Huawei produces various products with IT-related technology and one of the product segments that is also targeted is wifi router. Two series of wifi routers in the entry-level class are the Huawei ax3 ax3000 which is entered in the entry-level market share with stiff competition from various vendors including tp link in the ax3000 and ax1800 network segment.
In this article:
Huawei AX3 Routers
Most Huawei loyal users are familiar with Huawei products on Smartphone which are indeed a very large market share; almost everyone today has a Smartphone in their hands. For this reason, Huawei is also targeting a large share of wifi router products in the entry level segment with its Huawei ax3 ax3000 wifi-6 router to target their loyal users to built their home wifi network with the same Huawei gear.
Two Huawei AX3 series
With the same network segment ax3000, Huawei released two series of AX3. Both are physically exactly the same except the processing unit on the board is different. The first faster one is embedded with Quad core processing unit (Gigahome Quad-core 1.4 GHz CPU) and the second series is only embedded with Dual core processor (Gigahome Dual-core 1.2 GHz CPU). Both series are targeted the large market share in entry level wifi router that has been flooded by vendors from small to giant vendors.
Gigahome CPU is one of best CPU products introduced by Hisilicone, one of global semiconductor company which is owned by Huawei. So it is quite clear that Huawei makes their IT product brand completely designed using products with Huawei’s own technology. This ensures the compatibility level of your Huawei brand products is very high.
Different speed performance
Certainly with different class of processor embedded in each machine board, their processing performance is different, especially in the processing speed of the wifi networking tasks on devices connections. The speed of a dual core processor is mathematically slower than a quad core processor, although there are few factors that are not as simple as the difference in speed; of course the difference is lower than twofold.
Huawei Wi-Fi 6-enabled phones
Although these two Huawei ax3 wifi-6 routers as general are used to share wifi internet connections with all internet devices in homes, Huawei specifically emphasizes these products to pair with all Huawei wifi 6-enabled phones, tablets and laptops to get optimum performance. This is because they are equipped with the same Huawei’s self-developed Wi-Fi chipset as the foundation of chipset synergy.
Both Huawei ax3 routers are embedded with the same Gigahome CPU but different core, produced by one of Huawei wholly owned subsidiary business – the HiSilicone semiconductor products.
AX3000
Slowly, wifi-6 based devices will replace wifi-5 based devices in the next one or few years, ranging from wireless adapters to mobile devices. For desktops, today you can find few models of PCI-e wifi-6 adapters in the market such as the one offered by the TP-link Archer tx3000e, and today you can find few models of USB wifi-6 adapter available in the market such as Asus USB-ax56 ax1800 adapter.
People tend to try new technology by purchasing the product that doesn’t cost lot of money, and that’s what Huawei is offered with its AX3 wifi-6 routers series that come with affordable price. The Huawei ax3 dual core model retails drop down under $ 50 today and the quad core version retails for around $ 80. Compare these two products with other similar products offered by Asus, Netgear, Linksys or TP link which are still selling for over $ 120, even though today probably the prices are also dropped below their MSRPs.
These two products are based on simultaneous dual band ax3000 wireless-6 technology delivering wifi speeds up to 2400Mbps @5ghz radio band with 1024-QAM and 160MHz frequency bandwidth in connecting to compliant devices with 2×2 MU-MIMO, and up to 600Mbps @2.4GHz radio band.
Highlights
- Simultaneous dual band ax3000 wifi-6 router with 2×2 MU-MIMO connecting up to 128 devices
- Wifi speeds up to 2400Mbps @5Ghz and up to 600Mbps @2.4Ghz for total bandwidth of up to 3,000Mbps
- Gigabit Ethernet ports, 1xGigabit WAN port and 3xGigabit LAN ports
- Perfect pair with other Huawei’s wifi 6-based phones, laptops, and other Huawei’s devices with 160MHz frequency band
- Powered by Gigahome Quad core 1.4GHz processor (first model) or Gigahome dual core 1.2GHz processor (second model)
- Security features: Anti-brute force algorithms, WPA3, Firewall, DMZ, PAP / CHAP, DMZ / DoS attack protection
Cons
- Doesn’t come with USB port for shared storage disk
With all Huawei phones, laptops, and other devices based on similar wifi-6 chipset are very good pair considering the synergy chipset introduced by Hisilicone is from the same Huawei brand.
Huawei AX3 vs TP link AX3000 routers
We take one of TP-link products – the TP link ax3000 router (aka Archer AX50) as a comparison to Huawei ax3 where these two products are designed based on the same ax3000 network segment. The two companies Huawei and TP-link are two major vendors in the same information technology from China. It’s just that Huawei has wider variety of products, including Smartphone products.
We compare the Huawei ax3 ws7200 quad-core version where the price is closer to the selling price of the TP Link ax3000, while the price of Huawei dual-core version is a lot different from the TP-Link.
TP Link Archer AX50 vs AX55
So far you can find that there are three models of TP link ax3000 including TP-link archer ax50, archer ax55 and TP-link ax3000 Pro. The first release was archer ax50 and then came the second series with few enhancement features and specs. And the latest series in the same ax3000 segment is tp-link archer ax3000 Pro.
See also Deco X20 Voice AX1800 with smart speakers.
