BiPAC 8800axl Availability

[DaveBrennan]

The 8800AXL is now discontinued, the replacement 8900 series will be released in January

I assume thats end of January?

[gatekeeper]

Yes, as pointed out by billion-fan, the 8800 is being superseded by a new 8900 series VDSL/ADSL router, which I think has been trialed thus far in Australia. It looks like there'll be three different models of 8900, two for which I've in the last few days found some pre-sales info here:

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/product ... es/#videos

(look in the middle of that webpage).

I believe the third one will be the 8900X-R2 (see the Products section of the actual billion.uk.com site), which will retail at just under £142 incl VAT.

It appears that Billion have taken onboard the criticisms of the 8800 series as regards the poor signal coverage and so have 'gone to town' with that side of things in these new models.

I'll doubtless get one of these myself and so am waiting on broadbandbuyer and other e-retailers getting in stock of them. Can't decide which one. I need more info (images) of each one.

Doubtless, there'll be some initial bugs found, so my guess is that throughout 2016 there'll be the usual firmware revisions to contend with.

[vanburen]

Thanks for that extra info Gatekeeper.

@billion_fan

- Do you think it will be likely the new 8900 range will be available by the end of January?

- It looks like the BiPAC 8900AX-2400 will be £61.01 more expensive than the BiPAC 8900AX-1600 R2. Does the 2400 have any extra features besides greater 802.11ac bandwidth?

- is the BiPAC 8900AX-1600 R2 wall mountable?

[dave_j]

I believe the third one will be the 8900X-R2 (see the Products section of the actual billion.uk.com site), which will retail at just under £142 incl VAT.

Here's a link to it:

https://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/produc ... -8900x-r2/

I think it comes without any sort of wifi.

[billion_fan]

Thanks for that extra info Gatekeeper.

@billion_fan

- Do you think it will be likely the new 8900 range will be available by the end of January?

- It looks like the BiPAC 8900AX-2400 will be £61.01 more expensive than the BiPAC 8900AX-1600 R2. Does the 2400 have any extra features besides greater 802.11ac bandwidth?

- is the BiPAC 8900AX-1600 R2 wall mountable?

Yes stock should be leaving at the end of the week or at the start of next week, the only difference is the wireless 2.4ghz and 5ghz

We are still waiting for official stock for the 8900-1600 so we can confirm

[clashcityrocker]

Good to see the 8800 discontinued, it failed to meet the usual high standard of billion products.

I had to send mine back to Amazon, the WiFi range was really really poor, and at the time there was no replacement from billion.

It's somewhat dented my faith , and it will now wait and see what others think before jumping in on a 8900. My Linksys wrt1900acs from Amazon Vine seems to be behaving itself well enough to not make me need to jump in early on a billion router.