Comparison of 200-yuan routers: Is JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi the biggest dark horse?

Although routers have not been very visible to the public in recent years, due to the popularity of concepts such as smart homes and mobile gaming competitions, the seemingly mediocre router market has actually been experiencing a shocking degree of "involution" behind the scenes.

The high-end configurations that were originally only available in thousand-yuan routers have now been lowered to the 200-yuan price range. Consumers do not need to pay such a high cost and can still experience an ultimate Internet experience that is completely different from previous generation routers.

However, I believe that for friends who don’t know much about routers, how to find a cost-effective router that suits their needs is still a very difficult problem. After reading the dazzling detail pages of major manufacturers, it can be dizzying.

Therefore, today, we have prepared the three most popular routers in the 200 yuan price range, namely JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi, TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition and Redmi AX3000. We hope to provide a comprehensive and all-round router review for friends who need to buy a router.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Product Appearance

Although the beauty or ugliness of a router has nothing to do with its performance, as an electronic device that is placed in a fixed position in the home all year round, a good-looking device is ultimately more comfortable than an ugly one. When guests come to your home, you don’t have to worry about them being "awed" by the ugliness of the router. So before comparing the performance specifically, let's first compare the appearance of the three routers.

Redmi AX3000

Xiaomi's products have always been designed with the concept of configuration first and design second. The design of Redmi AX3000 is no exception. In order to ensure the heat dissipation needs of the router, almost all of the upper and lower surfaces of the body are used as heat dissipation holes. But to be honest, it doesn't look good, the design sense is average, and it makes people feel a little perfunctory.

However, it is worth mentioning that the interface design on the back of the Redmi AX3000 is very innovative. The WAN port is specially marked in blue, so that users can directly insert the network cable led out of the optical modem. Although this design is not difficult to implement, it has to be said that this fully reflects the humanized thinking of the Redmi AX3000 team.

TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Display Edition

As the big brother in the router industry, TP-Link has designed a variety of routers. There are routers with corresponding design languages ​​for various scenarios such as business and home. However, the TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Display Edition participating in the comparison today adopts a very personalized gaming style design. The front glossy plastic and diagonal stripes splicing design make it look very dynamic.

However, for the general consumers, it may be difficult to accept buying a router with a strong gaming style. This personalized router is more suitable for gamers.

JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi

It is no exaggeration to say that the design of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi may be my favorite among the three. Although it has many heat dissipation holes on the upper and lower sides like Redmi AX3000, it does not have all the holes. Instead, it adopts a collision design with one-third of the non-hole area and two-thirds of the hole area.

There is also an indicator light in the style of the JD Cloud logo on the front of the JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi, which can inform users of different information by displaying different colors. Overall, it is a router with a more mature design than the Redmi AX3000 and a design that is more in line with the public's aesthetics than the TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition.

Configuration comparison

In terms of configuration, since all three routers belong to the AX3000 series, the processors naturally use Qualcomm's IPQ5000 series processors, but there is still some gap in the processor levels of the three.

Redmi AX3000 and TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition use IPQ5000 and IPQ0509 respectively, so each can only support up to 256MB of memory. If it was a few years ago, then 256MB would definitely be considered a large memory, but in today's WiFi 6 Internet of Things era, if there are many smart homes, then a 256MB router will easily freeze, disconnect from the network, and restart.

The JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi is equipped with the IPQ5018 chip, which also integrates a 2.4G 2x2 574Mbps chip and can support up to 512MB of memory. If you have plans or are not sure whether you will use IoT devices on a large scale in the future, then the JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi is a "future-oriented" option that I highly recommend considering.

Not only that, the power of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi's 5G signal amplifier (5G FEM) is also much higher than the 5G FEM of the other two routers. JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi uses KCT8570HE, which has higher power than the RTC66568 of Redmi AX3000 and the QPF4506 of TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition.

This is reflected in real life, where the 5G WiFi signal of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi has stronger wall penetration performance and longer transmission distance. There is no need to worry about the signal being significantly attenuated across the wall, making it easier to use.

Comparison of actual speed and signal strength

Obviously, in the comparison of hardware configuration, although JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi is much inferior to the two industry predecessors, its cost performance is indeed better than the two predecessors. But does high configuration necessarily mean good signal and fast speed? Let us use the actual test data to give you the answer.