As discussed in the other article, the tp link ax50 is the first series offered by tp-link in ax3000 network segment. And in the newer model tp-ink introduced archer ax55 that also works at the same segment, it comes with few enhancements including Onmensh support. With Onemesh support this will allow this ax55 to join whole home network with other tp-link Onemesh compatible products including TP-link Archer gx90 gaming router.
Refer to the following spec and feature differences between these two series, tp link archer ax50 vs ax55 that are designed with the same ax3000 network segment.
Table 1. TP-link Archer ax50 vs ax55
| Model | TP link Archer ax50 | TP link Archer ax55 |
| Ethernet Ports | 1x Gigabit WAN Port; 4x Gigabit LAN ports 2 LAN Ports with Link aggregation (LAG) | 1x Gigabit WAN Port; 4x Gigabit LAN ports No Link aggregation LAG |
| Network security | HomeCare™ Antivirus: Malicious Site Checker Port Intrusion Prevention Infected Device Isolation Notification and Log | HomeShield Security Real-Time IoT Protection Malicious Site Blocker Intrusion Prevention System DDoS Attack Prevention Home Network Scanner |
| QoS | QoS by device Homecare QoS: QoS by Application | QoS by device |
| One mesh | N/A | Onemesh supports |
| Price | $69.99 | $129.99 |
Both series are equipped with 5x gigabit ports, 1x Gigabit wan and 4x Gigabit LAN ports. See that there is no different between the two 5pcs ports, however tp-link ax50 supports link aggregation while ax55 doesn’t. There is a drawback on the ax55 which does not support link aggregation. Does the absent of link aggregation (LAC) feature matter?
It matters when it comes to multi-gig LAN connection to those Ethernet-based devices that support link aggregation such as high speed NAS such as Asustor AS5202T that comes with two 2.5Gbps LAN ports and supports link aggregation.
With tp-link ax50 you need to enable this link aggregation feature from the configuration menu Advanced > Network > LAN. From Link aggregation tab, you need to Click the Link Aggregation tick box and select Port3 and Port4 for combining them into teaming port.
What about tp-link Ax3000 Pro, what is the difference with tp-link ax50 and ax55. TP-link ax3000 pro is the same as ax55, however this pro series comes with one 2.5Gbps WAN/LAN configurable port in addition of 5x 1.0 Gigabit port.
Huawei AX3 vs TP link ax50
Now let’s focus on the comparison between Huawei ax3 vs TP-link ax50 ax3000 wifi6 routers. We just discussed the differences between TP-link ax50; ax55 and ax3000 pro, so we just compare the first release of tp-link ax3000 ax50 with Huawei ax3000.
We use table 2 as the reference for spec comparison between tp-link ax50 vs Huawei ax3. What’s the difference?
Ethernet
TP-link ax3000 like most wifi-6 routers in general has 5x Gigabit Ethernet ports, one 1.0Gbps for wan and four 1.0Gbps ports for LAN. You can compare to Huawei, which only provides 3x LAN ports beside the WAN port, one less Ethernet port than most wifi routers on the market. And of course people will use more of a wifi connection than wired Ethernet.
As discussed above, ax50 supports teaming ports that combine two Gigabit LAN ports to become multi-gig link you may connect to NAS with two Ethernet ports with link aggregation support such as Asustor as520. If link aggregation matters to your home network, tp-link ax50 will be preference, moreover ax50 offers more ports.
USB port
One more cons from Huawei is the absence of a USB port which is very useful if you need to share a USB hard disk. You can compare it with TP Link Archer ax50 ax3000 which is equipped with one USB 3.0 port that supports the functions of apple time machine for Mac users, ftp server or media server or Samba server.
Huawei, which is targeting Huawei Smartphone users to be paired with ax3 wifi router, will certainly be more useful if it is equipped with a USB port so that it can be used as share storage for Smartphone users who may have limited memory capacity.
Table 2 Huawei ax3 vs TP-link AX50
| Model | Huawei ax3 ax3000 (Huawei ws7200) | TP link ax50 |
| Wifi technology | Simultaneous dual band ax3000 with 2×2 MU-MIMO | Simultaneous dual band ax3000 with 2×2 MU-MIMO |
| Wifi speeds | 2404Mbps @5GHz; 2×2 574Mbps @2.5GHz | 5 GHz: 2402 Mbps(802.11ax), 2.4 GHz: 574 Mbps(802.11ax) |
| Antennas | 4x external antennas | 4x external antennas |
| Ethernet Ports | 1x Gigabit WAN port 3x Gigabit LAN ports | 1x Gigabit WAN port 4x Gigabit LAN ports |
| USB Port | N/A | 1x USB 3.0 |
| WPA3 ready | Yes | N/A |
| Processor | Gigahome Quad core 1.4GHz processor | Intel’s dual-core CPU |
| Price (Dec 2022 in Amazon) | $99.99 | $69.99 |
The processor embedded in the archer ax50 is only dual core CPU which has slower processing speed than Huawei which uses a Gigahome quad core processor.
With only $30 the price difference, the tp link ax3000 is sold slightly less expensive than Huawei for the quad core version. Meanwhile, when compared to Huawei dual core version there is a fairly large price difference.
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Related products
For top notch products you may consider new wave of wifi 6e technology – see Netgear raxe500 axe11000 vs Asus axe11000.
For businesses, to support large number of AP devices you may consider Netgear wax610 wifi 6 AP products or Unifi NanoHD access point.