Hello!

I've already setup LHG LTE6 with HAP AC3 in river valley so got some experience. On my land I have vacation homes and at least for now LTE is just only option but signal is really weak - you almost can't call or send SMS in most places, internet in phones is not usable at all except some hills.

One summer house had Zyxel LTE3202 and it worked well with 3-9 mbps down and 1-5 mbps up. After recognizing Microtik, I decided that will buy 2 wAP AC LTE6 for 2 homes so Zyxel would be "upgraded" - now I'm in shock that wAP most of the time doesn't see almost anything! It connects baerly only when pointed in weird way. Long response times, almost zero internet, really weak sources in Cell Monitor.

When locked with the same towers which Zyxel chooses as best one wAP works at 20-30% of strenght, most of the time doesn't even connect. This is shocking because Zyxel LTE3202 is 20% the price of wAP AC LTE6.

What I'm missing here? Does wAP have ZERO antena gain? It behaves literally like cell phone in those places. I would understand this if I wouldn't have comparison to that cheap Zyxel :O

Yes I could mount antena but would prefer to go with SXT/LHG straight away but for now wanted "all in one" device for homes inside without drilling etc.

FYI just for fun tried at factory firmware V25, and RouterOS 6.4. Then I upgraded everything - exactly the same

Hopefully it was not dropped hard, and maybe some antenna broke inside 8-O

I've unpacked today second device - ran tests with v.25 firmware and 6.49 RouterOS, just after that upgraded to v.35 and 7.92, ran test at my home and went to smaller houses at my land but already knew what to expect.

So this is true - wAP AC LTE6 has ZERO antena gain over smartphone, it might be even worse (compared to Samsung A53)
Bot devices act the same: 2 wAPs.

I wouldn't be surprised if I wouldn't have that cheap Zyxel which works PERFECT. I thought that wAP would be upgrade plus everything will be from Mikrotik everywhere.
Now this makes me question even SXT, that cheap Zyxel thrown anywhere in small house gives 80% of that what perfectly aligned SXT would.

Best what I could achieve here with wAP was 150ms and 1,1 mb download, 0,23 upload - but most of the time it just doesn't work at all. Cell lock with my best and trusted towers often doesn't work at all, wAPs have to be rotated and aligned perfectly.

Ehhh so Mikrotik doesn't have LTE for indoor use? What with HAP AC3 with built-in LTE? This variant has any gain over smartphone? Those antenas in HAP are for wifi only?
I have set of LHG LTE6 + HAP AC3 in my uncles summer house and it works so so.

Your smartphone case is tricky — most new ones use 4x4 MIMO antennas/CA/etc, instead of lower category modems with 2x2 antennasin either Mikrotik/Zyxel. LTE is pretty complex, so just adding gain doesn't necessarily get you more speed – so yeah SXT might only yield 20% more since it's still shared media and if your not that far from tower no need for more gain. You might see a bigger difference on upload with SXT than a smartphone, but download (if relatively close to tower) not so much. And if multiple towers are close, then directional SXT/etc that can only lock one band may be way worse than smartphone's omni antenna with carrier aggregation to use multiple tower.

If LTE is used in a fixed location, I'd focus on cellmapper.net or other stats to help figure out what bands are possible, from which carrier & then aligning the needed hardware around those. e.g. starting with what possible from carriers is generally a better approach, than starting with hardware and trying compare performance.

Now I'd agree, I don't think the wAPac-LTE6 would be best choice for high performance LTE, if that's the goal... But that Zyxel doesn't look like it make it overnight in the rain... And the wAP can be fitted with pigtails and external antenna if desired.

But if you're indoors, I'd think the hAPac with LTE be a better choice – e.g "h" (home) vs "w" (waterproof) in wAP/hAP . Or wait for newer AX devices with 4x4 MIMO LTE...

Hopefully it was not dropped hard, and maybe some antenna broke inside 8-O

useful as usual

I've unpacked today second device - ran tests with v.25 firmware and 6.49 RouterOS, just after that upgraded to v.35 and 7.92, ran test at my home and went to smaller houses at my land but already knew what to expect.

So this is true - wAP AC LTE6 has ZERO antena gain over smartphone, it might be even worse (compared to Samsung A53)
Bot devices act the same: 2 wAPs.

I wouldn't be surprised if I wouldn't have that cheap Zyxel which works PERFECT. I thought that wAP would be upgrade plus everything will be from Mikrotik everywhere.
Now this makes me question even SXT, that cheap Zyxel thrown anywhere in small house gives 80% of that what perfectly aligned SXT would.

Best what I could achieve here with wAP was 150ms and 1,1 mb download, 0,23 upload - but most of the time it just doesn't work at all. Cell lock with my best and trusted towers often doesn't work at all, wAPs have to be rotated and aligned perfectly.

Ehhh so Mikrotik doesn't have LTE for indoor use? What with HAP AC3 with built-in LTE? This variant has any gain over smartphone? Those antenas in HAP are for wifi only?
I have set of LHG LTE6 + HAP AC3 in my uncles summer house and it works so so.

you are dealing with challenging situation. Some of the problems are caused by the modem you use (wap ac is "meh", but the moderator and the MT groupies won't tell you that), others by the capacity of the towers. The SXT performance easily can be caused by the tower — either using band 8 at 5mhz width (very common in Europe) , or just having poor uplink capacity.

to improve things on your side, make sure you put the device outside or behind a window, with direct line of sight to the tower. Finding the tower has been separate quest for me. I also found out the hard way that some materials in old houses are shockingly good radio wave absorbers.

return the wap ac if you can and get SXTs or get external antenna (such as MT's mAnt) for the zyxels — it will boost the signal for sure.

As Amm0 explained, comparing modern phone to CAT6 LTE modem is not fair. Modern phones have much more advanced modems. CAT6 is pretty old now and its advertised speed is purely hypothetical. In reality going above 100mbit is already great success.