It’s fairly common to first release the better equipped device, as a sort of power display, so the Zyxel WBE660S that you see here is the most powerful WiFi 7 access point from Zyxel (at the moment of the writing) and yes, it has been released a few months before the NWA130BE. The latter did have to wait a few months until it received the support for MLO, while the WBE660S had it from the beginning.
Which is nice, but the client hardware also needed to catch up and it wasn’t until the fall of last year that we finally got a more stable performance with both Windows and Linux. That being said, the Zyxel WBE660S is a best of a device and not necessarily in terms of size, but weight and robustness. I was sure that it could be mounted outdoors, but there is no IP rating, so mount it out on your own risk. The access point comes with two ports, one Gigabit, the other 10GbE which is a huge step up from the 2.5GbE port for the NWA130BE.
The antenna gain is also better on the WBE660S and the spatial streams are 4×4 on all three radio bands. Other than that, we do get a smart antennas once again, and, in terms of software management, there is not only the option to use the Nebula Cloud, but a controller and the option to use the access point in standalone mode as well. That being said, let’s see the WBE660S in action.
The Design and Build Quality
The Zyxel WBE660S is definitely larger than the WBE660S, but not by that much, and this new design that we see with their access point is very nice actually. It’s definitely helps differentiating the Zyxel access points from the rest. The upper side is made of plastic, while the rear is metallic for a better heat management.
The NWA130BE went with an all-plastic case, but it was specially designed to help dissipate the heat as well, so it’s not ordinary plastic. The single LED sits at the top in a similar fashion to the NWA130BE which at this point, can be considered a miniature WBE660S. And it does function in the same way, with flashing green, blue and red. Far from intuitive, but know that green and blue is good, while red not so much.
Flip it upside down and we get to see the intricately-designed metallic bottom and, since we’re dealing with a ceiling-mount access point, it does come with a bracket. Also, it’s better to not leave the WBE660S on the table. It will fall off easily and this is no inexpensive device. As for the ports, we do get quite a few surprises here.
On one hand, there are two Ethernet ports, one is Gigabit, the other can go up to 10GbE which is excellent news considering that this is a WiFi 7 access point. On the other hand, we get a USB-C port for charging if PoE(++) is not available which is a novel feature on networking hardware. There is also a Console port and a Reset button.
The Thermal Management
While Ubiquiti went the weird route of adding a fan to cool down the case of their WiFi 7 access points, Zyxel kept the tried method of moving the heat away from the components using heat spreaders and a half of the metallic case. Did it work? It did and, as you can see, it worked better than expected.
Zyxel WBE660S Teardown
Now that we’ve reached the teardown section, know that I did open the access point a couple of months back and I did a dedicated video where I go far more in-depth on the process of opening the device. Then again, Zyxel makes things simple as always, requiring the removal of four screws and yes, there is no warranty seal. Why would there be one? And we quickly get a good view of the PCB.
The main components are beneath the aluminum covers, but before that we need to see this smart antenna that Zyxel has proudly announced it has used with the WBE660S, which, just like on the NWA130BE, it does include an RF filter. To reach the two antenna plates, you will have to first detach a metallic heat spreader and, before that, to carefully disconnect all the antennas from the board. They are no soldered, so it’s easy to do so. I have also included a comparison table with other WiFi 7 access points that I have tested so far.
Hardware Comparison
| Zyxel WBE660S | Ubiquiti U7 Pro Max | Zyxel NWA130BE | EnGenius ECW536 | |
| CPU | quad-core 2.2GHz Qualcomm IPQ9579 (A73) | quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm IPQ5322 | quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm IPQ5322 (Cortex-A53) | quad-core 2.2GHz Qualcomm IPQ9570 (A73) |
| RAM | 2GB Nanya NT5AD512M16C4 | 1GB Samsung (SEC K4A8G16 SYC 8CTD) | 1GB Micron 3UR77 D8BPK (DDR4) | 2GB (2x Nanya NT5AD512M16C4-HRI) |
| Storage | 256MB MXIC MX35UF20E4AD | 4GB Kingston EMMC04G-MT32 | 512MB (MXIC X233662 MX35UF46E4AD-241)/ 16MB NOR flash (MXIC MX25U12832F) | 512MB NAND (MXIC MX35UF4GE4AD) |
| Switch | Marvell AQrate GEN4 Ethernet PHY | Qualcomm QCA8081 Ethernet PHY | Qualcomm QCA8385 Ethernet PHY | 2x RealTek RTL8261N N2068H3 |
| 6GHz Radio | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11a/n/ac/ax/be 4×4:4 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11be 2×2:2 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11be 2×2:2 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11be 4×4:4/td> |
| 5GHz Radio | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11a/n/ac/ax/be 4×4:4 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11be 4×4:4 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11be 2×2:2 | Qualcomm QCN6224 802.11a/n/ac/ax 4×4 4×4:4 |
| 2.4GHz Radio | Qualcomm QCN6214 802.11b/g/n/ax 4×4:4 | Qualcomm QCN6274 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 | Qualcomm IPQ5322 802.11b/g/n/ax 2×2:2 | Qualcomm QCN6214 802.11b/g/n/ax 4×4:4 |
Single Client Tests (6GHz & 5GHz)
Before getting into the more complicated tests, let’s first take a look at the more basic single-client tests. And, as I did with the U7 Pro, the Zyxel NWE130BE and many more other WiFi9 7 access points, I relied on multiple types of client devices ranging from the higher-end WiFi 7 to the still common WiFi 5 devices.
