Reasons for Buying

As early as last year, I upgraded my home connection to 200M fiber, but I was still using a 100M router I had bought a long time ago, which resulted in half of my bandwidth being wasted. I had been in my senior year of high school and had no time to organize the network equipment at home. Now that I’m on vacation, it was naturally time for a proper upgrade, and the first thing I needed was a gigabit router. Since many devices at home require Ethernet cables, I also planned to buy a gigabit switch.

The requirements for the switch weren’t high, so I simply picked a Mercury MCS1505D.

There were many gigabit routers to choose from, ranging from a few hundred to over a thousand yuan, but my budget was under 200 yuan, so I narrowed it down directly to these three models:

• TP-LINK WDR7660
• HUAWEI WS5200
• Xiaomi Router 4A Gigabit Edition

The old router at home was a TP-LINK, so I had always had a favorable impression of the brand. However, I didn’t really like its pitch-black appearance, since all the network devices at home are white. By comparison, Huawei and Xiaomi’s products looked better. I often saw negative reviews of Xiaomi routers online, such as connection drops and random restarts, which aroused my curiosity and made me want to buy one and try it out. Coincidentally, there was a promotion going on, and since there was also a seven-day no-reason return policy, I didn’t hesitate too much. In the end, I bought the Xiaomi Router 4A Gigabit Edition for 129 yuan.

Appearance

JD.com’s promotional discounts were not as attractive as Tmall’s, so I chose to buy it from the “Xiaomi Official Flagship Store” on Tmall. The Tmall Direct delivery was unexpectedly fast—just as fast as JD’s delivery—and it arrived the next day. Next, it was time to unbox it.

The packaging follows Xiaomi’s consistently simple white style, with the Xiaomi Router 4A Gigabit Edition shown on the front.

The product specifications are shown above. It is worth noting that there is one gigabit WAN port and two gigabit LAN ports. Since I also bought a gigabit switch, I didn’t need too many LAN ports on the router. If you don’t plan to buy a switch, this router may not be suitable for you if you need many LAN ports.

The production date of the router I bought was May 2019, and I purchased it in June, so it was still relatively fresh stock. The manufacturer was an OEM factory in Huizhou.

All right, after removing the box, you can see the white router lying inside.

Let’s first take a look at the power adapter. The input is 100-240V~50/60Hz, making it suitable for use in various voltage environments. The output is 12V-1A, or 12W. The manufacturer is an OEM factory in Sichuan, and it has 3C certification.

The design of the router’s front is very simple, featuring only a Mi logo and two indicator lights. It is worth mentioning that the indicator lights look quite nice when emitting blue light. Almost the entire bottom of the router is covered with ventilation holes, which ensures efficient heat dissipation. In actual use, the surface of the router did not feel particularly hot during daily operation. Since I couldn’t afford a thermal imaging camera, I could only roughly estimate that it was around thirty-something degrees Celsius—at least it was cooler than the old router at home.

How to Use

After connecting the power and WAN port, I began configuring the router.

My Xiaomi phone was even able to recognize the Xiaomi router and added a Mi logo to it. After connecting to one of the WiFi networks, it automatically opened the configuration page.

Then, after setting the WiFi password, everything was done.

Conclusion

As a 129-yuan gigabit router, I think the Xiaomi Router 4A Gigabit Edition is worth the price, and it offers a certain value-for-money advantage. Of course, it also has some drawbacks, such as having too few LAN ports and lacking a USB port, which makes its expandability somewhat limited.

After using it for a month, I feel that it performs quite well. With my 200M fiber connection, download speeds can reach up to 30MB/s, and downloads using PanDownload can also maintain a speed of 20MB/s. The average latency in Honor of Kings is 30~40ms. As for the connection drops mentioned online, I haven’t encountered any so far, but this remains to be observed over time.

Here is a screenshot of the backend:

People who have used routers such as the K2P may feel that this is nothing special, but as a complete beginner, I still think the Xiaomi router offers quite a lot of features, especially the custom Hosts feature I need most (so I won’t have to configure Hosts on multiple devices anymore).

As for things like flashing a ROM, I’ll leave that alone for now. I’ve also heard that the Xiaomi Router 4A Gigabit Edition isn’t very suitable for tinkering, but that happens to make it a good fit for someone like me who doesn’t want to fuss with it.