and so much more feature rich than any other equipment at same price.

[@medastopalallos4796]

Hi sir, confused about poe in/out in ethernet1 port can you explain to me please. Is there any switch to turn the power on a poe port? Thanks 🙏

[@aliancemd]

“Turn the power” - I guess you want to use it as PoE out to feed electricity to another device. In this case, you just plug in the DC jack(the included power adapter) and that port will work as PoE-out, feeding any device with PoE-in support - max power it can feed is 16.8W.

[@RenatoAmes]

Hola, soy de Perú, gracias por compartir el video, mi consulta porfavor es hasta cuantos dispositivos wifi soporta el dispositivo? Lo comento porque tengo un domicilio con 40 dispositivos entre cámaras, luces , interruptores, celulares, televisores, me pueda servir el dispositivo que estas revisando? Gracias totales

[@hmt8701]

Can this be used as a mesh with wired back haul using maybe 3-4 units? I need to cover approx 2200 sqft across 4 bedrooms and a large living room/kitchen.

[@danman132x]

I'm not sure, but if you put it central in your house, it should reach all corners. I have a 1600 sq ft and it's in the front left room and reaches pretty good. Not even wall mounted or up high, like 3 feet up maybe

[@aliancemd]

Yes, it can(works better on “ax” devices), using CAPsMAN(just make sure all devices are updated to the latest RouterOS) + and enable FT(Fast Transition) preferably. You activate CAPsMAN on one Mikrotik device and it will provision configurations to itself and all the other wired devices, using one single SSID with client roaming.

[@y0uRF4t3]

If this had an SFP+ cage so I could connect my GPON directly to it it would be perfect.

[@aliancemd]

L009UiGS-2HaxD-IN has that but it’s only 2.4GHz Wifi 6

[@pavelbondarenko9508]

Test wifi6 please😀

[@floriangrill9561]

Hello, is your hAP ax2 also that loud? Under load, I hear noises like coil whine.

[@danman132x]

I haven't heard any noise from mine at all, it's completely quiet

[@floriangrill9561]

​@@danman132x Very interesting! Even though mine is hanging on the wall at 2.2 meters, I can hear it when I'm doing a speed test. Thanks for your quick answer!

[@floriangrill9561]

Mine also has a very strong coil whining! There is a coil on the board that vibrates - I covered it with a thermal pad and I can't hear anything anymore!

[@fernandomartinez7706]

Where can I buy it? US 2023 ??????????????????

[@-.nisa.-]

amazon

[@Xiefux]

too bad it doesnt have a usb port like the ac2.

[@johanbogg9158]

What use do you find in the USB port? I’ve never gotten the idea of a usb port

[@Xiefux]

@@johanbogg9158 you can use docker containers with this router, so they benefit from extra storage space.

[@johanbogg9158]

@@Xiefux you’re talking about the metarouter feature? Not seen any real life use for that really, and no worth while images. Still a USB port is too slow for any decent NAS performance really (as I’m guessing the ac2 only has USB 2), and a bit too easy to detach, I’d rather have a dedicated synology with decent performance if I’m going to run containers on a device

[@johanbogg9158]

@@Xiefux actually found it now. Great, will try installing pihole on it, thanks for getting me to check it out!

[@Xiefux]

@@johanbogg9158 its good for running pihole or adguard home. and yeah, no sensible person would run a NAS from it, its just 1 usb port. any drive connected is bound to fail at some point

[@arnoldvanzyl6473]

NO SFP fiber port WAST OF MONY

[@ruslanruslan5583]

Супер спасибо