I do have several WiFi 7 adapters available, but I prefer the MSI Herald-BE, while the WiFi 7 client is an Intel AX200 and the WiFi 5 is an Intel 8265. And the results are impressive, the WBE660S managing to outclass all the other WiFi 7 access points that I tested, going above 2.5Gbps when near the client and still maintaining above 1.3Gbps rates at 30 feet.
At 70 feet, we see that it drops below 100Mbps, and, after checking the signal attenuation graphic, we understand why the WiFi 6 client did much better in terms of range.
This is all upstream, so let’s have a look at the downstream graphics. And you can see right away that it’s only slightly worse than upstream, while last year, after testing the U7 Pro, the Pro Max, the ECW335 and the NWE130BE, the results were nowhere near this good.
Things can get even better as you will soon see with the MLO enabled. But before that let’s have a look at how the WBE660S fares against other access points when using the 80MHz channel and 5GHz.
Still not as good as the TP-Link EAP660HD, but still second. And it did take first spot when using the 160MHz channel bandwidth.
Switching to 6GHz and 320MHz, the Zyxel WBE660S once again takes first spot.
I have also added a longer-term graph to see the fluctuations that you can expect in respect to another Zyxel access points. And there are some interesting patterns, clearly in relation to the hardware I was using.
Single Client Tests (2.4GHz)
Moving on to the 2.4GHz radio band performance, I did remove the Pixel 2 XL since it performed badly and I didn’t really found a replacement for it. Anyway, we still get an idea about what to expect when using WiFi 6 and WiFi 5 client devices.
It’s a fair performance, clearly adjusted to be suitable mostly for IoT devices and some old tablet. I also included the mandatory signal attenuation graphic to make it easy for you to reproduce these results in your own home.
And a comparison table with other access points. Not really at the top here, but like I said, it’s a fair performance, nothing spectacular or anything of the sorts.
The Multi-Client Tests
OK, so now let’s move over to the multi-client tests. Things get a bit more complicated, but bear with me because the concept is actually fairly simple. I have one server computer connected to the switch which powers up the access point and then five client devices connected via WiFi. You can see each client’s specifications in this table. I then used a tool called net-hydra developed by Mr Jim Salter and which is available on Github.com to simulate different types of traffic.
Then, we can see the latency which we want to be as close to zero as possible. The first test simulates 1080p streaming on five client devices.
And we see the WiFi 7 and one WiFi 6 client doing decently well, while the second WiFi 6 laptop rises near 100ms quickly. The WiFi 5 clients immediately cross 100ms immediately which is not good. So far, it’s a somewhat similar performance to the Zyxel NWA130BE.
Running 4K streaming (35Mbps) on the five clients, we see that the WiFi 5 clients prefer to stay above 100ms, while the other three did a bit better, but still not a phenomenal performance.
If you need to run a similar type of traffic, make sure to add at least one client using a wired connection. Now let’s add intense browsing into the mix where a page is opened every few seconds which will run alongside 1080p streaming.
And, as we can see from the graphic, the WiFi 7 client again does really well, the two WiFi 6 client remain decent, while the two WiFi 5 clients tend to show higher latency.
When compared to the NWE130BE, the WBE660S once again does a bit better. The intense browsing graphic pushes the WBE660S as a clear winner over other WiFi 7 APs that I tested so far.
But we need to run the same test but with 4K streaming instead of 1080p. And, well, the streaming graphic shows one WiFi 6 as the winner, while the rest quickly rise above 100ms which we don’t want when streaming movies.
It’s interesting to see that the intense browsing graphic shows that with the exception of two client devices which rose above 1s for about 10% of the time, the rest did really well.
Then again, anything below 1.5s is acceptable. Moving on, I included the downloading traffic which involves the download of a 10MB file continuously and no cap involved, so the client device can request as much as it wants from the available bandwidth.
And I started with two clients which, in total got up to 786.6Mbps. Not bad considering that this we use the 80MHz channel bandwidth and the 5GHz radio. And the latency is actually better than expected. I know that 200ms and above is bad, but if you check out the NWE130BE and the U7 Pro as well as the Pro Max, these are phenomenal values. The 4K streaming struggled as well, but again, much better than with other WiFi 7 access points.