Before starting the test, let me first introduce our test environment. The entire test used Speedtest's BJ Uniform node speed measurement and WiFi signal meter to test signal strength data (OnePlus 7T was used in this step).

As shown in the figure, W is the location where the router is placed. The three routers are placed here in turn. I will test the speed and rate at points A, B, and C respectively, and then test the delay data of the mobile game at point B; the test model is iPhone 13, and the broadband is China Mobile 100M broadband.

Speed ​​test

Speedtest was used to test the speed of only the iPhone 13 after it was connected to the router. The average of three results was taken for each point. The final speed test results are as follows:

JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi

The overall speed test performance of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi is relatively stable. Although its download and upload speeds are not the fastest, it can ensure that the Internet experience will not vary greatly due to changes in location. Similarly, the network delay performance is also very stable. Overall, it can provide users with an experience that allows them to surf the Internet with confidence anywhere in the home.

Redmi AX3000

The speed test results of Redmi AX3000 have the biggest gap. When separated by walls or doors, the Internet experience will show obvious fluctuations. In other words, the signal wall penetration performance and transmission rate of Redmi AX3000 are average, which may be related to the insufficient power of its signal amplifier.

TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Display Edition

Compared with the first two, the performance of TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition is more satisfactory. In the case of close-range walls, it does not have much impact on network delay. Secondly, the download speed may be worse than the first two due to chip performance. If the download speed can be optimized through OTA upgrades in the future, the user experience of TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Exhibition Edition can be greatly improved.

Signal strength test

With only OnePlus 7T connected to the router, the latency test result is the average of the five scores given by the WiFi signal meter. The final results are as follows:

JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi

The performance of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi is definitely a strong one among routers in the same price range. The comprehensive performance of the signal strength at points A, B, and C is the strongest among the three routers. Even in the presence of walls, it can still provide very good WiFi connection quality, demonstrating its WiFi signal's excellent wall penetration and anti-interference performance, making it very suitable for users with complex surrounding WiFi signals.

In this test session, we also specially experienced the Mesh self-organizing network function of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi. The overall operation experience is the simplest among the routers we have ever experienced and evaluated. You only need to plug in the sub-router and reset it, then long press the Joy button and wait for the indicator light to turn blue to complete the self-organizing network.

After completing the self-organizing network, the sub-router was placed in the bedroom. Even on the balcony, the OnePlus 7T can still measure the -21dBm signal strength next to the router. Therefore, if your home is large, we highly recommend trying the self-organizing network function of JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi, which is indeed very suitable for users with large apartments.

However, because the other two routers do not have sub-routers that can use the Mesh function, in order to be fair, we will not include the JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi after Mesh networking in the comparison. The following comparison is still based on a single router test.

Redmi AX3000

Since Redmi is backed by Xiaomi, which started out as a mobile phone manufacturer, the signal strength performance of the Redmi AX3000 is also very good. Although the overall performance lags behind that of the JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi, its signal strength performance is sufficient for most ordinary consumers in my opinion. Therefore, although the performance is not the best, it is also considered to be among the best in the same class.

TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Display Edition

It has to be said that although TP-LINK is the oldest brand among the three contestants, the signal strength performance of TP-LINK XDR3010 Easy Edition is not better than the other two products. Instead, it ranked last. When tested at point A, the data even reached -68dBM once. The signal penetration through walls was not stable, which was somewhat disappointing.

Summarize

After completing the above comparison project, I have to say that I am quite shocked. JD Cloud, the least experienced of the three router manufacturers participating in this comparison, has such a high cost-effectiveness. Not only is the configuration and materials decent, but the actual Internet experience is also fast and stable. It does not look like a novice in the router market at all. Instead, it gives people a sense of dimensionality reduction, like "an expert using a small account to catch fish".

The two relatively older contestants this time, TP-LINK and Redmi, also have their own unique advantages. The former has a unique and personalized appearance design, while the latter's supporting App and web management page are more user-friendly, and can be said to be able to compete with JD Cloud Wireless Bao Houyi.

Of course, given that JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi has an extremely high cost-effectiveness and a simpler appearance design that conforms to the public's aesthetic taste, if we have to decide the winner in this router comparison, I think JD Cloud Wireless Treasure Houyi is the most suitable candidate. It is also the only router that I can safely recommend to my relatives and friends.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.