Orbi and mesh would give greater coverage as you can keep adding satellites. Orbi has advantage over regular mesh because of dedicated backhaul, allowing for higher performance.
A router like the RAX80/120/200 will give better “single” unit coverage and better overall speeds at close to medium ranges.
Honestly the RAX200 is just an RAX80 with an extra 5Ghz band and a 2.5gb port. I highly doubt that extra 5Ghz band will really benefit most people even with many devices as only few are actively transmitting at any given time anyway.
The RAX120 I would say is superior to the RAX200 due the Qualcomm chipset and 5Gb with port, which is great if you have a NAS and do tons of large transfers. But the RAX80 should also be just fine if gig ports are enough.
Just note that final draft AX chipsets are now releasing and current AX routers may never get stuff like Uplink MU and Uplink OFDMA, even though some early AX chipsets did advertise those.
Also some people I found falsely assume that an extra 5Ghz band Increased coverage over a standard dual band, it does not... In edge cases it helps load balance to get better throughout when multiple devices are needing lots of bandwidth. The RAX80 and RAX200 would have similar coverage.
Last clarification, by better single unit coverage and performance I mean comparing a router with a single unit from the mesh system, without satellites.
Assuming coverage was not the main issue, would a RAX120/200 paired with a EAX80 mesh extender provide better day-to-day usage with many connected devices? As in, are they more powerful devices than the Orbi?
How does WPA3 support work with each system?
At what point would it be safe to buy a AX router and be confident it will have all features including WPA3, Uplink MU, and Uplink OFDMA? Spending this much on a router, it better have everything needed for a long time.
The Orbi looking at individual units maybe less powerful range/performance wise but as a mulgi unit system would provide greater coverage than a router.
The RAX120/200 would definitely be providing better coverage/performance when paired with a EAX80 on paper but in real world use unless you benchmark all day I doubt you’d notice too much of a real world difference to warrant the cost difference.
As for WPA3 you can’t use it standalone, you need to enable WPA3 +WPA2 mode because most devices still use WPA2 unless you have laptops with an Intel 9260 or AX200 WiFi cards or some newer mobiles from this year.
Current gen Qualcomm chipset the IPQ8074/8078 found in the RAX120 supposedlay supports UL OFDMA and UL MU-MIMO according to Qualcomm’s press release in 2017 but so far only Downlink MU and OFDMA are enabled even on the latest firmware, WPA3 has been enabled for a while though even with WPA2 fallback active in WPA2+WPA3 mode some really old devices like iPhone 5S and some newer ones like the Oppo One Plus 6 refuse to connect until WPA2 alone is selected.
Also know that for the average home use AX/WiFi 6 wont really boost your performance much over 5Ghz AC, maybe a modest 10% or so. On the other hand 2.4 GHz throughput doubles though, still obviously not as fast a 5Ghz by any means. AX biggest improvement is for multi AP/router dense environments like corporate environments where better spectrum sharing allows better throughput compared to AC.
I’d say wait for 2nd gen AX/WiFi 6 products to have full featured devices and kinks worked out. Also not the best idea to get the latest routers just 6 months into release cycle regardless of brand especially with a new gen WiFi change, since it takes a while to get mature firmware.
Can anyone provide a basic summary of pros and cons of each system.
What would be the benefits of Orbi Wifi 6 setup vs a RAX200 (tri-band) with EAX80 mesh extender (other than the $150 price difference)?
>>>> if one router can cover all areas you'r going to use, RAX200 is your best choise. if your application requries additional wifi range extender, either Orbi system or RAX200 + EAX80 could fit your need but honestly, which one is the best for you will requires real test in your house.
If going for a single router without needing extenders the RAX120 is a better choice than the RAX200 mainly due to the WiFi chipset, Broadcom looking at previous gen didn’t do a great job of implementing ancillary features like MU and Broadcom based devices have had issues with MU enabled causing lower performance and Broadcom routers with 1024QAM on AC did worse than Qualcomm based routers using 256 QAM in terms of peak performance. Qualcomm in my opinion implements advertised features in a more functional manner. Hence the reason I’d pick the RAX120 over the RAX200. Only get the RAX200 if you need to add an extender because then the extra 5Ghz band can be used for backhaul. Just know that higher model number isn’t necessarily better, just look at the performance reviews comparing R7800 (Qualcomm based dualband) vs the R8500 (Broadcom based chipset triband).
I purchased the RAX200 to replace my Linksys EA9500v2 (also a tri-band router). I have a tonne of wifi devices so wanted to stick with a tri-band router as I can allocate devices accordingly. I'm finding 802.11ac speeds on the RAX200 even better than the Linksys and overall, the RAX200 is a brilliant router for wifi range. The RAX200 isn't cheap but if you're looking for a tri-band router and you can afford it, then I highly recommend it!
