TP-Link - Archer AC5400 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router - Black

This is a review of a free product received from TP-LINK as part of the review program I’ve always been one to not purchase a routers unless I was certain that it had open-source firmware capability, and thus, I’ve always been a generation or two behind the cutting-edge in router technology. I’ve been an IT professional for 18 years, and I always thought to myself that I “needed” a router that I could tinker with endlessly. Little did I know how much of a headache I was making for myself. The TP-Link C5400 has made me re-think my home network, and what is important to look for in a router. This router is a monster. It’s large, it’s in charge, and it has the performance to match its size. It’s external design is very pleasing to the eye, it doesn’t look nearly as much like a spaceship as other routers in its class. Coupled with 8(!) external antennas, the Archer C5400 absolutely destroys the old ASUS RT-N66U that it replaced in both range and throughput on both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz bands. I realize that we’re not comparing apples to apples here, one is N (max 300Mbps throughput) and the Archer C5400 is AC5400 (max combined 5400Mbps) but the difference is clear: I’ve been stubborn about needing open-source firmware for way too long. Setup was very simple out of the box. The Quick Setup asks you very simple questions to get you up and going. Most users will be able to complete the quick setup, close the admin page, and never have to think about it again. Not me though, I like to tinker. One very important thing to me is VPN support. I like to run my own VPN server on my home network that allows me to remote back from anywhere in the world, access my local files, help my wife troubleshoot issues while I’m not at home, and also encrypt my internet traffic while on Public WiFi at places like Starbucks. The Archer C5400 supports OpenVPN (my choice), and PPTP (not nearly as secure as OpenVPN). It was also the most simple setup I’ve come across for OpenVPN. There is a simple Generate Certificate button (which takes a while) and an Export Configuration button. Boom, all done. If you use a Dynamic DNS service, be sure to set that up prior to configuring the OpenVPN server, and exporting the configuration file - your DynDNS hostname will be pre-configured in your profile. Another very important thing to me is QoS. With two kids (3 and 6 years old), we must have 25 devices accessing the Internet at my house. They may be young, but they’ve discovered Netflix, and it eats up bandwidth. QoS settings are available under the Advanced tab, and you can assign priorities to different devices (Low, Middle, High). If you configure this properly, everyone should be able to access the services they need without hogging all of the pipe. Super handy for large households with tons of devices. A few other great features are: -Tri-band support: Segment your most important devices onto separate wireless bands for optimum performance -MU-MIMO (Available after a future firmware update, but will be a game changer once implemented) -Beamforming technology: Automatically adjust the WiFi radios to “aim” toward the devices that are connected. -Easy setup Parental Controls -File and Printer Sharing via the USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports -Guest network: Let your friends access the Internet without having access to your complete network, protect your devices! A few things that I’ve noticed that could use some improvement: -Traffic Statistics: These are disabled out of the box, and can not be enabled unless you disable something called “NAT Boost”. Even after trying them out, they just don’t provide enough info to keep track of your data usage. Some households have data caps attached to their broadband plans, and need some way to keep track of their usage. This really needs improvement. -UPnP - I’m having an issue with my Amcrest camera not being able to map ports via UPnP, where it had no issue with my previous router. I’m still troubleshooting this to see if it’s a camera issue or router issue. UPnP seems to work OK with other devices/services. There are a few things that my old open-source router was handling on my network that I can’t do with this router (certain cron jobs, etc…), but that’s OK. I was looking for a reason to buy a Raspberry Pi anyway. I should be able to fill that gap very easily. After about 10 days of thorough testing and comparing, I am absolutely thrilled with the performance and options that the Archer C5400 has to offer. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this router for its ease of use, broad feature set, and fantastic performance.

Bought this to replace an older n600 that didn't have the bandwidth to support my connected home. Plus the 5ghz band kept cutting out on my old one... Anyway, this thing is heavy and big but it gets the job done easily. Set up was extremely easy and I get better coverage through my two story house on both 2.4 and 5ghz. My wireless lights no longer randomly disconnect on me and my Amazon echo doesn't jitter while streaming audio anymore. The ui is the only thing that can be a bit hard. If all you want is standard settings you can just leave it on basic and it still gives enough info for the average household user. The advanced tab is way more in depth but some of it can be hard to understand. All in all well worth the money, it's a beast.

WiFi is perfect. I purchased it for parental control as well and think the parental control needs improvement. For example, you just can choose Min-Fri as one single option and can not separately allocate time for each individual day. This is correct about weekend which gives you just one opinion and not Sat or Sun separately. Also time interval is 30 minutes and you can choose zero or any other increments.

What a relief to have this router! It was easy to install, the features are exactly what our family needed and it is very user friendly! The mobile app is extremely helpful/handy. Excellent parental controls, especially nice to have on my phone. Content streaming has never been smoother! Even when we have 10 devices connected it still runs amazingly! We very much like the partition of guest network and the control over that feature!

This is a really great router so far (online for about 3 months). The speed is as advertised. I have a TWC internet connection rated at 200MBs down and 20 MBs up. My speeds on my Apple devices via the 5G connection are showing 220 MB down and 22 up. The router has also been very stable as well; no unplanned reboots; no lock ups; etc. My only complaint so far has been the inconsistency between the Router's Desktop software and TP-Link's Tether software. The Tether software allows you to change the name of a device from a cryptic manufacturer's name to a easily recognizable name. This changed name transfers to any other device running the Tether software, but does not transfer to the Router's Desktop software. The Desktop software also does not allow the user to change a device name. Also, the connected devices count sometimes differs between the Tethered software and the desktop version. If you are looking for speed, dependability and good bandwidth this is your router.

Ease of setup, it works for wireless as specified. As far as any other functions like storage sharing, it really lacks functionality. I managed to connect to it two 4TB drives. It recognized them. Forget about setting any accounts on this router for file and drive access management. You got one account and that's it. File management is non existent. Once the drives start to fill up the router bogs down, utilization goes to 99% and after two minutes it reboots. And what function did I use? I opened a directory on the hard disk in a mapped network drive on my windows PC to browse 356 files which were ripped MP3's. Anything beyond basic wireless this router fails to do. I had this router for two weeks. I returned it for refund. This much money for basic wifi is too much. It does have a great wifi range. That's about it. I bought it because of the reviews. I made sure I had the latest firmware on it. It was the latest and it was over a year old from 2016. This router is not open platform, meaning you are dependent on the manufacturer for updates. It has a Broadcom chipset. I worked for Broadcom for over 15 years and it is not the chipset issue but poor quality firmware. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends or anyone unless they just want to plug it in and never do anything advanced. But then why buy such an "advanced" and expensive router? I went back to my old router, bought wifi extender, put my drives on a 9 dollar C.H.I.P computer running Linux, and shared my drives through it over the network. Instead of the router slow file access of 24MB/S I get now over 80MB/s. Don't buy it. The company charges a lot but offers over a year old firmware with basic functionalities and buggy too. You can verify this by going on their site and look for updates. There's none. I will never buy routers from that company. Best Buy was great and took the return. Thank you Best Buy.

I bought this to replace a TP-Link Archer C7200 which failed out of warranty. That was an excellent router. This model is the same as the other router with the exception that it doesn't have the 60MHz band (not that it was used). Unfortunately, it's the same price as the 7200. That makes no sense. Returned it for a Google WiFi setup

My entire house is bathed in full strength WiFi signal in 2.4gHz and 5.8gHz bands. Not a single low strength signal anywhere. Super easy set up and many devices streaming all at the same time. I cannot come up with even the slightest complaint.