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Why I No Longer Use Sophos AP6 Access Points

Why I No Longer Use Sophos AP6 Access Points


network sophos

Table of Contents

Introduction

As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I no longer use Sophos Access Points, even though I still use a Sophos Firewall in my HomeLab. I’m generally a fan of ecosystems, but in this case, the product was no longer acceptable to me. Why? I will explain that in this article.

I conducted extensive research because there were always contradictions and unanswered questions. I wanted to understand the exact causes of the problems and put the situation into a technical context. In doing so, I came across a series of serious shortcomings—both on a technical level and in the way Sophos communicates these issues.

Sophos Teams and the Product Problem

Before I go into the technical details of the AP6 series, I want to emphasize that this is not a rant against the entire company Sophos. In large companies, teams often work in isolation and are given different priorities. In my opinion, the firewall and endpoint teams at Sophos are doing a good job. Unfortunately, the Access Point team either has fewer resources or doesn’t push its products with the same consistency. Access Points are not a core product at Sophos, yet I find it questionable when unfinished solutions are brought to market and customers effectively become involuntary beta testers.

A Brief Look Back at Sophos Access Points

I have known Sophos Access Points since they existed and have tested them both in corporate environments and privately. Sophos Access Points were never the cheapest on the market, nor were they the leaders in terms of features. For many networks, especially those with basic requirements, they were perfectly adequate. Anyone who only needs a guest WLAN or basic internet access for a few mobile devices was quite well served with them.

However, the release of the AP6 series brought the break. In addition to a significant delay in the market launch – the WiFi 6 standard (802.11ax) was already well established when the devices finally appeared – these Access Points also came with other serious disadvantages.

WiFi 6 Too Late and WiFi 7 on the Horizon

WiFi 6 (802.11ax) was officially released in 2019 and has become increasingly prevalent in the consumer and enterprise sectors since 2020. When Sophos finally followed suit with its WiFi 6 models at the end of 2023, it was already foreseeable that WiFi 7 (802.11be) would not be far away. Anyone investing in modern wireless solutions today expects the standard of the future – or at least not an outdated product shortly before the next technological leap.

Cloud-Only Management and Missing Features

Another point of criticism of the new Access Points is that they can only be managed via Sophos Central. Local management via the firewall has been eliminated. In addition, important functions such as mesh or guest WLAN were missing at the time of launch. These features are now a basic requirement, even for inexpensive entry-level models from other manufacturers.

Questionable Pricing Policy

The pricing of the AP6 series was downright off-putting at first. Asking almost three times the price of an older entry-level model is a statement. After only a few months, there were massive discounts (up to 60%), and early adopters were completely taken aback by various promotions (“Buy two, get one free”). This back and forth with prices not only demonstrates poor planning but also creates uncertainty in the market.

My Tests in the HomeLab

Of course, like my colleagues, I received test devices of the AP6 series from the company, and I installed and intensively tested them in various environments and in my HomeLab. My apartment is large enough to place several access points sensibly and simulate roaming scenarios. But the results were disappointing.

Poor Transmit Power

With WiFi 6, in addition to the channel width (80 MHz or 160 MHz channels) and the number of spatial streams (MU-MIMO), the transmit power also plays an important role. Especially in the 5 GHz band (and in the future in the 6 GHz band with WiFi 6E), range quickly becomes an issue. In my tests, the new AP6 series delivered significantly less range than the previous models (APX) – even in identical environments and with the same transmit power settings.

When I streamed music via WLAN speakers during training, dropouts occurred regularly. At first, I thought it was a problem with my internet connection. But after repeated tests, including in the local network without internet, it was clear that the access point was not handling the hand-over or signal stability cleanly.

Professional Analysis and Alarming Findings

To objectify my subjective impressions, I used professional measuring equipment from the company to analyze the wireless signal of the AP6 Access Points in detail. The results confirmed my initial observations. The reception power was indeed worse than with the APX models and significantly worse than with the AP100 models – and this despite the external antennas of the AP6. It is known that the AP100 models may have exceeded the permitted transmit power limits in the past, which led to a subjectively good range, but even considering this factor, the AP6s were disappointing in terms of signal strength.

Irregular Signal (Flickering)

In addition to the weaker signal, I noticed a “flickering” in the signal, i.e., unstable signal strength, and repeated short interruptions in the signal performance. At first, I suspected a hardware defect, but since all my test devices showed the same behavior, I ruled this out.

Poor Roaming

Roaming protocols in IEEE 802.11 environments rely on standardized mechanisms (such as 802.11r, 802.11k, and 802.11v)

With roaming, too, it was noticeable that Sophos did not seem to adhere to the 802.11 standard in the numbering of the access points, which is unusual and could potentially lead to incompatibilities.

