[REVIEW] Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 has solid performance thanks to 7 antennas and WiFi 6 support

Not long ago, we brought you a review of a Xiaomi router with the model name AC2100. After our review, we kept it and still use it today—along with the older Mi Router 3G. This time, what landed in our editorial office was probably the most powerful router from the Chinese giant, branded as Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600.

It comes with support for the latest IEEE 802.11ax standard (WiFi 6), a dedicated antenna for AIoT, and many interesting features. How did it perform in our test? You can read all about it in this review.

Where to buy the Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600?

We purchased the router from our partner DHGate, where it appeared at a record-low price. Thanks to delivery from the Polish warehouse, we had it at home within a few days with no extra fees. Unlike the routers we’ve had so far, the Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 is available in a global version that’s tailored for our market.

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Updated 6. 12. 2022 at 12:28

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What will we find in the box?

The moment the courier delivered the package, we knew it wasn’t any compact, small router. That was obvious at first glance—a large box wrapped in protective packaging. On the box, you’ll find not only a photo of the router, but also all the key device features in English.

The router sits in the box in a plastic insert, and the protective film isn’t just on the router body itself, but on every single antenna. On the top side, the router is protected by a soft foam layer glued to the inner side of the box. In the package, you’ll also find the user manual, a power adapter, and an Ethernet cable. But their placement is quite unfortunate, because they literally fly around and bump into the router inside the box.

The power cable, just like with other Xiaomi routers, is quite short at 120 cm. The Ethernet cable included in the box is 100 cm long. The packaging is simple, but we would have welcomed a better arrangement of the individual components inside the box.

Key features of the Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600

The Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 is Xiaomi’s flagship router model. You get support for the latest WiFi 6 standard (IEEE 802.11ax), which delivers up to 5.802-times higher transfer speeds compared to the older WiFi 11 variant (2.7ac). Response times and signal coverage have also improved, especially when multiple devices are connected at the same time.

The router supports the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. By combining these two bands, we can achieve a theoretical wireless transfer speed of up to 2976 Mbps. The 2.4 GHz band offers better transmission through obstacles like walls, which means better coverage in your apartment or house. On the other hand, the 5 GHz band provides low interference and significantly higher data transfer speeds. It does, however, struggle more with walls and other obstacles. But by combining both bands, you gain a huge advantage.

The router has up to 7 external antennas with PA and LNA amplifiers. 2 of them are for the 2.4 GHz band and 4 for the 5 GHz band. PA (Power Amplifier) boosts signal strength, allowing it to reach longer distances and pass through obstacles more effectively. LNA (Low Noise Amplifier) handles signal reception and enables the router to pick up even weaker signals from devices that are farther away. The last seventh antenna, located in the center, is used exclusively for Xiaomi smart home devices.

The router’s memory capacity is 512 MB, and the maximum number of devices that can be connected simultaneously is up to 248. OFDMA technology ensures more efficient data transmission to multiple devices. Its core mechanism is splitting a single channel into multiple sub-channels. Through them, the router can transmit several data units at the same time. This feature is one of the biggest advantages of the AX3600 router and the WiFi 6 technology itself. You can check out a clear explanation in the video below:

WiFi 6 is also closely related to the 8×8 MU-MIMO feature. While with WiFi 5 and the AC2100 router we wrote about 4×4 MU-MIMO, using the AX3600 router allows up to 8 devices to receive and send data simultaneously on 8 streams.

Here you can also find support for mesh functionality, where it’s possible to connect multiple routers for better coverage of larger spaces, a new version of WPA3 security, or the BBS feature that reduces interference between other WiFi networks. Parental controls are also available, along with a powerful 4-core Qualcomm A53 processor or efficient heat dissipation.

First power-on and router setup

Since we have the global version available, setup is very simple and the interface is in English via the web interface, not only through the app. You can configure the router using the graphical interface through a web browser at router.miwifi.com (or via a preconfigured IP address 192.168.31.1) or via a smartphone with the MiWifi app installed.

Both methods are identical when it comes to the initial settings. You can configure the router either over WiFi if you connect to the router’s WiFi network, or using an Ethernet cable.

If you use the smartphone app, there’s a smaller issue if you also have other Xiaomi routers in the Chinese version. Similar to the Mi Home app, MiWiFi can only work with one region. For this reason, we had to change the region in the app from China to any European country. The app will find the router even if you’re using a Chinese region, but it will prompt you to change it.

The first step in the app is choosing the mode in which the router should operate. Options include: the standard router mode for connecting to the internet, a wireless repeater, and a wired repeater. We chose the first option – the classic internet setup. We connected the cable from the internet provider to the WAN port and started the automatic setup. The router immediately detected the internet connection, and in the next step offered a choice of region, the WiFi network name, and password settings. The router creates 2 WiFi networks—one for the 2.4 GHz band and one for the 5 GHz band.

These WiFi networks can be combined by ticking the “Smart connect” option. With this option, the WiFi networks in both bands will have the same name, and devices will connect to the band that currently has the better signal.

Speed test via WiFi 6

We tested the WiFi speed using the Speedtest app on the Xiaomi Mi 10T smartphone. In the router, we had smart connect enabled, WiFi 6, signal strength set to the highest level, MU-MIMO turned on, and we were curious about the results. Our internet connection delivers 1 Gbit/s over fiber.

