In the manual for the AP 1 Mini HW3, chapter 10 is on restoring factory defaults
Peplink AP One Firmware 3.9.5 User Manual – Peplink Documentation
what is say there was not my experience.
First off the doc makes no sense, logically
Hold for 5 seconds for admin password reset (Note: The LED status light blinks in RED 2 times and release the button, green status light starts blinking)
Hold for 5 seconds for factory reset (Note: The LED status light blinks in RED 3 times and release the button, all WAN/LAN port lights start blinking)
From illogical to wrong: I did this and the status light never blinked. When I removed the paper clip after 5 seconds, nothing. Both the status and Wifi lights remained. green.
So, I pressed and pressed. After maybe 10 seconds, the AP reboots (again, no blinking red). The only way to tell if it reset or not was to look for default SSID that the AP creates out of the box.
Is resetting the admin password still a thing?
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Michael,
You’re right. The button should be held down for around 10-15 seconds, just until the LED turns off, then release. The device will factory reset at that point.
Thanks for bringing this up, I’ll let the team know about the misleading statement.
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Hello @Michael234,
In our experience, across all recent firmware releases, the ability to reset only the admin password has been removed. In both a professional sense and a cybersecurity sense, we see that as a good thing. We need to protect our customers’ networks, and if someone could reset just the admin password, they could get access to customer-sensitive network configuration details.
Our team is happy with the way the hardware reset to only factory currently works; anything else is too risky in professional networking nowadays.
Here is a previous post strongly advocating for restrictions on the factory resetting abilities.
Don’t buy used Peplink equipment.
.
We are grateful that Peplink makes it challenging to resell the equipment; it is an excellent theft deterrent.
Have a good week,
Marcus 
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