Tenda mesh wifi 6 products have been available in the market adding previous ones that are still based on legacy wifi 5 including nova mw6 and nova mw12. Are these legacy products still worth buying, and how these nova series compete with popular deco series?
Nova Mesh Wifi 5 Series
Currently the newer models of nova series based on latest wifi6 technology have been released to the market and ready to compete with popular products from other vendors including tplink and asus. Tenda released two models of mesh wifi6 products, the tenda nova mx6 ax1800 and tenda mx12 ax3000 mesh wifi 6 systems. See also tenda nova mx6 and mx12 vs deco series.
With these new wifi 6 products, is it still worth buying legacy nova mw6 and mw12? If it is, which one is better value between nova mw6, nova mw12 and deco series?
Nova MW6 and MW12
Tenda with its nova mw3 is greatly successful in the market which is tagged with lower price than others. And the newer models nova mw5c and nova mw12 are also tagged with the same low price strategy to get this huge entry level market share.
Nova mw5 is also dual band like nova mw6, but Nova mw12 series is not. What are the main differences between tenda nova mw6 and nova mw12 can be seen in the following table 1 below.
Wifi
The main difference between the nova mw6 and mw12 is the dual band on mw6 as opposed to three-band on nova mw12. Does the addition of one radio band mean a lot? Yes, it does because this @ 5GHz radio band addition serves as a dedicated backhaul. Moreover this band addition also becomes an additional band in turbo backhaul mode where the three radio bands become dynamic backhaul to ensure optimal traffic between connected devices and backhaul link communication between router and satellite nodes.
Despite the major difference in tri-band, the addition of an Ethernet port from two to three ports is also advantageous so you can add more wired connections for Ethernet-based devices.
When it comes to create wired backhaul, with three ethernet ports you can configure wired backhaul by applying star backhaul topology by connecting the other two mw12 nodes to the mw12 router node using utp network cable. With two ethernet port as in nova mw3, you can use daisy chain backhaul topology. You cannot configure star topology backhaul except adding separate switch.
Pay attention to the following table details for nova mw6 vs nova mw12.
Table 1 Nova mw6 vs mw12
| Nova series | Tenda Nova MW6 | Tenda Nova MW12 |
| Wifi technology | Simultaneous Dual band ac1200 with 2×2 MU-MIMO wave 2 (up to 9 Nova mw6 nodes) | Simultaneous tri- band ac2100 with 2×2 MU-MIMO wave 2 (up to 12 Nova mw12 nodes) |
| Wifi speeds | 867Mbps @5GHz; 300Mbps @2.4GHz | 867Mbps @5GHz; 867Mbps @5GHz 300Mbps @2.4GHz |
| Antennas | Internal antennas (no detail specified) | 4x internal antennas |
| Ethernet Ports | 2x Gigabit Ethernet Ports WAN and LAN on mesh router; 2x LAN on satellite mesh points | 3x Gigabit Ethernet Ports 1x WAN and 2x LAN on mesh router; 3x LAN on satellite mesh points |
| Backhaul link | Shared bandwidth | Dynamic three radio band backhaul |
| Technical coverage | 6,000 sq ft /3-pack | 6,000 sq ft /3-pack |
| Processor | Unspecified | Dual-core 900MHz CPU, 256M DDR3 memory |
| Price | $117.00 | $214.99 |
Compared to the nova mw6 series which only has two radio bands and 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports, the nova mw12 with three radio bands and more Ethernet ports is more promising to provide better performance and more advantage.
Nova mw12 vs Deco M9 vs Meshforce M7
How this Nova mw12 will compete with other products particularly compared with Meshforce M7 as new comer vendor and Deco M9 as one of featured products introduced by big vendor TP Link? See also wifi-6 mesh products offered by TP Link, Deco x68 ax3600 vs Orbi.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this nova mw12 compared to tp link deco m9 and meshforce m7? To find out the differences between the three products that work in the same network segment, here we present two comparison tables of the three products.
Table 2 presents a spec comparison between nova mw12 and deco m9 plus, while table 3 is a spec comparison table between nova mw12 and mehforce m7.
Wifi technology
These three products are designed with the same simultaneous three radio bands, each @5ghz band is the same and only slightly different on 2.4Ghz band on the deco m9.
Tenda nova mw12 and deco m9 have similarities in their approach to backhaul links between nodes with dynamic backhaul, although both leave one @5ghz band as a dedicated backhaul and when the demand for bandwidth between nodes increases, the other two bands take on the role of providing bandwidth for backhaul needs in addition of dedicated backhaul @5GHz band. For deco m9, dynamic backhaul is limited up to 1,500Mbps only (867 + 50% of 867 + 50% of 400). There is no information for nova whether there is a dynamic backhaul limitation or not.
Unlike the deco and nova with dynamic backhaul, the Meshforce m7 uses a dedicated @ 5GHz backhaul as well as a wired backhaul option.
