Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsWorked great at first but then became very unstable
Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2019
Upgraded from a 4-year old Asus router due to a gradual increase in devices over the years - I have about 50 devices (including a dozen Chromecasts streaming Hulu Live TV among other things) and although the Asus did fairly well, I noticed some trouble when there was a lot of traffic, especially streaming. Memory and CPU would max out 100% of the time and streaming would be interrupted. I upgraded to this router for the additional processing horsepower, enhanced range, and future WiFi 6 (AX) support. I also considered the Asus equivalent as I have been a long time Asus user but I went with this one for the additional antennas, better processing/co-processing and overall reputation if TP-Link products. i would love to have both in hand to test but that's a little more buy/return effort than I wanted to do. I believe Asus also makes great products.
The router setup was extremely easy with the Tether app via bluetooth - the best I've seen in fact. I was up and running within minutes and had all my tweaking done in about an hour. Tweaking meaning setting up IPV6, custom DNS servers, etc. I have a single SSID for both 2.4 and 5.0 so that the clients can connect to whichever they find better. Right now it is about half and half. One note about the tether app - it will stay in bluetooth mode (meaning you have to be near the router) unless you enable remote management in the router settings. It is handy for managing the router without logging into the browser page, although I will say that not all options are available in the app and I found the browser setup to work very well.
So far the performance and range of the router has been excellent with the exception of one thing. I was experiencing difficulty connecting some of my apple products to the 2.4GHz radio. After an email to TP-Link tech support (which was replied to very quickly), they asked me to turn off AX support in the 2.4GHz radio. I turned it off for 2.4 (and 5.0 simply because there are no AX clients yet for either anyway) and it immediately fixed the problem but I still have trouble connecting on occasion to the 2.4GHz radio. It begs the question why you would have to turn off a feature but I'm trusting there will be a firmware fix down the road before I have any AX clients and to fix the iPhone connectivity issue. If not I would be inclined to come back here and downgrade the rating since a large part of the cost of this router is AX compatibility.
I have 115Mb/s internet service and I get that or very very close everywhere in my two story plus basement home. I'm sure it covers the yard too but I haven't tested it well since it is winter. Using a throughput app I get gigabit speeds near the router and 600-900 on other floors even in the far corners. So overall it should suit my needs as I am hoping 500Mb/s service or better will be available at some point for my area. All my smart devices (bulbs, plugs, thermostats, vacuum, cameras etc) work perfectly. This is one reason I went with a single router rather than a mesh system - I read reports of smart devices having difficulty with some of the mesh systems. I have not tried them however.
Overall I'm pleased with a little more testing to do before my return period is up. I hope they keep up with firmware updates and add some more features such as the ability to have a timed guest network (I used that all the time on my Asus router for parties, it would remove the guest network at a set time so I didn't have to remember to go back in and turn it off) and the ability to set up multiple guest networks (not as important for me). It's an expensive router but hopefully it will last me several years, and that they will enable the WiFi-6/AX features.
UPDATE: After a few weeks with the router, I'm having some more issues. iPhone products are disconnecting and the router is going offline and online about 2-3 times per day, which then disconnects many of my smart home products. Some of those products wouldn't reconnect (especially the cameras) without a full power cycle of the router. I've been working with tech support and I'm still hopeful to get a firmware fix to help. Otherwise, I'm going back to Asus as I have always found those to be extremely robust. Until I figure it all out, I'm downgrading this rating to 3 stars. If I have to return, I'll downgrade it again to 1.
UPDATE 2/11/19: Unfortunately I'm returning. As I said above, the router has a lot of potential but it's simply not ready for release. I don't know if it is bad hardware or bad firmware but the thing goes offline several times a day. Despite working with tech support (who is very responsive and they do try to help), I can't get this thing to stay online and be stable. I ordered an Asus RT-AX88U and so far it is outstanding. Performance is excellent and it hasn't gone offline or rebooted in a week. I should've never left Asus!
