Within reason, how many device connections should a SXT set up as an AP be able to handle? Set up as an AP, one there are more than say 25-28 devices (laptops, phones, tablets), then the wireless interface seems to freeze. You can still disconnect and reconnect to it, but are unable to ping anything. However, if you log into Winbox, you can ping out fine, and the CPU is not pegged at 100%. Turning off the wireless interface and turning it back on fixes the issue until it gets north of 25 connections again. I know that I can limit it under the Max Station Count, but was hoping for more connections.
The AP in theory can handle much more connections than that. But in reality the 802.11 protocol will have problems. And in your scenario with phones laptops you have a lot of low power devices, so you will have a lot of hidden node issues. Also as some client signals will be very low their rates will aslo be low which will cause more problems.
It will be very hard to improve that, but try to enable cts-to-self protection and using rts/cts on clients where possible. Also look for clients with marginal signals which will be very bad for overall performance.