You’ll find a variety of ax3 owners with similar complaints on the forums, my issues with my ax3 in regards to Tx power are not related here in this case, though it looks like no one has a straight answer for the other issues. Like @Nullcaller said, I’d raise a ticket and hope that it can be fixed in a firmware update.
I’d second the hAP ax2 if you want to stick with MT - it’s a bit more mature, a little less magical-mystery-tour as the ax3.
The straightest answer I can personally give regarding @dalami’s issues, is that my personal undereducated guess, is that something very weird but very dumb is happening with the 5GHz RF chip, QCN5052, right after QC.
With how reliable MikroTik devices usually are, I presume they do a little burn-in test on each device, also testing the wireless-related components. During the test, there must be a load connected to antenna connectors. And after the test, that load must be disconnected. Let’s say it gets disconnected a little bit too soon. Just a tiny bit. Well, the amplifier gets a little bit of a shock. Not the full blast, but still enough to potentially mess it up. Some chips retain full functionality, some don’t. But since this happens after QC, it still counts as a QC pass and a newly-borked router goes into the box and off to the customer.
And this doesn’t happen with other devices, because they’re built in a little bit of a different way. The hAP ac3, for one, uses IPQ4019 as its 5GHz RF chip. All of Chateau axs seem to be limited to 23-24 dBm in TX power, instead of 27-28 dBm that ax3 can do, so there’s definitely some differences in the amplifier stage. This also might be a matter of power of reflected signal. A 4 dBm difference translates to a 2.5 times more powerful signal. Even the ac3 is limited to 25-26 dBm, which is 1.6 times weaker than ax3, still nearly double. So any signal reflected off of an antenna-less connector is roughly double the power on ax3, compared to other boards.
It should be noted that MikroTik devices are manufactured in multiple locations, as far as I’m aware, and it’s fair to assume that some testing parallelization is happening at some point. So it might be that only a select few machines in a select few locations are to blame for all the broked ax3s, thus we don’t see everyone complaining about the ax3, just a few unfortunate souls.
Again, this is a guess, and, to be honest, probably a wrong one. I don’t know anything about MikroTik’s internal processes. But this is the only way that I can imagine an ax3 being half-dead out of the box, assuming MikroTik does everything in their power to QC every router before they send them off to customers. Also, this explanation has that “most issues are usually dumb” spirit about it, which is always good.
I understand you already tried a lot of configurations. But could you repeat the scan with WiFi analyzer with the following differences?
We are looking into this. Big thanks to those of you who send us more info to support.
Im also confused guys… i repeat my knowledges here also :
Im using ac2 as a “replacement” till i found my new router. Ill tested yesterday ax3 the second time (dirrent device as first) and i dont know what is happening. I see finally better signal ratio (neither RB4011, ac3 and ax2 was able to provide in my 80m2 apartment better numbers as ac2!!), better Tx/Rx rates, but the real speed is always at least cca 100-150Mb/s “behind” compared to ac2. Same setup, same place, same clients and i dont understand why is this happening. Im able to get max 600Mb/s (iPhone 13, iPhone 15, Lenovo T14) from ax3, 1meter away from the device. If i take two more steps and make measurement 3meters away from router ill get 400-420Mb/s. For comparison, ac2 provides here 520-560Mb/s speed. And this is the same in every spot…
If i can support/help you with any informations, comparison, please let me know. Im now “dancing” on the edge of the blade with ac2 and its limited memory and have ax3 as paperweight.
Just advice: rename the topic from 5G to 5GHz.
I am also hAP ax3 owner, I also noticed weaker wifi compared to my previous hAP ac2. Probably due to tx-power hard coded lower than regulatory would allow (country Czech).
But I never opened this topic because 5G is mobile network standard, so why should I read that…
I’m a hAP ax2 user at home and I too struggle with 5GHz signal strength downstairs in mainly open space, i.e. same room. My home set-up is hAP ax which is sat in an open fronted cupboard under the TV. My laptop is usually on a desk about 4m away. There is a partial 20cm stone wall and me (!) blocking line of sight. If I watch the logs carefully after the laptop wakes up, I often see entries like this in the log:
It’s doing it right now… connects and then disconnects immediately. After a while it gives up and picks up the 2.4GHz signal.
