Creator Pick: Upgrade Your Game Day or Gaming Setup with the Perfect Home Wi-Fi [0:25]

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 1 out of 5 stars

  Internet cuts out, does not reach upstairs

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Owned for 2 weeks

  Setup was easy enough, but as-is it doesn't work smoothy. Seems like the sale item I bought was hardware V1.0 so you may have more luck if you get the updated hardware version. The internet randomly cuts out! I still have wifi connection but can't access any websites for about 30 seconds about once every hour or so. According to the internet this is a known issue - I'm surprised they're still selling this router! It also has terrible signal upstairs/downstairs in my house, which my old wifi router covered without any issue. I'm attempting to return it under warranty because I was traveling during the 15 day Best Buy return period, and they're making me go through a process which involves emailing with their tech support.

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  Posted 3 months ago by ESdl

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  A router with 2.4ghz, 5ghz, and 6ghz, OH MY!

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  As the happy owner of a TP-Link Archer AX5400 Pro, a dual band Wi-Fi 6 router, I was happy to upgrade to the newest WiFi 7 router from TP-Link. And I wanted to like this router more than I have, but there are just a few major annoyances that I can’t get over. Setup of the router was extremely simple: unplug your old router and remove all ethernet connections, then hook up your new router, follow the instructions in the TP Link Tether app, and you’ll be up in running in no time. What’s nice is that my previous router worked with the Tether app, so I was already familiar with all the functionality of TP Link’s app. It wasn’t soon after setup that I encountered my first annoyance, which may be a limitation of the technology itself and not the router. On my previous router, you could configure all bands (2.4, 5 and 6ghz wireless bands) to be seamlessly merged into one connection, in other words, all connections would require one WiFi name and one single password. But with this router, the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands were together as one network, and the 6ghz band is it’s own band with a separate name and password (though I did use the same password between them). I soon received a notification on my phone that I may experience issues controlling other devices on my network since my phone and smart home devices were now on separate networks… This was a disappointing discovery. If I wanted my phone to use the faster (though shorter range) 6ghz band, it may not communicate well with my smart displays and speakers. There’s also an option to enable what’s called an MLO network that isn’t found in the initial setup, just to make things more confusing. MLO (multi link operation) basically allows devices (that support WiFi-7) to connect to multiple WiFi channels/bands simultaneously. I turned this on briefly to try it out and it was okay. I didn’t notice that much of a difference. However, the only device in my home that supports WiFi 7 is my iPhone 16 Pro, so any potential benefits I would have seen were limited by the fact most devices don’t have WiFi 7 capabilities yet. After some researching, I have seen that some folks online have suggested using the same username and password for all bands/networks. That way your smart devices in your home can communicate with each other. I’m not sure how this would impact an MLO network (should you enable that feature). I’ll have to try this and see if I encounter any problems going that route, even if only for the 2.4/5ghz and 6ghz channels. But until then, I’ve primarily connected all my devices to the 2.4/5ghz connection. As for range, I don’t think this is an improvement from my old Archer router. If anything, it seems like it may have a smaller range. My house isn’t huge, it’s a 1,500sf 3-bedroom. Yet somehow in the corners of this home I find my speeds ranging wildly which is a problem I didn’t encounter much with my previous router. When you are in range, speeds are quick as can be. I have 1-gbps speeds from my ISP and when you can get close to that it’s magic. I would give this router a score of 85 out of 100. The tether app is nice, the unit is fast when you are in close enough range, but the different band setups are confusing and not intuitive. And to top it off, you might not need a WiFi 7 router quite yet until more devices are WiFi 7 compatible. And by the time WiFi 7 is ubiquitous amongst all new consumer electronics, there may be better router options out there to meet your needs. I’ll leave you with one last pro tip: try using the same username(s) and password(s) for your WiFi login(s) on your new router as you had on your old router, that way you won’t have to re-login to your network with every device in your home that was previously using your old router/network.

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  Posted 5 months ago by CactusMan

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  All the new features

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 25 Contributor

  It’s good to see more routers come out supporting Wi-Fi 7, 6Ghz channels and higher speed LAN ports. Technology is getting faster and all these things help it keep up. However, why are so many security features getting put behind a paywall? I know it’s not just TP-Link that is doing this, as other companies are doing the same thing. But, it is sad to see that something like DDoS prevention and intrusion prevention isn’t something that the router, that is fully capable of doing, doesn’t do it by default. Then, you have to use the Tether app on a mobile device to try the trial or enable the subscription. Anyways, despite that, this router has a lot that many other routers don’t bring to the table. This one can be as simple as running the app and getting your network running in a matter of minutes, to breaking it down and having several different networks running through your household. You can have a different SSID per band for regular users, for guest users and a separate for Internet of Things (IoT), so that you can isolate those items from other local network devices. Basically so that random lightbulb doesn’t need to know your regular SSID and password. You have control over all the typical advanced LAN and WAN settings, you can even make static routes. You can use the router as a VPN client or make it a VPN server with OpenVPN, PPTP VPN, L2TP/IPSec VPN and/or WireGuard VPN. Allowing you to configure client accounts, certificates and manage their connections. You can even isolate specific connected devices so that they can’t see other devices on your network with just a couple clicks. No need for learning network engineering just to keep your kids tablet from being hacked and ruining everything else on your network. If you are like me and still prefer wired connections, this has a single 10Gbps port that can be switched between WAN/LAN and four 2.5 Gbps ports in which the first one can be swapped between LAN/WAN. So, for example, with 1Gbps internet, you only need the 2.5Gbps port and might have a NAS that can do 10Gbps, so it makes it even better for your local network connected devices. There are other features I have not used but know others may enjoy. Like using Alexa or Google to enable guest networks or read out the WPA password so that your guests can connect without you having to remember it on your own. If you have a large house you may also have some weak spots for WiFi, so TP-Link makes it easy to get another EasyMesh and OneMesh device to extend your network to that other device. You can even hook up a USB drive directly to the router and treat it as a network storage that can even be accessed externally if you enable that feature. Despite my complaining of the required subscription for some other security features, they do still include a fair bit of options as they list as “basic”. These include notifications of new connected devices, security scan for router updates, port forwarding issues and wireless password strength. You also get some parental control functions that can do some basic blocking of malicious or restricted content or specific sites and create bedtime to remove access for that device. However, if you want reports of what has been blocked or accessed, that is part of the subscription. Overall, it’s a simple to set up router that brings a lot of the modern tech to the user and plenty of advanced features. It is fully capable of more, but for a slight monthly or annual fee. It has all the capability to still work with that original wireless device from 10+ years ago to the most modern device you can get.

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  Posted 6 months ago by DavidJr