MR74 is vastly inferior to MR84, correct?

[RumorConsumer]

I realize for many use cases this may not be true but in my case what I am using as my metric is pure omnidirectional range in an outdoor environment. Like imagine a large garden or campsite where you can have one access point in the center of everything with Omni directional antennas. My experience so far in trying both of these models in this type of situation Is that the 84 seems to have almost double the range of the 74. Can anybody corroborate? If I were to make an analogy it seems like the difference between an MR 34 and an MR 52 practically. OK that is too harsh but you know the direction I’m pointing.

[cmr]

@RumorConsumerI'm pretty sure the MR84 is an MR53 at heart and the MR74 is an MR33 so yes quite different in terms of maximum performance.  I'm surprised about the coverage differences though, are you using the MA-ANT-20 antennas on both?

[RumorConsumer]

Yeah full omnis on both.

[JohnD]

Chipset and radio improvements go a long way in the real world! That MR42/MR52/MR53 generation of Wave 2 APs is honestly the tipping point that got me to leave my previous preferred wifi vendor.

[RumorConsumer]

@JohnD @It is no joke. I buy unclaimed MR52 on eBay for all my needs. Costs less than retail of the worse models.

[rhbirkelund]

Note that MR84 has dual band antenna ports. MR74 does not. So for MR74, you’ll need one antenna per band.

[PhilipDAth]

Here are the datasheets:

https://meraki.cisco.com/lib/pdf/meraki_datasheet_MR84.pdf 

https://meraki.cisco.com/lib/pdf/meraki_datasheet_MR74.pdf

If you compare likewise bands and parameters you'll find it tends to have better receive sensitive and greater transmit power.

The MR84 is 4x4 while the MR74 is 2x2.  Having double the number of radios to receive with is going to improve your receive sensitivity a lot.

[GIdenJoe]

The max transmit power does not really matter that much.  You shouldn't go over 14 dBm anyway.

The antennas used are the same.

The receive sensitivities do seem a little different where the MR84 seems to have better sensitivities at the lower MCS's but a little worse at the high MCS's (depends on the radio, it seems to differ quite a bit).

However being able to do explicit beamforming with 4 radio's instead of 2 will improve range for multi radio clients.