Friday, January 7th 2022
MSI Teases RadiX AXE6600 Router at CES
Although not much is known about MSI's upcoming router, the company was teasing the RadiX AXE6600 during its virtual CES event. It's said to be a WiFi 6E router based on an unspecified 1.8 GHz Qualcomm SoC. The AXE6600 in the model name should break down to 600 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, 1200 Mbps in the 5 GHz band and 4800 MHz in the 6 GHz band, if routers with the same speed rating are anything to go by. In fact, the specs seem to be similar to the Linksys Hydra Pro 6E, as it seems to be based on the same or at least a similar SoC from Qualcomm.
The one thing that is obvious, especially from MSI's teaser on Twitter, is that the router will have plenty of RGB bling built into the antennas. The MSI dragon logo on the router, is a button according to Tom's hardware, that is said to cycle through various "AI" QoS presets. How useful or practical this will be in reality, is up for debate. The router is still a good few months out, with an expected launch sometime in the second half of this year. And if you're wondering, yes, MSI have made routers before, but it was quite some time ago and they weren't particularly popular.
Sources:
@msigaming, Tom's Hardware
The one thing that is obvious, especially from MSI's teaser on Twitter, is that the router will have plenty of RGB bling built into the antennas. The MSI dragon logo on the router, is a button according to Tom's hardware, that is said to cycle through various "AI" QoS presets. How useful or practical this will be in reality, is up for debate. The router is still a good few months out, with an expected launch sometime in the second half of this year. And if you're wondering, yes, MSI have made routers before, but it was quite some time ago and they weren't particularly popular.
15 Comments on MSI Teases RadiX AXE6600 Router at CES
I wonder which manufacturer will first implement massive MIMO for home WiFi? 64x64 as a minimum.
I have one of these in my closet, Netgear XR500. Design seems awfully familiar.
That said, the above configuration is only an asumption of the author based on whats labeled as AX6600 up till now. The text itself doesn't even state it's a Tri-Band Router an the only WiFi 6E-capable Router I know of (Netgear Orbi) ist AX1100, offering one 2.4Ghz 4x4 @1.148MBit/s, two 5GHz 2x2 160MHz @2.4GBit/s each and one 6GHz 4x4 160MHz @4.8GBit/s.
And 6E isn't a 5GHz band, it's a 6GHz band, which isn't even legal in most countries. US and Canada allows the use off all frequencies, with Europe and the UK allowing a limited range and the rest of the world not allowing it at all so far.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#6_GHz_(802.11ax)
5GHz is actually a real mess too, once you go outside of the lower frequencies, aka UNII-1.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(802.11a/h/j/n/ac/ax)
There are still a lot of devices out there that can't take advantage of 160MHz channels, so it's mostly useful for mesh setups or wireless bridges.
Yes, I don't know what MSI's AXE6600 rating will be, but there aren't all that many other configurations that can work out to that exact rating than the one I put in the news post. If you can come up with an alternative solution, please go ahead.
@Tigerfox here you go, a real reason for AXE6600, they're most likely using the IPQ6000-series from Qualcomm, which has integrated 2x2 WiFi on the 2.4 and 5GHz band, with the 6GHz band being an external chip. As such, you have very fixed hardware limitations on the lower frequencies. It also adds up with the 1.8GHz SoC clock speed.
zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/382127563