Xiaomi router, the fourth one! The AX9000 has the best performance and breaks the old order of high premium of traditional brands

“Natural Selection Number , forward four! "

There are countless golden quotes in the sci-fi masterpiece "The Three-Body Problem", but some netizens said that the most exciting one is Zhang Beihai's "command" without any emotion. The BGM that comes with it is like Li Yunlong's shouting "Fire" while standing behind the Italian cannon.

Whether to move forward or fire, it means a major decision. For Xiaomi routers, the appearance of the third-generation WiFi 6 flagship AX9000 is the "forward four" that represents full speed without hesitation - Xiaomi routers are about to fly to their own stars and seas.

Among all Xiaomi products, the router is probably the most criticized product by users. From the design to the performance to the firmware and software, almost every aspect has been criticized by users over the years. If a user's complaint is a brick, Xiaomi routers can be used to build a Great Wall that circles the earth seven and a half times.

Xiaomi is certainly aware of these problems, otherwise it would not have had a series of popular products such as AX5, AX6, AX1800 that were gradually accepted by users.

In the middle of the game, Xiaomi Router still fought a comeback with its product, neatly stacking the bricks thrown by users one by one until it built a "Star Fortress AX9000".

In fact, thanks to the powerful performance of several previous popular products, Xiaomi router has quietly gone from being "avoided by everyone" to the second place in national sales, second only to TP-Link.

But obviously Xiaomi’s goal will not just be to compete with TP, which focuses on volume. It needs to continue to move upward, break through the premium ceiling of the thousand-yuan router market, and let it return to its original value level. AX9000 will thus emerge.

Xiaomi was nervous about launching its first 1,000-yuan router product, so it changed its simple packaging style and used an exaggeratedly large foam box as a container, providing an exceptional protection standard for its first high-end product.

As for the appearance of AX9000, there are already a lot of unboxing articles on the Internet, so I won't go into details here. In short, the appearance is very sci-fi, showing Xiaomi's ambition in router products. However, some users think that this domineering big guy with a net weight of more than 2000 grams cannot be placed in the weak current box, and it is a bit "occupying space". There is an old saying that goes like this, if you love a girl, you have to love her all, you really can't have your cake and eat it too.

Perhaps it is precisely because of the consideration that this machine can only be placed on the desktop, so Xiaomi also equipped it with RGB light pollution full of combat feeling, which Xiaomi itself calls "e-sports lighting effect".

Specifically, the AX9000 is equipped with 4 light strips, each with 2 RGB lights, which can mix up to 16.7 million colors. When the user starts the Xiaomi mobile phone exclusive game acceleration, the LED light will turn into a green breathing light. In addition, there are 5 LED lighting effects to choose from, including constant light, breathing light, color cycle, rainbow light, and strobe star light.

Let me insert a sentence here. Perhaps it is to highlight the friendly support of AX9000's "Xiaomi Fast Connect" function for AIOT (Internet of Things) products. After the user changes the router password, there is no need to debug the smart devices one by one to connect to the Internet. The router will automatically synchronize the new password to each device. Therefore, the AX9000 App is currently placed in Mi Home, not MiWIFI.

Considering the wide influence of Xiaomi in AIOT and the high user penetration rate, this is probably not a big problem. At least in the use, I did not feel any inconvenience.

The overall UI interface is as clean and simple as Xiaomi's previous products, and it also has all the necessary functions. Of course, I still hope that Xiaomi can continue to optimize its flagship products and frequently launch new firmware to enhance product value for users.

Back to the AX9000 product itself. I believe that Xiaomi's launch of a flagship router product in the 1,000 yuan range during this period is a result of thorough consideration. The general background is naturally that Xiaomi's overall router sales have come to the second place in the market, and a product that can hold its own is needed to show off.

From the perspective of product strength itself, after Xiaomi has reaped the rewards in the mid- and low-end markets, in order to improve its own brand, it also needs such a product to prove its technical strength, firstly to consumers, and secondly to the supply chain. Especially at the current time of chip shortage, Xiaomi needs to establish its own strong voice at the end of the industrial chain.

Therefore, there is a view that in the actual use of ordinary users, the difference between AX9000 and AX6000 is not that big. However, in order to highlight the word "flagship", Xiaomi still launched AX9000, and the means of implementation is also very simple and crude, that is, piling up materials, melting all the top parts currently available on the market into one furnace, and offering its own interstellar fortress trick.

In fact, most top-end products are like this. The performance may be only 10% higher than that of a sub-flagship, but both the brand and the user are willing to make endless attempts for this.

Xiaomi Router, go four!

The hardware stack of AX9000 is as follows:

CPU: Qualcomm IPQ8072 / 2.2GHz / 14nm / 20240 DMIPS computing power

NPU: Dual-core 1.7GHz

RAM: 1GB

ROM: 256MB

12 antennas, 12-channel signal amplifiers

Total rate: 9000Mbps

5G Gaming band rate: 4804Mbps (4*4 AX@160MHz)

5G band rate: 2402Mbps (4*4 AX@80MHz)

2.4G band rate: 1148Mbps (4*4 AX@40MHz)

AIoT 2.4G+5G dual-band antenna: 600Mbps

WiFi 6 Enhanced 4K QAM Technology

Support Xiaomi fast connection

2.5G network port, support WAN/LAN switching

USB3.0 interface

After looking at the ingredient list of AX9000D, to use an inappropriate analogy, facing a pile of abalone and king crab, who the chef is actually doesn't matter much. Of course, this is an exaggeration, just to illustrate the arrogance of the dishes themselves. After all, cooking is very different from making electronic products, because routers also involve underlying issues such as firmware. Without a good chef (programmer), it is impossible to mix these top-notch "ingredients" to make the most delicious taste.