Keep in mind that although the deco m9 (as well as nova and meshforce) provide the option of wired backhaul using Ethernet, this @5 GHz dedicated backhaul band will be reserved as not used as connected devices. So the total bandwidth for clients is (867+400) Mbps. This dedicated backhaul will serve as a fallback when there is disruption in the Ethernet connection.
Hardware
Both nova mw12 and meshforce m7 are embedded with the same dual core processor, on the other hand the deco m9 uses a quad core processor. This is understandable considering that deco m9 comes with tp-link homecare software, which of course requires more processing tasks than the two competitors, nova and meshforce.
For Ethernet ports, nova and m7 are equipped with one more port as opposed to deco m9. Sometimes we need more Ethernet ports for wired connections.
Table 2 Nova mw12 vs Deco M9
| Mesh model | Tenda Nova MW12 (3-pack) | Deco M9 Plus (3-pack) |
| Wifi technology | Simultaneous tri- band ac2100 with 2×2 MU-MIMO wave 2 | Simultaneous tri-band AC2200 mesh 4×4 MU-MIMO and supports Bluetooth 4.2; ZigBee HA 1.2 |
| Wifi speeds | 867Mbps @5GHz; 867Mbps @5GHz 300Mbps @2.4GHz | 867Mbps @5GHz; 867Mbps @5GHz 400Mbps @2.4GHz |
| Antennas | 4x internal antennas | 8x internal antennas |
| Ethernet Ports | 3x Gigabit Ethernet Ports 1x WAN and 2x LAN on mesh router; 3x LAN on satellite mesh points | 2x Gigabit Ethernet WAN/LAN auto sensing |
| Backhaul link | Dynamic three radio band backhaul with auto turbo backhaul mode | Dynamic backhaul from dedicated 866Mbps up to 1,500Mbps (tri-band) and optional wired Ethernet backhaul |
| Technical coverage | 6,000 sq ft /3-pack | 4,500 sq ft / unit |
| Security | WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK(default) | WPA / WPA2 A free lifetime subscription to TP-Link HomeCare powered by Trend Micro for Antivirus, Parental Controls and QoS |
| Processor | Dual-core 900MHz CPU, 256M DDR3 memory | Qualcomm 717 MHz Quad-core CPU |
| Price (oCT 2022) | $190.99 | $218 /3-pack |
Security
Compared to the two competitors, which are only equipped with standard security and parental control, the deco m9 comes with free lifetime TP Link HomeCare software that works as antivirus, parental control and QoS. This is very advantages for the protection of your network security and connected devices against any internet threats.
Another advantage of the deco m9 is the built-in zigbee smarthub for easy access to smarthub devices in one app.
Table 3 Nova mw12 vs Meshforce m7
| Mesh model | Tenda Nova MW12 (3-pack) | Meshforce M7 (3-pack) |
| Wifi technology | Simultaneous tri- band ac2100 with 2×2 MU-MIMO wave 2 | Simultaneous tri-band ac2100 wave 2 with 2×2 MU-MIMO |
| Wifi speeds | 867Mbps @5GHz; 867Mbps @5GHz 300Mbps @2.4GHz | 867Mbps @5GHz band 1; 867Mbps @5GHz band 2; 300Mbps @2.4GHz |
| Antennas | 4x internal antennas | 4x internal antennas |
| Ethernet Ports | 3x Gigabit Ethernet Ports 1 x WAN and 2 x LAN mesh router; 3x LAN on satellite mesh points | 1x Gigabit WAN port ; 2x Gigabit LAN ports |
| Backhaul link | Dynamic three radio band backhaul with auto turbo backhaul mode | Dedicated backhaul @5GHz 867Mbps and optional wired Ethernet |
| Technical coverage | 6,000 sq ft /3-pack | 6,000 sq ft /3-unit |
| Security | WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK(default) | WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK (default) |
| Processor | Dual-core 900MHz CPU, 256M DDR3 memory | Dual-core Processor with 256MB DDR3 |
| Price (Dec 2022) | $190.99 | $157.99 (3-pack) |
Technically, 3-pack nova mw12 and 3-pack meshforce m7 provide the same signal coverage up to 6,000 sq ft as 2-pack deco m9 and the price is also not much different. From technical and feature standpoints, the deco m9 outperforms its competitors nova mw12 and meshforce m7. Click the link below to shop the products on Amazon (#ads).
- Click here to SHOP Nova MW12 on Amazon
- Or you may like to SHOP Deco M9 with smart hub ZigBee
- Or SHOP Meshforce M7
Related products
TP-Link introduces new deco series @ ax6600, see Deco x90 ax6600 vs Asus xt8 and also Deco x90 ax6600 vs Orbi rbk852.
Instead of mesh wifi, you may also like new introduction of wifi-6 routers offered by TP-link – Archer ax90 ax6600 wifi-6 router vs Netgear rax70.