Speed up your internet with the ZTE AX3000 Pro Wi-Fi 6 router

ZTE Miracle Wi-Fi 6 router AX3000 Pro. Picture: ZTE.

We all desire faster internet speeds, yet far too frequently, Wi-Fi rather than our broadband provider is the bottleneck. We take for granted just how many connected devices we have including smart speakers, lights, phones, tablets, TVs, video streamers and set-top boxes — the list goes on and on.

You may see drops in performance and dropouts when connected to the stock router that came with your broadband. Signal strength is another big issue and even in a standard-size home, the signal quality can drop off significantly to a point where it becomes unusable.

I’ve been testing the ZTE AX3000 Pro Wi-Fi 6 router for the last month to see if it can improve the performance of my existing broadband router. In comparison to Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) technology, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) offers faster throughput speeds, improved battery life on your devices and reduced bandwidth congestion.

Design

While the ZTE AX3000 Pro isn’t going to win any awards for its name, the ZTE Miracle range of routers has won design awards. It sports four distinct antennae at the back side, one of which features the Wi-Fi 6 logo and is available in either black or white in a stylish and streamlined design. Positioning the antennae vertically will provide maximum signal range but they can be adjusted individually if you think it will improve the signal in certain rooms.

My review unit arrived in the all-white colour and it looks great. It has a ZTE logo on the top near the front of the modem with an LED indicator light on the thin front edge. Behind the logo is an NFC emblem to indicate where to place an Android phone for a quick tap and connect — no need to look for the SSID in the Wi-Fi settings or input passwords. Of course, this won’t work with iPhones since they don’t allow this via their NFC protocols.

Features

Despite its elegant exterior, the AX3000 Pro has a lot of high-tech hardware under the hood including a dual-core 64-bit CPU network acceleration engine from Qualcomm and a 12-thread network processor for speed, low latency and a reliable connection.

The 512MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM allow for up to 256 simultaneous connections all of which can be easily managed using the intuitive, but basic ZTELink app for Android and iOS.

Using devices like phones, tablets and even my desktop PC I was able to get the maximum upload and download speed from my internet connection while in the same room as the AX3000 Pro — 500Mbps / 50Mbps. Of course, this is dependent on your device being Wi-Fi 6 compatible. Doing the same test from my stock broadband modem using Wi-Fi 5 my average speeds were 250Mbps / 50Mbps.

On average, when connected to the AX3000 Pro I saw speeds very similar to when I was in the same room while my Wi-Fi 5 signal was much slower. Moving out to my back garden I got much lower speeds, but the broadband modem didn’t even show up in my Wi-Fi settings.

It’s important to note that each building is unique not only in square metres but also in wall thickness and if it’s block or timber. If you have a large home with thick walls then you can take advantage of the AX3000 Pros easy mesh system. This feature allows you to use multiple AX3000 Pro units to create a mesh network to increase the Wi-Fi signal to all corners of your home.

One of the only things I didn’t like about the system is that sometimes it would automatically connect to the slower 2.5Ghz network. By default, the modem is set to combine the SSID of the Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz and 5GHz frequency bands but you can also disable this and set them to separate SSID. Then you can manually choose either one or the other since some devices will only work on the 2.4Ghz band.

The extra download speed is always welcome, but for gamers, latency is even more important and the AX3000 Pro is a big improvement here. I've seen improvements in the performance of cloud gaming using Xbox GamePass Ultimate and the AirLink connection between my PC and Meta Quest 2 VR headset.

Interfaces

On the back of the modem are four-gigabit network connections, three of which are LAN ports and one of which is a WAN port.

On the far right side of the router's back, where the reset button and the WPS button are combined, are the power interface and the reset buttons. Long press the WPS button to reset the router. After connecting the power supply, the cable can be tucked under the host for an even more elegant appearance.

Verdict

If you’re in the market for a Wi-Fi 6 router and want an upgrade from your stock broadband modem, the ZTE AX3000 Pro is a solid choice for those with Wi-Fi 6 compatible laptops, tablets and phones. The performance is solid and it’s great that you can expand the system to include a powerful and straightforward mesh network.

The ZTE Miracle WiFi-6 AX3000 Pro router €89.99  ZTE