By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
EnGenius was one of the first Wi-Fi vendors to launch a Wi-Fi 7 AP last year and now the company is expanding its attack on the SME segment with a more affordable Wi-Fi 7 product. At US$299 the new ECW526 offers the full suite of Wi-Fi 7 features and delivers a peak data rate of 9.5 Gbps. The ECW526 is powered by Qualcomm’s Networking Pro 1220 chipset. Most SMEs will likely be hard pressed to find good reasons why they should spend more on a new Cloud-managed Wi-Fi 7 network – or why they should wait.
Last week EnGenius – one of the most successful smaller providers of enterprise Wi-Fi networking gear – released their second Wi-Fi 7 AP in the form of the ECW526, a tri-band unit incorporating the full suite of Wi-Fi 7 features. The new AP represents a significant improvement in affordability over EnGenius first (and more powerful) Wi-Fi 7 product but still delivers impressive capacity and arguably all the Wi-Fi 7 capabilities you’ll ever need if you’re an average SME.
EnGenius rightly points out that Wi-Fi 7 is a new standard for all Wi-Fi bands – including 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz – while Wi-Fi 6E was simply the 6 GHz extension for Wi-Fi 6. The ECW526 offers all the advanced capabilities of Wi-Fi 7, including 320 MHz channels, 4096-QAM, Multi-Link Operation, and preamble puncturing.
“We’re looking at much better all-around performance in application areas that otherwise can be challenging for networks to support at a high quality of service, such as heavy use of video conferencing, wireless multimedia, a high density of devices, and more. And don’t forget that Wi-Fi 7 APs are backwards compatible, which means you get all the new capabilities without having to give up any part of your current network performance or legacy device support,” says Bryan Slayman, Product Marketing Manager at EnGenius.
He also says that Wi-Fi 7 adoption is looking increasingly positive as EnGenius delivery volumes for Wi-Fi 7 APs has tripled in the last couple of months, sparked by strong interest from the residential segment as well as small businesses. EnGenius mission is now to make Wi-Fi 7 available to an even broader segment of the SME market. “There really is no longer any reason why SMEs should wait with their Wi-Fi 7 upgrades, now that equipment is available at this cost level. And as always our Cloud-management system is license free, which should simplify the upgrade decision,” Bryan Slayman says.
Both EnGenius new ECW526 (2x2x2) and larger capacity ECW536 (4x4x4) Wi-Fi 7 APs are available now from EnGenius resellers and distributors. The price of the larger capacity ECW536 has now been reduced from its original US$1199 price to just US$499. Read more here.
For more details also see EnGenius’ highly recommended Wi-Fi 7 webinar below.
/Claus.
