Overall and Final Verdict
In the past, we have had a few of EnGenius’s faster switches in for testing, and having 2.5G ports and faster is a lot more exciting than the ECS1552P’s 48 Gigabit ports but where they differ is the ECS1552P is a workhorse. Not every connection needs to be the fastest, even with the ECS1552P as I have it installed right now there are multiple connections that I have devices that only need a 100 Mbps connection. The ECS1552P stands out however because with all of that EnGenius has set the switch up with a solid switching capacity to fully handle things if all 52 ports (including the SFP+ ports) are all maxed out. Between that and having the four SFP+ ports to be able to tie the ECS1552P in with the rest of your network at 10G speeds helps avoid those bottlenecks and with four SFP+ ports you do have a few connections available to tie in one or two servers or important PCs in at a faster speed. In our case, most of that is handled on the backbone, but we are tied into that at 10Gbps. The ECS1552P also has PoE+ capabilities on all 48 of its ports. For our specific situation, this allowed us to cut out an extra PoE switch that was used just for cameras but it also means that in an enterprise application, you can deploy PoE powered devices like IP Phones or thin clients anywhere. This also helps with battery backups, you can keep cameras up and running through an outage with just the UPS at the switch, not a smaller UPS near each device. The 410 watts of total power is ideal for cameras, our IP Cameras all fall in the 3-5 watt range and with 410 watts the ECS1552P can handle 8.5 watts average across all 48 ports. EnGenius does have a higher wattage model that increases that to 740 watts if you need more as well.
For me, as someone who is handling our network myself while also having other responsibilities the cloud functionality that EnGenius has tied in with the ECS1552P is important for me. I have the EnGenius Cloud web interface as well as their app to be able to monitor and handle things remotely. I’m not a big fan of the pro subscription that the EnGenius Cloud has integrated, obviously, the target audience isn’t a home user at all. But even in an enterprise environment, the pricing can start to add up quickly with each device costing $40 yearly. For the switches you aren’t getting much for that, the biggest feature for me at least would be Auto Cam Lifeguard which can power cycle a camera if it detects it has locked up. At least with the S series of access points, it makes sense that the pro plan is helping support the AirGuard functionality. You do get a year of a pro license with any device so you have time to get a feel for things to see if you need the functionality. This gets a little harder to deal with because as it sits the current interface is an all or nothing situation. So if half of your switches or access points have an active license but the other half don’t you have to either turn it off or on for them all and if you have pro on for expired devices they no longer get updates and for the switches, you lose the ability to even open up the diagnostic page because 2 of the 6 functions there are Pro only. I would like it if I could turn it on or off per device.
There are a few other areas where I would love to see the cloud interface improve even though as a whole I do like it. For the switches for example there are a few functions here and there that are only on their own web interface. I would also love to see for switches and access points all of the connected devices show up on the topology map. Utilizing the cool port traffic interface in the diagnostic page that shows which ports have the most traffic could be useful on the main switch detail page.
The EnGenius ECS1552P is going to hit the pocketbook hard as well with it being priced at $879. This is an enterprise 48 port PoE switch with four SFP+ ports so that isn’t completely out of line and a quick look on CDW has the TP-Link JetStream TL-SG3452XP V1 with a similar configuration at $939.99. So I wouldn’t consider it out of line, in fact, it is well below the Ubiquiti USW-PRO-48-POE which I would consider to be a direct competitor. Overall I like what EnGenius is doing, they have been reliable and easy to work with and they have been expanding their lineup both with the EnGenius Cloud enterprise lineup and the Fit lineup for small businesses and power users which helps keep more of your functionality all in the one interface.
Live Pricing: HERE
