Overall and Final Verdict
When I first heard about the new EnGenius Fit lineup I was a little torn. I was very excited that they are taking the home power user seriously and with that also finally bringing out products that better fit small businesses. Their main lineup has been amazing and with EnGenius Cloud they managed to make maintaining it and setting things up to be easy enough for a power user or smaller businesses that aren’t going to have a dedicated IT department or have one person handling the job while pulling double duty with other tasks. The Fit lineup fits there perfectly. The one downside, however, is Fit isn’t backward compatible with the other lineup and while that is disappointing for me as I already have a lot of EnGenius Cloud hardware I do get why they wouldn’t want to mix the two.
The new lineup does, however, allow them to change things up when it comes to the app, and as far as support goes they can draw a better line between the pro-level features. The Fit lineup still has the same easy to setup features that I saw previously, only now you can do it with the new FitExpress cloud, with a FitController which hosts your own cloud right on-site, or if you only want to use one device you can even run an AP like the EWS377-Fit off of the built-in web interface which is a big step up over their competition with lineups like Unifi which require the cloud or on-site controller for configuration. In the end, the EWS377-FIT was easy to set up using QR codes in all of the configurations and you have an option for each way you might want to use it.
Hardware wise the EWS377-FIT is a solid access point that has 4 radios each for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and combined with a 2.5G wired connection can offer up a lot of bandwidth. I do wish they had a WiFI 6E option that supports 6 GHz in the lineup but I’m sure that will be coming in the future. The EWS377-FIT builds on the already solid EnGenius AP designs with this model even now having a passive heatsink on the all-aluminum backplate to help keep things running cool. It wasn’t too aggressive on power and it supports PoE of course which makes it easy to mount in remote locations. The mounting setup isn’t any different than what EnGenius has used on past APs as well which gives you different options including quick installation on drop ceilings or screw mounting for in a home. Performance was great as well, doing better with 5 GHz than the last EnGenius WiFi 6E AP did at 5 GHz in my testing.
Overall EnGenius is hitting all of the marks for the power user and for small businesses including a variety of products to start the Fit lineup which I hope to check out more in the future. Given the popularity of lineups like Unifi and TP-Link Omada, I’m always happy to see more competition which should only help consumers when it comes to features and pricing. The EWS377-FIT that I took a look at today, for example, is priced at $199 and unlike a lot of the EnGenius lineup, you can actually find these easily without having to spend a fortune and get it through CDW. The $199 price point isn’t too far off from the $179 price point that the Omada EAP660 HD is selling for which has a similar feature set so it is clear that EnGenius is keeping a close eye on the pricing. In the end, the high-end EnGenius Cloud lineup has been great and I would highly recommend it. This is the lineup and access point that I’m going to recommend when friends are asking about a solid upgrade to their network. Especially with the Fit lineup having an outside AP in the lineup already as well which will be great for friends in my rural area looking to stay connected while out enjoying the weather this summer.
Live Pricing: HERE
