Final Thoughts
The EnGenius ESR530 offers 802.11ac wireless with speeds up to 1300Mbps. Based on the speed throughput measured against Synology RT2600AC I would say that the performance of ESR530 is a touch slower than a dedicated router but still well within the wireless specification. This mesh network supports MU-MIMO technology. It is also called AC Wave 2. MU-MIMO stands for Multi-User, Multi-Input, Multi-Output technology. It allows multiple users to connect and interact with the device without queuing. The ESR530 has no issues with multiple connected devices and I haven’t seen any bottlenecks or slowdowns in operation.
My placement of the primary master node and secondary node were about 35 ft apart and with this distance, I did experience in different in throughput speeds. The EnGenius app has a section where the distance of between members is measured and then recommended. The rule of thumb is; if you are planning to run a mesh network in your house, the more access points you have the better. So for a 2000 square feet house, I strongly recommend 4 mesh nodes for optimal throughput speed. With that said, my light use of the mesh network was occupied with streaming content and browsing the web. In either of these tasks, I did not experience any lag, buffering, or other network issues.
EnMesh app provides good visibility of the mesh network and is fairly easy to work with. The ESR530 can be managed from the inside and outside of your network via the app. Right now, the EnGenius ESR530 two-pack sells for about $130 USD and single node for about 70$. Some of the competitors have their nodes listed for a bit more. Example pricing includes: Google WiFi $99 USD, Ubiquiti $134 USD and Netgear $174 (2 pack). My experience with EnMesh ESR530 was short but from what I experienced, I like it. A word of advice, if you are planning to go into home mesh networking, do yourself a favor and pick up a few extra nodes.
