Trying to understand wireless speed ratings (AC 1350/1750/1900/etc) and their real world impact.

The TP-Link EAP225v3 supports 867Mbps on the 5GHz band. With a strong connection you should see actual transfer speeds around 420Mbps from a single device. With MU-MIMO support it shares downstream bandwidth quite well with multiple devices especially if all are 802.11ac capable.

The TP-Link EAP245 supports 1300Mbps on the 5GHz band. With a strong connection you should see actual transfer speeds of around 600Mbps from a single device. Lacking MU-MIMO support downstream performance will be less than that of the EAP225v3 with four+ devices actively using it at the same time.

What MU-MIMO does is it lets the access point send data to multiple devices at the same time. HOWEVER only one device can send data to the access point at a time. This is a plus when multiple users are downloading data as they receive significantly more data than they send. If multiple users are uploading lots of data it does effectively nothing.

2x2, 3x3, etc is a statement of how many transmitters and receivers it has. More means the access point can utilize more channels increasing overall bandwidth (assuming there isn't too much noise, clients have the transmitters and receivers to handle the bandwidth, etc).

Out of all the access points you listed my recommendation is to go with the EAP225v3 (version 3 specifically. Not old stock v2). It will happily handle up to 20 devices (performance tanks after that despite claims of supporting 50+ users). It has a build in web interface for management so you don't need to use controller software unless you want to. The UniFi products can be tuned for better signal strength than the TP-Link products and they do better at handling more than 20 devices. They must be managed through a controller (software or UniFi Cloud Key).

/r/HomeNetworking Thread