I'm looking for non-wifi home router in $80-120 range. Using separate APs for Wi-Fi.

RB4011 and RB5009 are different league and out of budget.

Hex S - $79
RB450Gx4 - $99
hAP ax2 - $99
L009UiGS-RM - $119

Hex S is cheaper but MUCH slower than hAP ax2
RB450Gx4 is same price but slightly slower than hAP ax2
L009UiGS-RM is more expensive but still slower than hAP ax2

Am I missing something? I don't want a router with built-in Wi-Fi but I have to buy router with built-in Wi-Fi because every other choice would be sub-optimal.

Obivously you don't have to use the wifi provided by the router. Seems (to me) that there is not many requests for wifiless routers in that price range.

hEX S is not that much slower. What are you planning to do with the device? It is very much capable of handling a 1Gbit connection to the ISP at full speed. hAP ax2 is a newer ARM device and could be slightly faster, but is also more expensive.

According to mikrotik website ax2 is approximately 2.4 times faster then hex S.

routing 25 fw rules 512 byte packet size:

Hex s: 385.4 Mbps
Ax2: 912.9 Mbps

You can buy ax2 and disable it's wireless interface, it's a great home router.

hEX S is not that much slower.

The other different is the hEX S does NOT run zerotier, BTH, container, or some other newer V7 features. So that's a disqualification in my book as it does not seem very "future proof".

But hEX S does have PoE IN and OUT on separate ports, USB, and SD card – unlike the hAPax2... Now hEX S is wonderful device to run The Dude on (& hAPax2 isn't since no SD/USB/ROSE for storage). But they have NOT updated The Dude in years.

So outside of Dude or storage-based needs, the hAPax2 likely be worth the few extra dollars IMO.

Did you consider hAP ax lite? A port fewer, nothing spent on 5 GHz, pretty similar performance.

Ax lite have worse routing performance than hex S

I think it's better to pay a little bit extra and buy ax2, i mean router is not something that you buy every year. I assume OP wants to have this router for at least 5 years. So router should be future proof as much as possible.

MMIPS & MIPSBE are by far the most stable and reliable chips in the mikrotik range. HEX & HEX S thus hold value in that regard, hence I use them a hell of a lot and never have to question their stability. ARM chips have gotten better but are still unreliable in their performance metrics and do occasionally have weird issues.
RB3011 especially..... what an absolutely horrible product. It works fine in many/most environments but i've had them do really stupid unexplainable things such as woefully bad upload performance when running traffic 'through' them at least 1 or 2 steps up from where traffic originates (which should be substantially faster) - very low CPU but pathetic performance
Copy/paste the entire config onto a HEX or CCR and the problem immediately vanishes. It's not explainable by anyone, including MikroTik

Whilst i've generally had good success with ARM products, I only use them as a customer router. In which case sure it's actually better for that purpose. For traffic distribution I try not to unless performance is a higher priority
Havn't used the AX series products long enough to form any solid opinions. Bugs for sure but again they are customer focused so they don't cripple or take down entire segments of the network, minimal impact. Running an entire hotel or as a backbone distribution? If I had to choose between a HAP AX2 or HEX S i'm going to take the HEX S for sure

When wireless or LTE is not needed I also use hEX or hEX S for our customers, great little routers indeed. When LTE is needed then wAP LTE kit is my way to go. Never had any problem with them.

But at few sites I installed hAP ax lite lte6 just because more ports were needed and I want to keep device count as low as possible and so far so good, stable as rock.

At home and office RB5009 and RB4011 and cAP ax (no problems whatsoever) In office I installed hEX S and it was great but we upgraded to gigabit fibre and poor thing just wasn't able to handle all that traffic. Now RB4011 is doing a great job.

So as OP stated, use case is home and hAP ax2 is perfect for that role IMHO.

Seems (to me) that there is not many requests for wifiless routers in that price range.

There seems to be huge demand for this type of routers. Isn't Hex one of the best selling MikroTik routers?

Sure there is (IMHO) a lot of confusion in Mikrotik's offers.

Besides and before any consideration with speed, the Hex S has 16 MB only of storage, which seems to be already very tight, unless it is found a way to put the RoS on a diet, it likely won't be upgradable for long, and the Ax2, besides having more storage and memory have the radios also, so in the future could be re-purposed as an Access Point.

What remains (for me) a mistery is where the L009 place is, I thought that it was a "beefier" hex (s) with more ports, but it seems that it is outperformed by the Ax2 in everything, so the only advantage is the 3 more ports (and the SFP) and the routerOS license 5 (instead of 4, which is anyway good enough for what, 99% of users)?

I have read that a possible issue with the Ax2 can be - if it is stressed - a tendence to overheat, and surely the L009 appears as much more capable of thermal dispersion, but I don't think in a "normal" home this can happen or happen often.

The other thing that is not clear to me is (in the case of L009UiGS-2HaxD-IN, not the plainer/cheaper L009UiGS-RM) what sense does it make the (clever) form factor allowing 4 routers in a 1U rack space with the (only 2.4 GHz) radio (the big ears will need external antennas) and without 5 GHz radio it is hardly a stand-alone home router.

Surely there are "intended cases" for these L009 devices, but I am struggling to understand what they are.

L009 intention is to replace RB2011 router for which Mikrotik stated is one of the best selling routers.

I use one as switch on my desktop.

RB2011 maybe was one of the best selling routers. But L009 with the CPU will be maximum good selling SWITCH. It is not router, router needs CPU.

Surely there are "intended cases" for these L009 devices, but I am struggling to understand what they are.

