WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.880 Yup, just like you, I saw the Minions Wi-Fi routers on Reddit and went, 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:10.320 well, this can't be real, can they? But then, unlike you, I actually bought them. 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:18.960 So here they are, Bob and Kevin, ready to turn your Wi-Fi evil. How evil, you ask? Does this answer 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:27.440 your question? Oh, there's a thing about me. The truth is, there's not a ton of information 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:33.680 about these other than what the manufacturer publishes on the box. The Bob version is AX1800, 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:41.760 so this is Wi-Fi 6, while the Kevin version is AXE 5400, so Wi-Fi 6E. Other than that, 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:47.920 the Kevin version is tri-band, which it has to be to be Wi-Fi 6E, so it's got 2.4GHz support, 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:54.880 and 5GHz and 6GHz, each at 160MHz channel widths. It has a 2.5GHz uplink port, which 00:00:55.760 --> 00:01:01.280 is not necessarily surprising at this price, but is a little surprising on something that I had 00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:05.360 perceived to be pretty much a novelty item. Typically, they give no thought to performance 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:10.640 whatsoever, but this clearly does, because all we have to do is flip over one more panel, 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:16.240 and we see that it also uses an upgraded Qualcomm processor versus the more basic 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:22.720 dual-core MIPS IA processor on the Bob version, and it's got more, I guess, DRAM. I'm assuming 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:30.000 Flash DRAM doesn't really mean anything. I think they mean Flash and DRAM, so it has 512MB 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.240 of RAM. This side of the box is also where we find out these are designed by DavoLink, 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:39.920 a Korean company that's been around since 2000 and specializes in business and education networking. 00:01:39.920 --> 00:01:45.120 We've got a QR code for the installation guide, and then that is about it. And online, you won't 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:49.840 find much more in the way of information compared to what they tell you on the box. They are mesh 00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:54.080 supported. You could have one Kevin for your internet connection, and then have a whole mesh 00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:59.280 of Bob's connected to them. They had support for WPA3, which we actually did a video over 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:04.400 online as tech tips recently, and explained why that's very important. And what's included in 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:09.200 the box is, apparently, all. Now, we're going to need a little bit of clarification on that, 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:18.880 so why don't we go ahead and get, oh my god, it's so cute. My very own minion. It's not very heavy, 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:25.600 but a wireless router doesn't necessarily need to be heavy to indicate its quality. 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:32.800 Oh my god, it's so cute. If you want to connect more than one wired client, you're going to need 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:38.320 a network switch, so you've got just the one LAN port and the one LAN port. There's a mesh button, 00:02:38.320 --> 00:02:46.480 which I assume is for setup, an LED, which I have to assume lights up the eyes. I really, 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:52.480 really hope it does. And then, powering. Oh my god, the shoes are rubber. 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:56.480 The attention to detail, you guys. 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:07.600 So cute. Even the cable's cute. Look, it's a minion's cable. Not really expecting to find 00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:15.040 anything extra in Kevin's box, but who knows. He does cost $130 compared to just $69 for Bob. 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:19.760 He's a lot heavier, which highlights that this is a completely different product, 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:25.040 not just two different versions of the same thing stuffed into a smaller chassis and a larger 00:03:25.040 --> 00:03:30.560 chassis. This feels like it's got some heat sinks in it too. Oh my god, his hair tuft is rubber too. 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:34.720 Oh, it's probably not the eyes that light up. It's probably this right here. Okay. Oh wow, 00:03:34.720 --> 00:03:40.480 this is a really short Ethernet cable. That's kind of a bummer. Hey, there we go. We've got 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:45.600 activity LED now. Well, here, let's do the setup. This is pretty simple. Just scan this QR code to 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:51.600 connect to it and then scan a second QR code. Well, the easy setup kind of broke down here. 00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:55.920 Well, we got there. It turns out that whatever Apple's doing with their default DNS settings 00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:01.200 and Safari on the iPhone, it just doesn't work for this. It works just fine on Android, 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:06.720 and it works just fine on a desktop or laptop. So let's go ahead and check out this control panel. 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:13.040 I love that the default admin username is Bob. Come on. How perfect is that? 00:04:13.760 --> 00:04:22.640 Like they really did, they really did put in the work on this one guys. Wait, what? If you reconfigure 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:32.000 SSID zero, SSID one just shows up. So now I've got Kevin sucks, and I've got Bob underscore one. 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:40.000 How do I turn that one off? Oh yeah, it's not secured. What is going on right now? 00:04:40.960 --> 00:04:48.000 Was this enabled box here before? No, that enable and disable thing is not here, 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:53.600 and this apply button that is here in the easy setup is not here in the Wi-Fi settings one. 00:04:54.320 --> 00:05:01.440 Right? Guys, tell me. Tell me what's happening right now. Is that apply? 