Our first measurement was taken right when the router arrived, where we had a 100-percent signal. Download speed was 653.26 Mbps, and upload reached up to 793 Mbps, which is almost the value we typically measure on a computer connected via cable.

In the second measurement, we moved about 4 meters away from the router. A partition wall separated us from the router, but without a door. The speed dropped slightly, but not significantly.

The next measurement was carried out at a distance of about 8 m, in the doorway of a room on the other side of the apartment. Between the router and us there were 2 partition walls. Here, the speed dropped by almost half compared to the first measurement.

Then we moved a bit further, to a distance of around 10 m, where we were already separated from the router by 3 walls. The speed decreased to approximately 200 Mbps.

In the farthest part of the apartment, where there were 3 walls and also a few cabinets between us and the router, the distance as the crow flies was roughly at the level of 15 m. Here, the speed dropped sharply and the smartphone switched to the 2.4 GHz WiFi network. However, this band is heavily affected by other WiFi networks in the panel building.

As you can see, the speeds are decent, but with increasing distance and obstacles in the form of walls and furniture, the speed drops significantly. Our apartment is 70 m², and this router is more than enough to cover it.

If we placed it in the middle of the apartment, we would get better coverage and higher speeds in each room, but since we wanted to test how the signal spreads through multiple walls, we positioned it in a less suitable spot, in an edge room.

Comparison with WiFi 5 and router Xiaomi AC2100

Since we have access to multiple routers, we decided to compare the recently tested Xiaomi AC2100 with the AX3600 router. First, we compared speeds on a computer that was connected by cable. They were almost completely identical.

Next, we tested the WiFi. The AC2100 model does not support the newest version of WiFi 6, so in the settings of the Xiaomi AX3600 router we changed the mode from WiFi 6 to a WiFi 5 compatible mode, where WiFi 6 is disabled along with all its features like OFDMA. We tested again using the Speedtest app on the Xiaomi Mi 10T smartphone from the same spots in the apartment as in the WiFi 6 test from the previous chapter.

First measurement in the immediate vicinity of the router:

Second measurement 4 m from the router with one wall without a door as an obstacle:

Third measurement at a distance of 8 m with two walls as obstacles:

Fourth measurement 10 m from the router with a trio of walls as obstacles:

Last measurement in the farthest part of the apartment (15 m) with multiple different obstacles:

Based on these measurements, it’s clear that speeds with routers running on WiFi 5 are very similar. However, with the AC2100 router, you can see bigger differences between its download and upload, especially as the distance increases.

The measured WiFi speeds with the AC2100 router you can then compare with the speeds from the previous chapter, to see the difference between WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 on the same router. These differences aren’t that significant, and the 2.7-times improvement compared to WiFi 5, as presented by the manufacturer, is far from happening.

For the final comparison, we also measured the WiFi speeds using the Speedtest app on a Samsung Galaxy S9+ smartphone, which doesn’t support WiFi 6. We conducted the test with WiFi 6 enabled on the AX3600 router. This test shows that it doesn’t make sense to use a WiFi 6 router unless you also have devices that connect to WiFi with support for the latest standard. It doesn’t bring any speed improvement, and the cost of buying a WiFi 6 router is higher.

WiFi signal strength

What was interesting was measuring signal strength and quality using the WiFi Master app on a smartphone—here, the AC2100 router was actually better. However, we couldn’t find any information in the router specifications about what antennas they include.

The following screenshots are from the AX3600 router, measured at three distances for WiFi 5: right next to the router, 5 m away from the router behind a single wall, and 10 m away from the router with three walls as obstacles. With WiFi 6 enabled, the signal values were almost completely identical to WiFi 5; only the speed differed, so we’re showing only one version.

To our surprise, the signal at the same locations with the AC2100 router was better, even though the Speedtest app measured slightly higher connection speeds with the AX3600 router. In both cases, the phone was still connected to the 5 GHz band.

Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 app and router settings

We already described the MiWifi app interface and the settings you can change in our AC2100 router review. If you’re interested, we recommend you read the full review. So we don’t keep repeating the same things, we’ll only mention the settings that are missing for the AC2100 router.

The Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 offers the option to connect additional routers to a mesh network. Right on the app’s home screen, you’ll find a way to manage these devices. In the WiFi network settings, you can find the option to disable the MU-MIMO function, enable the WiFi 5 compatible mode, or turn off the automatic search for Mi smart devices, for which one dedicated antenna is assigned. The router itself was also added automatically to the Mi Home app.

We have the same problem here as with other Xiaomi routers, where the app doesn’t contain all the available settings that are found in the web interface. So the app is not a full replacement for the graphical web interface in your browser.

Final verdict

Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 is the newest router from the Chinese giant, offering support for the new version of the WiFi 6 wireless standard and up to 7 external antennas, one of which is dedicated to smart devices from Xiaomi.

The router works great—its setup is simple and throughout our time using it, we didn’t notice any connection instability or speed fluctuations. It’s a solid choice if you have WiFi 6-enabled devices at home.

If you don’t have any and you’re using, for example, an AC2100 router or something similar, don’t expect a big boost in signal coverage or higher speeds. However, the benefits of this router may show up when it connects to a larger number of devices, which is usually not the case in a typical household.

In smaller towns, the router size can also be a downside, since the device body itself measures up to 268 x 179 x 177 cm. Disappointing is the presence of only three LAN ports and the absence of a USB port. With these dimensions, we definitely would’ve expected more LAN ports.