I saw Mikrotik recently announce the new Chateau LTE12 (2025). But it’s too new, so no real-life tests are available on the internet. Has someone tested it? How much is it better if you compare it to a regular Chateau LTE12?
In general, what Mikrotik device has the best 4G speed/ping? If 5G is not available in here, only 4G LTE, is Chateau 5G ax still best option in terms of speed/ping?
Is it worth purchasing a separate 4G antenna, or is it enough to use an embedded antenna?
P.S. From my experience, many expensive Android tablets have amazing performance in terms of 4G. Is it because they have a better antenna or heavily tested modem?
Well, it remains
LTE Category 12 12 (600Mbps Downlink, 150Mbps Uplink)
if you want to compare it with latest-latest devices, you probably need to take the LTE18 model:
which is some 120 bucks more expensive, but has:
LTE Category 18 (1.2Gbps Downlink, 150Mbps Uplink)
and has more ram, storage and a more powerful CPU, faster wireless.
The need for an external antenna depends on the kind of cell coverage you have, and also on how your ISP cells/towers “behave”, I don’t think there can be a generic rule.
As well it depends on the kind of service you have the choice for the one or the other, it makes little sense to spend the extra money for a faster device if the service in your area is slow.
The 5G Ax (for a whopping 600 $ or so) is:
LTE Category 20 (2.0 Gbps Downlink, 200 Mbps Uplink)
so in theory even faster, but still if the ISP does not provide those speeds (or due to congestion you only have that on wednesday nights between 3:00 and 4:30 AM) the extra cost is largely wasted.
All these numbers are from official statements, they only shows theoretical maximum that is almost unachievable even in lab.
I asked few days ago mikrotik support about real-life numbers but they didnt respond
Regarding antennas, the reason why I am asking about external antennas is because often you can not have better antenna for specific frequency if it’s omnidirectional and it does not matter where this 6cm wire would be placed. I guess if you are refering to “depends on the kind of cell coverage you have, and also on how your ISP cells/towers behave” - you mean the exact location of these cells, right? So I can use directional antenna like yagi-uda.
Look at cellmapper.net (or some countries do publish their own LTE/5G tower maps) to see what bands in your area.
In theory, two CAT12 devices should perform roughly the same. Your mobile carrier is what’s controlling the speed way more, so that’s who to ask what you should expect. Just to be clear the max specs are not possible in a real-world situation, so actual speeds will always be lower than the max shown for 5G/LTE. i.e. the router is not going to within a few meters of tower, and the exact RF stats (RSRP/RSRQ and CQI, etc) will determine the max speed. And yes, an antenna may improve the RF stats, which will improve your speeds. But if you already have a strong signal, a bigger antenna may have only marginal improvement.
But I certainly would not upgrade CAT12 to another CAT12 (2025)…
Yep, of course the ISP cells/towers are omnidirectional and roughly cover a circular area around them with “good” signal.
If you are within that area or close to it having an external antenna is not really needed.
On the other hand, if you are outside that area, you might need an external antenna (not necessarily directional).
If you are far from the cell/tower the only way to have decent signal is an external directional antenna (and some luck).
In real world things are not as simple as that, as there may be several factors influencing the reception.
To give you some real world anecdata, I have a FWA (LTE/4G) connection at home which more or less sucks.
But it sucks less then it used to, since the antenna modem was changed with a “better” one (imagine LTE 12 replacing LTE6).
Then, I have very marginal coverage from two cell towers (so I am in one of those cases where I need a directional antenna), one which is nearer and stands in a “perfect position” on top of a hill, the other one is roughly at the same elevation as my house and about 1 km further.
When the antenna/modem was replaced it was initially oriented as the old one to the nearest tower, and still sucked, then the technician tried the other tower and suddenly there was some clearly much better bandwidth/speed (and additionally, as we could experience in the following weeks the connection was much more stable).
No apparent reason if not - maybe - that the furthest tower was installed more recently and thus had “better/faster” devices than the nearer one.
It is clear that real life speed is a fraction of the theoretical one, in first (very rough) approximation I would say 1/30 to 1/10, possibly much less depending on local conditions.
More likely: the closer, elevated, tower covers more subscribers and is thus much more utilized. Hence less radio resources available for each connected subscriber.
This also means much more noise for cell tower receivers, meaning lower SINR for uplink connections and hence lower uplink throughputs and worse connection stability. Remember, modern wireless broadband networks (anything since 3G and newer) use same frequency for all cell towers (apart from CA) and even clients using certain cell tower cause some noise/interference to adjacrnt cell towers. And an elevated cell tower (“geostationary satellite” towers) will pick a lot of noise from its large coverage area. And since most of traffic uses “acknowledge mode”, traffic in one direction does require working connection in other direction as well (for sending those ACKs … both on RLC/radio and TCP).
Yes and no (actually no and yes).
The increased stability can be explained by less noise, but the higher speed does not depend on number of subscribers, at least at the time the ISP technician was doing the tests the number of subscribers on the slower tower was a fraction of those on the faster one, but he didn’t have access to (or didn’t want to tell me) the kind of fibre backbone going to the tower.
Since the higher and slower one covers an area with very few houses but covers a stretch of a national road while the lower and faster one covers a small village I suspect that the latter has “beefier” fibre connection or however faster or more capable hardware.
Yes, It is true that I can improve my signal by using directional antenna and pointing it directly to cell tower.
However, I am wondering:
Why expensive android tablets with omnidirectional antennas inside behaves BETTER than all 4G modems I had? I just dont get it. What kind of unknown tech they are using? Same operator, same device positioning, even same phone number/sim card.
Last time I used Telit LM960 (directly plugged to computer, not in/via router) and it still loses versus latest samsung tablet. At this point there is no reason to purchase expensive 4G router with backup ups if tabled is just behaving cheaper and better. Weird.
Probably because those tablets use most recent 4G and 5G modems with much better ability to perform “Carrier Aggregation”. Vast majority of cell towers nowdays use multiple frequency bands (ranging from as low as 700MHz to as high as 3.5GHz or more). And if station device supports it, it can simultaneously use multiple frequency channels (that’s called CA) in a “bond like” configuration. Not all CA devices are equal, some don’t support all the frequency bands used by your particular MNO in your area, some have limit on how much band width they can use (some only up to 60MHz, some several hundred MHz). Some support only FDD bands, some also TDD (and higher frequencies are usually used with TDD). Some support 5G (which adds band width in upper frequencies as well).
And when it comes to CA support, 4G modems used by MT are … mediocre at best.
Sometimes it not case having better modem or signal, MNOs can detect if connection is established from mobile devices or router and they prioritize traffic from mobile devices or limit from router, even if you use same SIM. In some cases TTL hack helps, but there are other detection methods which cannot be easy avoided.
Correct, the LM960 does have most CA combos for LTE CAT18, including 2 x UL carrier aggregation. But it’s not one of the “stock” modems, which are all more limited in CA modes.
But if carrier does have a CA combo not supported by a Mikrotik modem, that is actually slower. You can also cross-check the LTE bands in area with the bands (and CA modes) offered by Mikrotik using something like cellmapper.net or from your carrier. Mikrotik lists CA modes on the product page OR in “brochure” PDF for the LTE router.