See now you're getting it

MikroTik almost always gets about 95% of the way to something great then drops the ball on the last part

- L009 wireless is 2.4ghz only, why!????
- CRS PoE switches use ModeB for 802.3af/at PoE
- HEX PoE is not a HEX, it's a weak single core CPU and thus a switch
- 60/5ghz products where the 5ghz is highly gimped and basically useless
- 5009 outdoor's PoE-In port can't be used for PoE out.... thus requiring janky PoE splitters
- Still low power budget on PoE ports, can't run many popular radio's off them

L009 intention is to replace RB2011 router for which Mikrotik stated is one of the best selling routers.

I understand that, mainly because it is written all over the place on L009 pages, but if one has not an old RB2011 to replace?

I use one as switch on my desktop.

So, is it a good switch, but not such a good router?
Or you happened to have a spare one and you just use it because you can?
Only as an example, I have an ancient Fujitsu thin client repurposed as a internal router (running an old Linux distro) for connecting a VLAN with another subnet, but I have that setup only because I had already that tiny PC (bought for an entirely different - failed - project) and wanted to experiment, if I was to go shopping for a suitable device I would have chosen something completely different.
The question/doubt was about why (in which cases) would someone like the OP, looking for a new router, prefer the L009 over another model.

Hex S is a little bit faster then L009 so to use L009 as router i don't know... There is use cases but then, for 50USD or 60 USD more for L009 you get weaker performance. So hex S is a better choice there. Only if you have little bit more devices on your network that could benefit extra three ports that L009 offer.

I bought it just to be a switch, to se how it works. I use sfp1 and ether2-8 in bridge, and ether1 as an offbridge (because ether1 is connected to CPU directly so if you don't want to load CPU much just avoid that port) and i don't have any issues achieving max wired speed.

I use one as switch on my desktop.

So, is it a good switch, but not such a good router?

RB2011 is not even a particularly good switch, because it's a combo of one 5-port 100Mbps switch and one 5-port 1Gbps switch ... with decent but not great interconnect. L009 will be much better switch as all the ports (including SFP but excluding ether1) are handled by same switch chip. Which makes it a very good switch with out-of-band management port (ether1)

The question/doubt was about why (in which cases) would someone like the OP, looking for a new router, prefer the L009 over another model.

L009 is latest-gen device with potential to get additional features (it's got decent amount of RAM and storage for upcoming optional packages). It's got a robust case which acts as a cooling surface (unlike all those fancy mini tower gadgets like hAP ax2 or hAP ac2 which get pretty hot due to poor cooling design), so it may be pretty decent hard-working router for lower end of home internet access.
It beats me as well why a modern wireless device would be equipped with 2.4GHz radio only (unless they meant the wireless version to be some kind of IoT concentrator).

I bought it just to be a switch, to se how it works. I use sfp1 and ether2-8 in bridge, and ether1 as an offbridge (because ether1 is connected to CPU directly so if you don't want to load CPU much just avoid that port) and i don't have any issues achieving max wired speed.

Wait, wait wait ... you mean you actually studied the block diagram before making your buying decision ?
Now THAT's a novel concept !
Why didn't anyone think of that earlier ...

I feel offended now... I think I will open new topic and complain about you... 200+ posts...

(...) the Hex S has 16 MB only of storage, which seems to be already very tight, unless it is found a way to put the RoS on a diet, it likely won't be upgradable for long (...)

Wow, I haven't realized its THAT small. Is it even upgradable with current version of RouterOS 7?

Wow, I haven't realized its THAT small. Is it even upgradable with current version of RouterOS 7?

AFAIK it is not (yet) an issue, the biggest current problems are with devices that have a radio due to the new wireless package.
Still, when you buy a new device you usually want a reasonable expectation of future upgradability. In the case of many router devices this is less important, you just set it up, tweak it a little bit and once you are satisfied, you keep it "as is", exception made - possibly - for security related stuff.
If you are some sort of nerd/geek (and you must be one if you are looking into Mikrotik for a home router) it is more probabile that you will want to try new features as soon as they come out, or new gadgets, revolutionary Iot devices and what not, and it might be frustrating finding out that you cannot because it doesn't fit in the storage space or by any other limitation of the older platform.
On the other hand, these older architectures are more tested and - besides possibile bugs that are (hopefully) solved by a new version of the OS - if the router does what it should do now, it will most probably work just fine for years without needing to be upgraded whilst the newer ones might not yet be stable enough and would need more care.

(...) the Hex S has 16 MB only of storage, which seems to be already very tight, unless it is found a way to put the RoS on a diet, it likely won't be upgradable for long (...)

Wow, I haven't realized its THAT small. Is it even upgradable with current version of RouterOS 7?

It has a SD slot if you need more storage for dude, user mgr, or other files. Since it has no wireless...and in 7.13+ versions, wireless is a seperate package ... SO the 16MB should have more room than earlier versions. Since container/zerotier/etc packages aren't support on MIPSBE devices like hHEX-S — the 16MB I unlikely to get full. And solvable with an SD card.

While hAPax2 has more flash memory, it has NO expandability since there is NO USB nor SD on hAPax2. So on hAP is where you get stuck on storage options IMO.

Now one more detail to look at is the IPSec test data, you'll see that hAPax2 has edge there. (They don't publish IPSec tests for hAPaxLite, which is cheaper than hEX-S, but that one be curious to know IMO).

Now one more detail to look at is the IPSec test data, you'll see that hAPax2 has edge there. (They don't publish IPSec tests for hAPaxLite, which is cheaper than hEX-S, but that one be curious to know IMO).

I did raw lab testing quite some time ago with various protocols on AX Lite, including IPSEC
viewtopic.php?p=1014112#p1014112

I'm sorry but the current product range is ridiculous. Every single product is essentially a trade-off. Regardless of price, to get one feature you need to give up another. The hAP ax2 with USB and separate PoE in/out ports would have been a no-brainer. I guess I'll stick with my old router and wait until Mikrotik get their act together. Duh