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iPad mini Recommended Router for iPad mini 5

I

ikkysleepy

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2014
38
17
I am looking for router recommendations for the iPad mini 5. I know that the ipad mini has two antennas to stream and the max theoretical speed is 866 mbps. It seems that the ipad is not using both antennas. I have an 802.11ac (1900 mbps) router but it doesn't support MU-MIMO, which I am thinking is the problem because I only get ~30 MB/s (240 mbps) no matter which machine / phone / tablet I use for transferring files to/from my nas. Here are the routers I am found that could work, but not sure:
  • NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S AC2600
  • Synology RT2600ac
  • PHICOMM K3C

Maybe someone can confirm MU-MIMO is needed to support the two ipad antennas or not?

Thanks,
--Jorge
 
What kind of speeds are you getting when doing a speed test? One limiting factor could be the hard drive of your NAS if you haven’t excluded that already
 
ikkysleepy said:
I am looking for router recommendations for the iPad mini 5. I know that the ipad mini has two antennas to stream and the max theoretical speed is 866 mbps. It seems that the ipad is not using both antennas. I have an 802.11ac (1900 mbps) router but it doesn't support MU-MIMO, which I am thinking is the problem because I only get ~30 MB/s (240 mbps) no matter which machine / phone / tablet I use for transferring files to/from my nas. Here are the routers I am found that could work, but not sure:
  • NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S AC2600
  • Synology RT2600ac
  • PHICOMM K3C

Maybe someone can confirm MU-MIMO is needed to support the two ipad antennas or not?

Thanks,
--Jorge
Click to expand...
Do a speed test.
 
BasicGreatGuy said:
You don't need a router that supports MU-MIMO per se, to get fast speeds. I am using an AirPort Extreme and get 900mb+ down and up on my mini and other devices.
Click to expand...

The 900 mbps is for internet speed or local network speed?

I get 80-90 MB/s (640-920 mbps) using a wired connection from my nas. Using Wifi I get ~30 MB/s.
[doublepost=1554571060][/doublepost]
ZEEN0j said:
What kind of speeds are you getting when doing a speed test? One limiting factor could be the hard drive of your NAS if you haven’t excluded that already
Click to expand...

The max speed for the nas is 115 MB/s and I can get 80-90 MB/s on windows machines and around 95-100 MB/s on my MBP, so I know I can reach these speeds. I just want to reach them with wifi.
 
ikkysleepy said:
The 900 mbps is for internet speed or local network speed?

I get 80-90 MB/s (640-920 mbps) using a wired connection from my nas. Using Wifi I get ~30 MB/s.
[doublepost=1554571060][/doublepost]

The max speed for the nas is 115 MB/s and I can get 80-90 MB/s on windows machines and around 95-100 MB/s on my MBP, so I know I can reach these speeds. I just want to reach them with wifi.
Click to expand...

And you are sure you are connected to the 5ghz band when on WiFi?
 
ZEEN0j said:
And you are sure you are connected to the 5ghz band when on WiFi?
Click to expand...

Yeah. I just reset my router and tested again. For some reason the MBP is getting better performance and both are nowhere near the gigabit hardwire speeds.

Here is the transfer rate times for downloading a 4 GB file:
  • 52s windows via gigabit ethernet
  • 120s mbp (2015) via wifi 5ghz
  • 129s ipad mini 5 via wifi 5ghz with no https
Screen-Shot-2019-04-06-at-12-27-53-PM.png
 
ikkysleepy said:
Yeah. I just reset my router and tested again. For some reason the MBP is getting better performance and both are nowhere near the gigabit hardwire speeds.

Here is the transfer rate times for downloading a 4 GB file:
  • 52s windows via gigabit ethernet
  • 120s mbp (2015) via wifi 5ghz
  • 129s ipad mini 5 via wifi 5ghz with no https
Screen-Shot-2019-04-06-at-12-27-53-PM.png
Click to expand...

What are you using to test this? I want to try it myself
 
ZEEN0j said:
What are you using to test this? I want to try it myself
Click to expand...

I am using a stop watch and transferring files from a network share to my desktop. For the iPad there is a native app for my Synology NAS. I tried a general smb five explorer app as well with the same results . If you have a modern router with usb you can try transferring files to/from that USB port but it is probably going to be difficult to test.

I looked up my MBP speed test and looks like this is around the average speed to expect.
FE8-D86-D2-EE38-4-C38-9-ACF-8-C8710-EA9626.jpg


I don’t see any WiFi speed test for the iPad mini 5 but it looks to be common to be around 50% the theoretical rate. Hard to say if getting a router would make the efficient speeds faster.

Does anyone have any real world WiFi speed tests for the iPad mini 5.
 
Last edited:
Long story short, there is nothing wrong with my router. I am getting 40-50 MB/s now depending on the file size.

zLClcCg.png

The first 3 transfers are downloading a 4.2 GB file to the ipad. The first transfer is before turning off a nearby wifi and after moving the router to face me. The 2nd is with cabinet door closed and the 3rd is with the cabinet opened. The average time was around 1 minute and 35 seconds for a 4.2 GB file or around ~44 MB/s The last test I did was moving a 772 MB file over to the ipad, which took about 15 seconds or around ~ 51 MB/s.

The 2nd wireless was interfearing with my router and the direction of the antenna matters, among other things. I actually did get another router to test but the the results were around the same, so no benefit from MU-MIMO or from higher spec router on the 5 Ghz band.

So, just like article I found, the actual wifi performance is around 47% of what the ipad is rated at. In the iPad mini 5 case it's 866 Mbps rated so 433 Mbps or around 54 MB/s is what your going to average out at. You can look at the transfer rate and see that it maxed out at 80 MB/s and even hit over 60 MB/s at some times but sometimes you got really low transfer rates .

I did all this testing because I wanted to see how fast I could transfer files to the iPad, since there was no USB 3 support. The lighting cable averaged about 30 MB/s so the answer is you can get 40-50 MB/s using wifi and a NAS.
 
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