The laptop has a Realtek 8822CE Wi-Fi 5 chip in there. This is the inSSIDer report from the laptop. I’m connected to Middle-Earth and strength looks pretty good to me. I assume the green line at -70 in inSSIDer is a general “must be above this” guide:
Out of interest, inSSIDer is reporting signal strength of ~-50 but the hAP ax2 log shows about -20 lower. Why the difference?
Just tried with my Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 mobile in the same place and it too struggles - and it has a Wi-Fi 6 chip. My Android tablet however has connected fine at the same spot even though it’s reporting a lower signal strength of -59. All very unscientific but IMO my laptop should be able to connect with a signal that strong - something feels off here which is I supposed why the original poster is sticking with it. I’m avoiding all Mikrotik AX lit in production at the moment.
Interesting that the other network shown above is my neighbour. That’s a similar distance to a Virgin Media Super Hub but through a brick partition wall AND a 1’ thick stone wall. The signal strength is similar if not sometimes a little higher… My hAP ax is currently on 5500MHz frequency with a Tx Power of 24.
I’ve got a bit of spare kit here at the moment so I can do some tests with a cAP ac, a hAP ax lite (on order) and hAP ac lite.
I’ve just put a new Wi-Fi 6 USB adapter in my laptop and it’s connected fine with a signal strength of -59. Is there some quirk with ac devices? Signal strength is similar:
Windows reports a pretty good connection:
But speed test is horrible!!
Just for comparison, this is speed test through my PC wired into the hAP ax2:
I’m going to restart the laptop first, try again and then reboot the hAP ax2… LATER: after restarting the laptop (but not hAP ax2), it’s running at the same speed as wired. All very strange…
Rob just a little reminder to make sure your InSSider or any other scanning software ISN’T running while speed testing!
It will reduce speed significantly…
Good tip - it probably was running but not after the restart.
I have onboard ax210, signals are about -50/-52 so pretty close for me 3mtr distance to hap ax2.
Green is connected to he highlighted blue! Cap ax clients are behind doors hence the -10 more!
Yeah it catches me out all the time because I use Wifiinfoview to hop between BSSID’s and leave it open. ps, if you wish to do that with wifiinfoview you need to disable the auto-connect flag then you can hop to all your AP’s with same SSID 
Each device reports strength of signal received from the link peer. inSSIDer is reporting signal strength of AP, received by laptop. And hAP ax3 reports signal strength of laptop. As AP reports much lower signal strength than laptop, this means either hAP ax3 has shitty receiver (not very likely) or laptop’s Tx power sucks (more likely). The first option would equally affect all clients.
I’ve just come across this thread about SA timeouts:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/not-responding-f-k-a-sa-query-timeout/168864/1
This appears to be the problem on my laptop so not the signal issue as such. If I change from WPA2-PSK/WP3-PSK to WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK, the SA timeout errors stop and my laptop can connect fine. I’m not sure whether this is a problem with RouterOS or the laptop network adapter. Need to do some more reading but my report doesn’t look like a range issue.
Thanks for that - makes sense.
I’ve seen several issues with WPA3. That’s why I suggested to the OP doing the following: http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/hap-ax3-5g-range-troubleshooting/174925/54
Maybe it is better if we do not hijack @dalami’s thread.
Agreed. Will switch to other thread.
This doesn’t really feel like it. WPA3 issues probably wouldn’t depend on distance away from the router, and would also plague other devices that have the same exact hardware and software inside, like the hAP ax2 and the cAP ax, in the exact same way.
They would also be dependent on config. And while @dalami didn’t test (or at least they didn’t post about it) their ax3 against an ax2 with the same client device and same config, OP of the previous ax3 thread had similar issues, and ax2 worked perfectly fine, unless I’m much mistaken.
I understand your point. Still, the test I suggest aims at simplifying the environment by removing elements that potentially play a role. If this does not solve, then there should be a problem on the receiver side (as you pointed out).
I agree. It just seems like @dalami isn’t coming back with any new ax3 tests any time soon, so I’m trying to compensate for that by estimating the probability that this is it.