Huawei have released a new Huawei B525 CAT6 4G router which is as a replacement for the popular Huawei E5186 CPE in the past two years. Now, for many users who want to buy a Huawei LTE CAT6 CPE, they would be confused about the two versions, such as the following:
Still please help in choosing, because I have two devices that I can purchase, namely:
– Huawei B525s-23a
– Huawei E5186s-22a
B525s is newer than E5186. As far as functionality is concerned, they both support LTE-A and have interfaces for two external antennas. I do not know how with the performance of these devices? Is there a difference?
Frankly, for single user who wants to buy Huawei LTE CPE, they usually have the similar question. There are slight differences between Huawei LTE CPEs which normal users cannot discriminate it. For example, the Huawei E5186 and B525 are both LTE CAT6 CPEs. Let’s take a view of the following difference between the E5186 and B525.
Appearance
Huawei B525 is the latest desktop router LTE from Huawei, which is in smaller size than E5186. With the dimension of 163 mm x 52 mm x 226 mm, there are power, Wi-Fi, signal strength, network mode and LAN/WAN indicator at the front panel of the B525. At the back interface of the B525, there are 4 x RJ45 ports for WAN/LAN, 1 x RJ11 port, 1 x USB port and power adapter plug. And there are also two connectors for external antenna.
For the Huawei E5186, the dimension is 194 x 177 x 64 mm, and there are power, network mode, WiFi, voice and signal indicators on the front panel. Two external antenna connectors, 4 x RJ45 ports for WAN/LAN, 2 x RJ11 ports for VoLTE and telephone, 1 x USB port for storage and power adapter plug on the back side.
From the appearance, we could get small difference from the B525 and E5186, one is with 1 RJ45 port, and the other is with 2 RJ45 port.
LTE Band Lock Feature
The band lock function is supported by Huawei B525, which cannot find in E5186 CPE. That means you could lock the B525 router to a specific MHz range from the setup menu of WEBGUI. This is a useful feature when the operator has overlaid networks in the area and retrieving the fastest and / or most secure network in your area.
VPN
Huawei B525 supports L2TP VPN client. When L2TP vpn client function isenabled, the throughput performance will slow down, themaximum speed can up to 50Mbps (dependent on networkenvironment). However, Huawei E5186 doesn’t have such feature.
Sub-versions
For all Huawei CPE, there are different sub-versions for each mode. For Huawei E5186, there are two versions available: E5186s-61 (Band 3/7/28/40) and E5186S-22a (Band 1/3/7/8/20/38).
And for Huawei B525, the most popular sub-models are B525s-23a (Band 1/3/7/8/20/32/38) and B525s-65a (Band 1/3/5/7/8/19/20/26/28/38/40/41 FDD1700/1400mhz). From the sub versions, we can see that the B525 supports more LTE bands than E5186.
Conclusion
Now back to this question, which one should I choose, Huawei E5186 or B525? From the price side, the B525 is much expensive than E5186. If you want to buy band lock function CPE, B525 is the choice for you. If the price of the E5186 and B525 are close, buy the newer B525 would be a nice choice.