Tenda OAP1200 — 802.11AC Indoor/Outdoor Wi-Fi Access Point

Buying it, and when not to

The OAP1200 is an 802.11AC indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi access point. The outdoor rating is the whole point: it is built to be mounted where there is weather, which no ceiling access point is.

Use it for the places people actually complain about - a compound yard, a car park, a terrace or garden at a restaurant, a market walkway, a gatehouse, a site office, the space between two buildings. Fed by one Ethernet cable from a PoE switch inside, it brings coverage out of the building without putting a power adaptor somewhere rain will find it. For estates and market lines it is also the standard way to light a shared outdoor area from an existing network.

It is 11AC rather than Wi-Fi 6, so for a dense indoor space the i26 or i27 will handle the crowd better and should be used instead - this unit's advantage is where it can be mounted, not how many clients it serves. It is also not a point-to-point link: if the requirement is to carry a connection from one building to another over distance, use the O-series outdoor CPEs in pairs, which are designed for that and will do it far better. And as always, size the PoE switch and use outdoor-rated cable and proper grounding on any external run.