Fortunately, after several years of doubts, the tuning work of Xiaomi router's underlying software has been improved day by day. For several previous best-selling products, users have made the most practical response by buying them.

The unanimous argument on the Internet that the Xiaomi router software is not good should really be turned over a new leaf, because the facts have proved that whether compared with high-end products or with mass-market products, the Xiaomi router is now really strong in terms of software.

In addition, Xiaomi, whose profit margin is only 5 percentage points, also maintains extremely high competitiveness in its flagship routers, and still achieves the product standard of the lowest price for the same performance and the highest configuration for the same level.

The specific advantages of AX9000 in terms of product, performance and price will not be compared here, because everyone has his or her own evaluation criteria, and forcibly leveling the standards will not help create a happy and peaceful online speech environment.

Regardless of the measurement criteria, one obvious consensus standard is that the AX9000 has visible care in workmanship, and basically spares no expense in both where it should and should not be saved.

Each chip of AX9000 is covered with a metal shield to prevent interference from external signals and ensure effective signal transmission. A whole piece of thick heat sink fins and heat sink, as well as an active cooling fan that will only start when it reaches the extreme peak, plus a large ventilation grille and unobstructed air duct, are enough to ensure that it can run 7 x 24 x 365 around the clock without any problems such as lag due to heat problems.

As can be seen from the above picture, there are external antennas hidden in the "big claws" of AX9000. From the outside, it looks like 4 antennas, but in fact, there are 4 groups of antennas, each "claw" is a group, and there are 3 antennas in this group, so there are 12 antennas in total, and each antenna is also equipped with a signal gain amplifier chip.

So, how does the AX9000, a Xiaomi router with huge ambitions and fully loaded hardware, perform in actual use?

After entering the background of AX9000 on the PC side, we can clearly see its three frequency bands, namely 2.4G, 5G and 5G Game, especially the latter, which has a bandwidth of 160MHz. Xiaomi officials have made a simple analogy for this. If 80MHz is a two-way 8-lane, then it is a two-way 16-lane, which will be more advantageous when processing ultra-high concurrent data. Although this value has no reference value for ordinary users, for e-sports players who pay attention to peak confrontation, every millisecond is the key to victory.

Xiaomi also equipped the AX9000 with an independent WiFi chip and antenna on the 5G Game band, and other bands can ensure low latency for games even when watching high-definition videos. In this sense, the AX9000 has really achieved perfection, that is, actively pursuing overwhelming advantages in parameters, and using this to widen the gap in grade with its own and other products of friendly companies.

Due to limited conditions, we did not test the maximum number of connected devices, but only the speed test. Because the media has already done extreme tests on Xiaomi's sub-flagship products, those who are interested can search for it, and the result is that Xiaomi wins completely, even if 100 devices are connected, the device can still play high-definition videos smoothly.

In real life, few users would have so many devices connected to a router. Considering that the AX9000 has taken a step further in performance, this test is more of a paper value and does not provide much practical guidance.

First, a network speed test was conducted on the PC side over 10 meters away and separated by three walls. The laptop is Lenovo's Xiaoxin Ryzen version, which does not support WiFi 6, but it still achieved a downlink score of 138.52Mbps under Beijing Unicom's 100M broadband.

Switching to the mobile phone, because the mobile phone supports WiFi 6 and is in the same room as the router, it is connected to the 5G Game band. The downlink performance immediately soared to 152.55Mbps, fully unleashing the potential of 100M broadband and producing an effect close to 200M broadband.

Since I only have one Xiaomi router that supports Mesh, I have not tested the AX9000. However, judging from its performance and parameters, it should be able to lead the trend for at least 3 years.

AX9000 can form a Mesh network with up to 10 Xiaomi WiFi 6 routers, and its tri-band Mesh has an independent backhaul. Multiple routers are connected using the 160MHz 5G frequency band to ensure that the 2.5G network port can be fully utilized during wireless networking. Unlike previous routers, half of the bandwidth needs to be allocated to ensure data backhaul.

In addition, in the stability test, after more than 10 hours of high-intensity overnight data transmission test, 4 computers' BT download + 1 TV's Blu-ray iQiyi, the AX9000 hardly had too much heat. That is to say, it encountered almost no challenges in these test items. As we all know, for a router, stability is the most important existence. I dare not say how strong it is, at least in daily use, it should be stress-free.

In general, AX9000 is an all-round display of Xiaomi router's strength in its move towards high-end. The stacking of materials shows its muscles, and the shape of the interstellar fortress reveals its ideal of rushing to the sea of ​​stars. From the perspective of cost-effectiveness and actual experience, it is like a declaration of war on traditional router powers - those brands that sell routers for 3,000 or 4,000 yuan, you really have to be careful this time, your old high-premium order has been shattered.

AX9000, Xiaomi router, move forward four!

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.