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:10.320 The little paper airplane is apply. Wouldn't recommend using the easy Wi-Fi setup. There were 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:13.680 a couple of concerns we saw raised about the device online. Someone said that it doesn't 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:22.640 support PPPOE. So if you need that, then I guess the Minion router is not for you. And more importantly, 00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:26.800 a Reddit user pointed out that there's a vulnerability where the Wi-Fi passphrase is 00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:31.600 passed to the UART console in plain text. However, it should be noted that someone would need physical 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:36.480 access to the device in order to take advantage of that exploit. So once someone's got physical 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:40.800 access, you're pwned anyway. Enough chit chat though. It's time for the moment you've all been 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:46.720 waiting for. Is it actually a functioning Wi-Fi router? It's a gigabit connection running into it. 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:55.360 Half a gigabit. Wow, uploads even better. 500 megabit download, 700 up. Very reasonable. 00:05:56.080 --> 00:06:00.560 But can Kevin do better? I'm not going to bother configuring everything on this one and 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:03.680 guys, I'm sure there's things we could do to tune things a little bit better, 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:06.960 but we want to see how these are going to perform out of the box because realistically, 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:12.960 come on. That is how most people buying a novelty router like this are going to use it. 00:06:12.960 --> 00:06:17.520 All right, not bad. You can see our ISP is delivering a little bit more than gigabit on 00:06:17.520 --> 00:06:22.400 this connection. Unfortunately, UBC is really not giving us good enough consistency in our 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:27.680 downloads to really draw any kind of reasonable conclusion. Let's move. The testing consistency 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.040 isn't that big of a deal though because under normal circumstances, you're not going to be 00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:35.920 right next to your router anyway and the bottleneck is going to be, you know, what kind of connection 00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:40.480 can you get to it through a wall or whatever. So we're at one wall right now. Let's see how we're 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:49.280 doing here. Oh, yeah, I don't think the university of British Columbia is the problem here. Wow. 00:06:49.280 --> 00:06:58.400 Okay. So then I just go through this one door. Oh, wow. This is with no wall. Guys, look, 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:08.800 the set is right there. It's like right there. This is bizarre, guys. Kevin? Kevin? 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:16.880 Are you okay? It probably switched over to 2.4 when I went on the other side of the door 00:07:16.880 --> 00:07:22.880 and then just didn't grab five gigahertz or six gigahertz again. Oh, that's not good. 00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:29.760 Oh, man, I had not intended to go into Kevin's control panel, but I'm going to have to do that. 00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:36.480 So here's what we're going to do. You're in an apartment and you just don't need 2.4 gigahertz 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:41.920 and we're just going to turn 2.4 off. So the question we're trying to answer here is can you 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:46.160 buy one of these for your mom or is she going to call you complaining the second she walks, 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:50.400 you know, 30 feet away from it or goes into another room if you understand the compromise 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:54.720 you're making that 2.4 gigahertz isn't going to work. Let's go. Let's go again. Back to the other 00:07:54.720 --> 00:08:00.560 side of the door we go. Okay, moving around doesn't seem to be good for it. Seriously? 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:10.160 Surprisingly, this fares much better. So the problem is not necessarily the wall 00:08:10.880 --> 00:08:14.480 or the distance. I'm probably about the same distance from Kevin as I was before. 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:21.680 The issue seems to be the pickup pattern of the antennas. So if you live in like a row home, 00:08:21.680 --> 00:08:30.240 you know, like a three level but like small building, man, perfect. All right, we're back. 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:42.160 All right, yeah, like we can really see it here. So the problems are twofold. One, switching between 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:49.120 different bands is handled extremely poorly. Now that could potentially be exacerbated by the 00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:56.400 devices own tendencies, but whoever's fault it is, it's not a good experience with the Minions 00:08:56.400 --> 00:09:02.000 routers. I'm assuming Bob is no better than Kevin. And then problem number two is that the pickup 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:07.280 pattern on this antenna is, I don't know what word to use to describe it other than inexcusable. 00:09:07.680 --> 00:09:13.840 It worked great upstairs. So it's not that it's completely unable to punch through walls. It's 00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:22.880 that the pickup pattern is really strong vertically. And yeah, it's all it's, it's a can tenna sticking 00:09:22.880 --> 00:09:28.560 out of the top of this thing and really poor horizontally. So at this point in time, I can't 00:09:28.560 --> 00:09:34.080 say that I can recommend the Minions routers for anything other than cuteness factors. So if 00:09:34.160 --> 00:09:39.440 you're in an extremely small space and you just want a cute little Wi-Fi access point, then they're 00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:43.600 great. And if you want performance, then you should probably look elsewhere, like to your 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:50.960 ISP provided access point compared to these things. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.