Switching to a single downloading client, things got even better. Again, above 100ms is not good for anything other than Internet browsing, but the values are still miles better than with other WiFi 7 APs. It’s not even comparable.
Let’s make things lighter for the Zyxel WEB660S by using only three client devices, one for downloading, one for 4K streaming and the last for intense browsing. The downloading client’s latency remained pretty much the same as before, so we need to make some other changes.
I decided to download a 1MB file continuously this time, keep the intense browsing and the third client would try to run VoIP traffic. And the downloading client did decently well this time, the intense browsing was good as always, while the VoIP latency moved between 17 and 30ms which I suppose is fine.
Lastly, I had to run the 10MB downloading traffic on all five client devices just for fun and the results are interesting. One client, the far-away WiFi 5 device went out of charts, but the other clients were actually handled better than expected.
Much better than what I saw with other WiFi 7 access points.
The MLO Performance
It’s been a while since I tested the MLO performance of the NWA130BE and the U7 Pro, and thankfully, things got much better due to driver and firmware updates. So, I decided to run some quick tests using pretty much all available configurations and the results were impressive.
I have added the throughput registered using only the 6GHz radio and on both the 320MHz and the 160MHz channel bandwidth. And then, I aggregated the 6GHz radio with the 5GHz one. I saw the best values using the 320MHz, where I saw nearly 3.3Gbps upstream, but even the 160MHz channel width did better than expected.
Downstream, we’re not dealing with some huge throughput difference, the performance staying very close to what we saw upstream. After aggregating the 6GHz radio band with the 2.4GHz one which was set to use the 40MHz channel bandwidth, we see that it can get close to 2Gbps both upstream and downstream. Then, I aggregated all three available radio bands and I got the best throughput so far, 2.73Gbps, while downstream, we see that it dipped below 3Gbps.
Lastly, I aggregated the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz radio bands and this time, we need to focus on the 70 foot performance which is much better than with all other MLO configurations. That’s only upstream because downstream, it’s closer to the average performance. I also ran FLENT and these are the latency values that I got.
5GHz(160MHz) & 2.4GHz(40MHz).
5GHz(160MHz) & 2.4GHz(40MHz).
The Standalone Platform
Just like the NWA130BE, there is a very comprehensive standalone platform as well. And it’s also pretty much identical as we can see the four main sections on the left side. The Dashboard shows detailed status info consisting of various widgets and yes, you can choose which will stay and which will go. Then, there’s the Monitor where, we get more in-depth with the status info.
We can see some Radio info, if there is any Station or WDS Uplink and Downlink info available, check whether the Rogue AP detection found something and just have a good look at the Log info. Then, there’s the Configuration section which goes deep into Network adjustments including VLAN and Storm Control. While under Wireless, there’s the AP Management where we can change how each Radio behaves and it does include setting up SSIDs as well.
We also get Load Balancing and DCS, and a more old-school approach of Object configuration. Under Maintenance, we can change the system configuration files, update the firmware, use the Diagnostic Info Collector and the Remote Capture. Sure, there is more to it, but let’s also have a look at the Nebula Controller.
The Nebula Controller
Just like with the NWA130BE, I am going to use the Basic License and, the experience is pretty much the same with the Zyxel WBE660S. There’s the Dashboard where you get to see various status info about the AP and other devices on the same site. Then, we get to see the access point under Devices which includes some other personalized info, such as the Map, as well as some Live Tools. But the most important are what we find under Configure because we get to set up the SSID and the Radios.
The SSID settings are differentiated in normal settings and some advanced ones. These include the option to add and set up SSIDs and, yes, here is where you get to enable MLO as well. It’s interesting to see that under the Radio Settings, you can choose the channel and channel bandwidth, but the 5GHz radio is limited to 80MHz. To go to 160MHz, it is required that you scroll to the bottom of the page, identify the access point, choose the radio and then, you get to change the radio settings for it individually, overwriting the global ones.
Then again, before anything else, you do need to visit the License and inventory section where you can add new devices, set the Site where they will operate and assign a license.
The Conclusion
The Zyxel WBE660S costs quite a bit more than the NWA130BE, but, considering the similarities in terms of features and used technologies, is it actually worth the extra cost? The WBE660S is definitely a better-performing device and it’s the best WiFi 7 access point that I tested so far, so it’s worth paying extra. Is it worth double or more the price of the NWA130BE, that, I am not so sure about. You definitely don’t get double the throughput or that much less latency.
Mark is a graduate in Computer Science, having gathered valuable experience over the years working in IT as a programmer. Mark is also the main tech writer for MBReviews.com, covering not only his passion, the networking devices, but also other cool electronic gadgets that you may find useful for your every day life.