Problem is Croatia regulatory, try setting country US and see 2x signal improvement..
I do wonder, if home devices from other brands actually follow regulatory limits,…
I once had been running hap ac² in super channel mode, in a flat on (technically) 3rd floor, and I was able to reach it from sidewalk on both sides of the building (penetrating multiple floors, and walls). Probably not the most neighbor friendly approach, though.
These consumer home devices don’t publish any specs, nothing,… I wouldn’t be surprised, if they violated laws.
I believe that TP-Link is also set to Croatia because you need to specify country when setting up. Also devices I have are business models, not home models so I believe that they are following the rules.
I was once comparing CAP AC vs Unifi U6+. Observing/Testing roaming with analiti. While on CAP AC my phone roamed (really roam, not disconnect and connect) perfectly to 2.4 once bad signal of 5ghz and roamed quite early back to 5ghz once in reach again. With the Unifi my phone was more sticky. I really had to move very wide away or hide the phone behind an obstacle to get it roamed to 2.4ghz. And when I went back near the AP it sticked at 2.4ghz or took ages to switch back to 5ghz again. So, while this is okayish in daily usage I at least have to say, that CAP AC did a better job in regards of roaming.
But don’t forget: qcom-ac drivers are different story.
I think regulatory is messed up on mikrotik, for example my home HAP AX3, i run 5220mhz on 5ghz and this is country difference.
Croatia 8 TX
United States 22 TX
Like what the hell is even 8 TX (From 28 TX max that router can do)? You can only guess how far that reaches…
I agree with you here, cAP ac is great device, had them before cAP ax and WiFi was good. Then I wanted to implement WiFi6 as all of my devices, except IoT and cameras, are WiFi6 capable and with greater internet speeds that matters now.
But Mikrotik’s ax line gave me nothing but headaches… Well not Mikrotik but my wife because of the performance of Mikrotik’s equipment. 
I’m willing to revert to Mikrotik but first I think I will wait until ax line mature a little bit… I didn’t even know something like PPSK is possible, and you showed that now.
Even if regulatory is messed up on Mikrotik, there shouldn’t be any problem for 2.4 GHz to penetrate one internal brick wall in my opinion.
Lobbying. MikroTik doesn’t have lobbying power, as other brands do. So, maybe other brands can get away by violating the rules,… Just a conspiracy theory, though.
Maybe, MikroTik wifi chips/somethings are just really bad at weaker signals / longer ranges. It could even be the PCB design, and noise on PCB itself, that causes the harm… Or, whatever. Designing electronics is hard.
Maybe, just fyi.
Croatia is 20 and and US 30db for 2.4ghz.
Thats why there is so much different expiriences, some users from US drop here and say i have no issues, it have great coverage.
Ofcourse when you have 10db more then we here for example in Croatia…
This is what’s strange to me. Why one internal (15cm only?) brick wall causes so much trouble? You mentioned, even TP-Link roams to 2.4GHz from 5GHz.
I’m connected to hap ax³ on 5GHz, where signal is going through one floor and one brick wall, without issues.
Isn’t there something in the wall? Maybe tons of electrical cables, wiring, or other perfectly grounded metal?
Now I’m curious… I will check in settings if I can find what is TX power of new AP’s because if TP-Link is not transmitting on same power levels then range test is not valid… I want to check stability with same power levels from both vendors.
Mikrotik wireless is still running as I want to confirm WiFi from TP-Link is stable in the long run… Few weeks for eg.
This is plain brick wall, there is a chimney, but no metal here, few electrical cables for central heating boiler and light and two copper pipes for the radiators.
TP-Link have setting to switch to 2.4 GHz earlier to maintain stability, that can be set when setting up new network I think but I left that default so maybe that’s the reason it switches to 2.4 earlier.
Mikrotik wireless is weird indeed. Other vendors launch e.g. Wifi7 devices short after 802.11be went official. And these devices seem to work. Mikrotik on the other side catches the 802.11ax train very late, many years after. And even more than a year after launching their AX lineup they have major serious troubles and issues. Despite using vendor drivers. This is all very irritating.
It’s indeed irritating… I don’t like mixing vendors but right now I really don’t have a choice…
Here are some photos, TX power from TP-Link and Mikrotik, power on both set to auto, country set to Croatia:
TP-Link 2.4 GHz:
Mikrotik 2.4 GHz:
TP-Link 5 GHz:
Mikrotik 5 GHz:
lol, you must of heard me!
What power does it output UK 5745 ?
On Mikrotik or TP-Link ?
TP-Link
Can’t select that… Controller gave me only 4 channels: 36,40,44,48, 2.4 GHz have all channels, but 5 GHz have only 4 ?
I just read this.
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/561276?replyId=1105420
Not sure if it applies to ax ?
I guess so, tried to unbind one of the AP from the controller just to check if maybe controller is limiting channels but no, same thing when they are working standalone.
APs that i have are EU models.
I assume you comparing CAP AX. Mikrotik shows TX Power excl. antenna gain. For comparison:
- 2ghz: 20 tplink vs 14+6 (antenna gain) Mikrotik
- 5ghz: 23 TP-Link vs 16+5.5 (antenna gain) Mikrotik
I guess they can up the rx gain and not have to worry about any triggers with DFS etc.