Nowadays, most of our mobile phones and computers and tablets already support the Wi-Fi6 protocol, in addition to many smart home devices that need to be networked through 2.4GHz, at this time, a high-ceiling, compatible router has become a must-have for every family. Honor recently released honor routers 4 and 4 Pro, which are designed to meet this demand.
At present, the Glory Route 4 Pro has been released, the first sale price is 349 yuan, IT Home has got this product, let's test its strength.
First, hardware
The Honor Routing 4 Pro's package contains a router body and power adapter, in addition to a Cat6 network cable to meet gigabit demand.
The appearance of the Honor Route 4 Pro has not changed much compared to the previous generation, and the overall circumference is 242mm long, 152.7mm wide and 44.5mm high. The fuselage is all white, and the wedge design is very designed. There are a total of 4 external foldable antennas, two for 2.4GHz and two for 5GHz.
In terms of hardware, the Honor Routing 4 Pro is equipped with Qualcomm IPQ5018 dual-core 1.GHz CPU + independent NPU, which is designed to handle network data traffic and provides a more stable high-speed Internet experience in high-speed transmission and multi-user access scenarios. For storage, it's 256MB of memory. To ensure signal coverage, each antenna has its own signal amplifier.
The back of the Honor Route 4 Pro has 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, which all support WAN/LAN blind plug- and are more friendly to Xiaobai. In addition, it also supports Mesh networking, which can form a seamless network with honor home Wi-Fi6 routers and achieve full-house Wi-Fi6 coverage at low cost.
The Honor Route 4 Pro also enjoys an exclusive NFC area, and the Android phone only needs to scan it to directly connect to the Internet, eliminating the embarrassment of guests asking for Wi-Fi passwords.
As we all know, the performance of Wi-Fi 6 routers is much stronger than that of traditional Wi-Fi 5, but there is also a difference between Wi-Fi 6 routers, and the router I use myself supports Wi-Fi 6 networks, but only supports 20/40/80 MHz bandwidth, missing 160MHz. The so-called bandwidth, that is, the frequency range occupied by the modulated carrier, is also the standard for sending wireless signal frequencies, of which 2.4GHz Wi-Fi supports 20/40MHz bandwidth, and 5GHz Wi-Fi supports 20/40/80/160MHz. If the data is likened to traffic flow, the frequency width is the width of the road surface. An 80MHz bandwidth is equivalent to 4 lanes, and a 160MHz bandwidth is equivalent to 8 lanes. Theoretically, 160MHz doubles the speed.
In the actual experience, 160MHz has a very obvious improvement on intra-LAN interconnection. Here I use my own personal experience to introduce you to the difference, the author is using an 80MHz Wi-Fi 6 router to play VR streaming games. The actual measurement of the old router stream speed can only reach about 300Mbps, and after switching to the Honor Route 4 Pro, it is directly increased to 405Mbps.
In the past, when I used VR streaming to play rhythm lightsaber, there would be some occasional stuttering and non-follow feelings, but after switching to the Glory Route 4 Pro, the feel has been improved to a certain extent, and it is easy to get an S-rating.
Honor Routing 4 Pro also supports OFDMA, MU-MIMO and other technologies. OFDMA technology allows routers to send data from up to 8 devices in a single transmission, reducing network latency by 66 percent; MU-MIMO makes it smoother for multiple people to surf the Web.
Second, performance
After reading the parameters, we will actually test it, first of all, everyone is most concerned about the signal coverage, the author installed the router on the workstation, and then use the third-party signal testing software to test whether the office of the IT home and the corridor outside the office can be completely covered. The home office is more than 200 square meters, with no load-bearing wall in the middle, plus the corridor has more than 300 square meters, and there is a load-bearing wall in the middle. The test equipment is the Honor Magic 4 equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8.
We opened the dual-frequency integration, 9 of the 11 test points measured are full of signals, and the farthest two are also separated by a load-bearing wall, and there is still no problem with the Internet, that is, the packet loss rate is higher, but the daily Internet can also be satisfied.
From the above tests, it can be seen that the Honor Route 4 Pro is more suitable for most conventional commercial houses below 200 square meters, if your apartment is a large house or has a large number of load-bearing walls, then buy a group mesh can achieve full house coverage. In the choice of frequency band, it is recommended that smart home devices use a more stable 2.4GHz, and mobile phones, computers and tablets use 5GHz with faster network speed.
Let's test another key parameter – internet speed. First test the speed of transferring files from the intranet, the author uses this computer to transfer a compressed package of about 1G size to the mobile phone intranet, and then uses the mobile phone to transmit it back to the computer to test the upload and download speeds respectively. Finally, the average download was 521Mbps and the average upload was 646Mbps, which was quite fast.
Finally, we test the speed of the external network, the author's broadband is 300M telecom broadband, tested with Honor Magic4, the measured download speed reached 349Mbps, can run full of 300M broadband, but then the author's upload bandwidth is really poor.
Honor Routing can be set up with the Smart Space App like other smart homes. What impressed me most about this software is that its settings are clear and simple, suitable for most ordinary consumers who have no relevant knowledge.
For example, the following channel optimization function can automatically avoid busy channels with just one click.
In addition, it also has a unique "online lesson acceleration" function built-in, which basically increases the priority of the traffic when detecting the traffic of the online lesson application, so as to avoid parents who play games by brushing vibrato and affecting their children's learning.
3. Summary
Wi-Fi 6 is becoming more and more popular these days, and if you're looking to upgrade your router, it's highly recommended that you stop thinking about low-end Wi-Fi 5 routers. In terms of my experience in recent years, Wi-Fi 6 is the most obvious technology to improve the feeling, even far better than 5G. The Honor Routing 4 Pro is a Wi-Fi 6 router suitable for the general public and is difficult to get started.
Honor Route 4 Pro has opened pre-sale on the e-commerce platform, the official retail price is 349 yuan, and friends who have Wi-Fi 6 replacement needs on the router at home may wish to pay attention to it.