MG21 or MG41 performance vs customer grade

[GIdenJoe]

Hello everyone,

I work for an MSP and we do alot of Meraki deployments.

Recently we have had alot of customers expanding to new buildings where they already want to move but the ISP's have not yet installed their fiber cables in the building.

These are customer we usually lend out a simple tp link 4G router we have lying around to help the customers get started.  However when mobile coverage is not great (the tp link only shows bars) we usually experience problems like when more than 10 people connect behind the local MX some people can't get on the internet for several minutes and usually we start to see north of 20% or way more packetloss on the WAN side.

I've seen that the MG E variants would be a great device to have as it also has the ability to connect external antennas.and you can actually view the RSRP and RSRQ values in the local page according to the documentation.

What is the experience you have with these Meraki devices under great and less than great signal situations?

Does it perform more stable than a customer grade device or not?

[PhilipDAth]

I have been using the internal MG21 and that has been good.  It's been in a static location, so always has the same amount of signal.

[PhilipDAth]

Have you thought about getting a Starlink dish?  Easy to move from site to site, and has a lot of bandwidth.

[NolanHerring]

I'm curious myself as I might be doing something similar. I believe the key benefit of the MG lineup is that it can be placed outside, and that is probably going to be the best way to improve signal.

When I first saw the product and noticed they had an 'e' model for external antenna I wasn't sure why because the only option I could find at the time was dipole, which as far as I can tell is similar to the internal ones, both are omni. Maybe the gain is higher? Can't confirm since I can't seem to find any specs on the internal antenna.

However then I stumbled across this and now it makes sense why they have the external connection option:

https://meraki.cisco.com/product-collateral/meraki_datasheet_mg_cellular_patch_antenna/?file

Spin it around until you get the best signal, or I think there might be some websites with cell tower locations documented etc.

[GIdenJoe]

Yes I'm particularly interested how stable this device will be in worse than ideal situations.
The E model for me is the way to go due to the patch antenna.