End of Sale – AP series indoor access points retire

Sophos is retiring its AP series indoor access points. This news comes as no surprise, at least to us. We already speculated about this in the eleventh episode of our podcast. At the latest, when UTM version 9.7 with support for the APX access points was released at the end of 2019, it also no longer made sense for owners of a UTM firewall to buy the old AP models.

End of Sale – March 31, 2020

So now it’s official and the AP series can only be ordered until March 31, 2020. Here is a summary of all indoor access points of the AP series and which APX Sophos suggests as an alternative:

• Sophos AP15 and AP15C > Sophos APX 120
• Sophos AP55 and AP55C > Sophos APX 320
• Sophos AP100 and AP100C > Sophos APX 530 or Sophos APX 740

End of Sale also for Central Wireless licenses!

If you have been managing your AP Series Access Points through Central Wireless, you will no longer be able to purchase licenses for them after March 31, 2020, except for the AP 100X (Outdoor Access Point). After that, no new features will be introduced for these models in Central and only critical security patches and bug fixes will be released, but only until March 31, 2021 (End of Support).

End of Support – March 31, 2021

Sophos explains the “End of Support” status as follows:

• RMAs will still be processed provided there is a valid warranty or support license.
• No more technical support will be provided. Calls to the hotline are now only accepted for processing RMAs.
• Software updates or bug fixes will no longer be provided for the affected AP models.
• The APs can still run on the last supported firmware version

End of Life – March 31, 2023

However, on March 31, 2023, it will definitely be over and all affected AP models can no longer be used in Sophos Central, the XG Firewall (SFOS) or in the SG UTM.

Price increase 30%

Those who now switch from the AP series to the APX access point will be confronted with a price difference of about 30%. While you can buy the AP15 access point for 107.25 CHF / 97.50 € net today (January 2020), the small APX 120 is available for 140.25 CHF / 127.50 €.

In my view, that would be fine if the devices were state of the art. However, the APX series currently does not ship with the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard IEEE 802.11ax, but still with Wi-Fi 5 IEEE 802.11ac.

So if you are thinking of replacing all APs with APX, I recommend waiting a little longer. Maybe Sophos will bring an update with the latest Wi-Fi standard later. Because Sophos itself also sees it that the access points should last longer. That’s why you get more warranty with APX series. The AP series had a 1 year warranty, the APX have a new 5 year warranty. This is certainly one reason for the higher price.

Outdoor Access Point AP100X not affected

As the Sophos announcement states, only the indoor access points are affected. The AP100X is so far the only outdoor access point from Sophos, which will therefore remain in the range for the time being. According to our information, there will soon be a changing of the guard here as well. In fact, in the next few months, Sophos can be expected to introduce the first outdoor access point in the APX series (APX 320X).