After the introduction of WiFi 6 standard, manufacturers immediately applied it to their new network equipment. Although the outdoor access point market was slower than the indoor equipment in adopting new technologies, EnGenius released EWS850AP, which is an outdoor access point and surpasses all other outdoor access points in terms of wireless performance. Not only are WiFi 6 clients connected, but WiFi 5 client devices also have better stability, performance and coverage. This is due to new and improved features (yes, they are in the draft phase, but still impressive), such as OFDMA (downstream and upstream on both bands), BSS coloring, 1024-QAM modulation and TWT. Of course, MU-MIMO, beamforming and other functions still exist, but one of the most interesting additions is the 2.5GbE PoE port. With the help of the above WiFi 6 functions, it should help to achieve better throughput than the previous generation.
Most outdoor access points are quite large, and there are many antennas around them (there are six ENH1750EXT). However, EnGenius EWS850AP maintains a four antenna layout (two for 5GHz band and two for 2.4GHz band), with a rectangular body made of hard plastic in the front and metal alloy in the back. The case size is 7.48 x 4.88 x 1.85 inches, the surface is white matte, and the logo is only displayed on the front. I also checked the all metal Mikrotik NetMetal ac2. I really appreciate that it is probably the most shockproof outdoor access point, but the plastic and metal combination on the EWS850AP is also good, especially because the manufacturer has ensured that it is weather resistant. In fact, the outdoor AP is ip67, so it is sealed to prevent dust from entering. You should be able to immerse the device in 3 feet of water for 20 minutes. I don't think people will use their access points to swim, but this shows that a strong storm will not harm the EWS850AP.
- TP Link eap610 - outdoor WiFi 6 access point
TP Link is not as popular as household hardware in the commercial market. However, after Ubiquiti showed signs of weakness (the recent controversy), this situation changed, which enabled Omada platform to grow and occupy some commercial markets. Moreover, although it is somewhat unconventional for cloud SDN, TP Link EAP610 Outdoor is indeed an access point built for external conditions, and can work perfectly with other Omada devices.
The TP Link EAP610 Outdoor has a long rectangular plastic body covered with a white matte surface. Although no antenna points outside the housing, there are four quite high gain antennas (2x 4dBi and 2x 5dBi) inside. The size of the equipment is 11.0 x 4.2 x 2.2 inches, so it is quite large, but the size is not so important outdoors, and the protection from natural factors is the most important aspect. As expected, TP Link does ensure that the access point can survive in outdoor conditions, so EAP610 Outdoor has lightning protection of up to 6kV, and the enclosure has ip67 class.
Ideally, you will mount the device on a pole (and you do get a PoE adapter inside the box), but TP-Link does offer a bracket for wall mounting as well – I would have liked to see a metallic bracket, but I suppose the zip ties should suffice. That being said, the area on interest is the bottom side, where you can find a Grounding Terminal, a Gigabit Ethernet Port (802.3at PoE and Passive PoE) and a recessed Reset button (press and hold the button for 8 seconds using a paper clip to return the access point to the factory default settings).