With modern standards such as 802.11r (Fast Roaming) and 802.11k (Radio Resource Management), a client should hardly notice any dropouts when changing access points (e.g., during an ongoing FaceTime or VoIP call). Nevertheless, there were repeated interruptions during my calls, which suggests that roaming functions were not implemented cleanly.

My colleagues, who carried out the same test setup in company environments, also confirmed similar and sometimes even more serious problems. The overall picture was clear: the product seemed unfinished and not yet ready for productive use in more demanding environments.

Central Management

Another problem concerned the Sophos Central management interface. Changes that I made in Sophos Central were not always reliably transferred to the access points. There seemed to be communication problems between Sophos Central and the local GUI of the access points, which led to inconsistencies and conflicts in the settings. Another indication of a premature product launch was the fact that the local GUI of the access points offered significantly more configuration options than Sophos Central, especially in terms of transmit power and WLAN settings. This discrepancy indicates an unfinished cloud management solution.

Communication with Sophos Support

I contacted Sophos Support with my findings and initially received the standard response that the AP6 Access Points should function perfectly and that I should please carry out some standard tests. I followed the instructions of the support, implemented the recommended settings, and carried out the tests again – with the same negative result. After weeks of email correspondence, exchanging logs, and support sessions, the responses from Sophos Support became increasingly generic and less helpful. The response times increased from initially every three days to once a week, which considerably delayed the problem-solving process.

Sophos Community Forums

Meanwhile, I searched online for other users reporting similar issues. I noticed that the official Sophos Forum was very “clean.” There were very few critical posts or problem descriptions about the AP6 access points, or they may have been deleted.

Design

Design is always subjective, but there’s a reason other manufacturers think about where cables exit the access point and how best to hide them.

Sophos AP6 420 Design Fail

Source: Sophos Community by Rafael Telles

More Bad Customer Feedback

By now, at the company’s request, these access points had been ordered and delivered to initial customers. The experiences were mixed. Some customers reported no issues, while others struggled with the same symptoms I found in my HomeLab: weak transmit power, a need for more access points than before, and repeated connection losses and problems with RADIUS server authentication. Here, too, tickets were opened with Sophos Support, which followed the same frustrating pattern: exchanging logs, running standard tests, applying driver updates, until the tickets eventually fizzled out after weeks.

Feedback from Sophos & Distribution

My direct Sophos contacts in sales and engineering denied any issues with the AP6 series and claimed they were not aware of any problems.

To gain a wider perspective, I contacted several distributors worldwide. Some didn’t respond, but those who did confirmed a similar picture: there were significant issues with the AP6 Access Points for certain customers.

Partially Functioning Environments

I looked more closely at customer environments where no problems were reported and discovered that these customers generally used WLAN only for basic purposes. For example, those without VoIP over WLAN or with mostly stationary setups where roaming wasn’t critical. Often the WLAN served primarily as a guest network or for light internet usage. By contrast, issues cropped up in environments where WLAN was central to operations—like video conferencing, which repeatedly dropped, or remote sessions that became unstable, as well as data transfers that failed intermittently.

OEM Manufacturer Confirms the Suspicion

Toward the end of 2024, a colleague contacted a former co-worker at EDIMAX, the OEM for Sophos AP6 Access Points, to see whether EDIMAX was aware of issues with this particular product line (since it may also be used by other vendors). The EDIMAX contact confirmed that problems with the AP6 series were known and gave us a contact in Sophos’ Global Escalation Service. To protect their identity, I won’t share their name here.

However, this Sophos staff member confirmed that the AP6 Access Points had major problems, that numerous support tickets were open, and that Sophos could not pinpoint a definite cause at the time (August 2024).

Conclusion: Disappointment and Consequences

My in-depth research painted a clear picture: there were glaring contradictions in the statements from different Sophos channels. While support and my sales contacts denied or were unaware of issues, internal sources, distributors, and EDIMAX confirmed widespread problems. This strongly suggests that Sophos attempted to conceal issues with a product that simply wasn’t stable. The lack of independent reviews highlighting these problems only intensified this impression. Perhaps Sophos is too small a player in the wireless market to attract much testing—or perhaps there was a deliberate effort to suppress negative publicity.

Because of all these factors, I removed the Sophos Access Points from my HomeLab and went back to UniFi. At the company where I work, we also no longer use the AP6 series and more strongly recommend established manufacturers like UniFi, Ruckus, Aruba, or Cisco. Six months without a fix for core WLAN problems is unacceptable.

I stayed on top of developments and learned that Sophos released a firmware update for the AP6 Access Points in early December 2024 with the MR5 update, which supposedly addressed most problems. That was the word from my Sophos contact, but I didn’t have the patience to test it again. For me, the product is already a lost cause.

Form your own opinion based on what I’ve found. As far as I’m concerned, I’m deeply disappointed in Sophos as a manufacturer—both in their communication and in the AP6 series’ quality. For me, the chapter on Sophos Access Points is closed.

Until next time, Joe

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