TP-Link AC1900 Smart WiFi Router (Archer A8) - High Speed MU-MIMO Wireless Router, Dual Band Router for Wireless Internet, Gigabit, Supports Guest WiFi, Beamforming, Smart Connect

After less than 3 years with my prior router from a different brand, its signal strength was noticeably declining and then 2 months ago I received an email from the manufacturer saying that it would not longer be supported and may stop working entirely. That was the context for searching out and ordering this TP-Link remote router for my office and I am very happy with its improved performance compared to the unit it has replaced. I have the router installed in my home office, in a separate building about 100' from my house. This router is connected to our main modem in the house through a 200' LAN cable which works perfectly. Setup was extremely easy - I followed the instructions precisely, step by step, and it hooked right up. The password strength is both satisfactory ... and not so darned complicated that it's difficult to enter as required. The strength of the signal is much better than what I had before, easily crossing the back yard and allowing connectivity from rooms facing from inside the main house. It also allows good, fast signal through a metal porch roof which wasn't possible previously. As much as I was frustrated with having to replace a unit that wasn't old enough to reasonably fail, it was completely worth it for the improved performance this has brought for my home office. As advertised; full marks!

I come from old-skool DD-WRT days, manual configs, and pretty much the router is supposed to route, and other devices do the rest (DHCP/DNS/Anything else). This fit the bill perfectly, could config it the way i wanted to. Sits in a brick house, so can't speak much to signal, as distance is limited by physical barriers that will block signal. Good value for what it is, easy to set up and use, looks much better than the WRT-54G's of yesteryear. Probably can travel with it, but I wouldn't think most people would. Peculiar notes - Offers 3 different SSID's to config, with 5GHz and 2.4GHz options for a total of 6 if you'd like. While this may be a feature or an annoyance, that's up to your use. It's there if you want to use all 3(6). I turned em all on, and seem to have confused everyone in my house. Especially with ISP's wifi router that can not be configured as easily. MAC address can be cloned if you would like to replace your ISP's wifi router to their network, if they check the MAC on the device for access.

I build computers and set up networks for a living, decided to upgrade my old router and test out this one before installing at customer's homes... It is a good thing I tested it first because I would have a lot of angry customers if this one I got was any indication of the whole batch. I don't review many things here unless they are unusually good or unusually bad but I felt the need to warn people about TP LINK'S absolutely GARBAGE support and quality control. So this falls into the unusually BAD category. Open the box and you are met with a shiny, but overly cheap light plastic router... It ran great for about 3 hours brand new out of the box... Then it started dropping 5G signal every few minutes on 3 different cellphones (2 android and 1 iphone), caused connection issues with MMOs and games and any online content on gaming computers and consoles, kept losing signal to 2.4g and 5g mesh extenders and Roku sticks. Gaming computers, consoles, everything was having connection issues. And this is with a BRAND NEW TP LINK ARCHER A8 ROUTER!!! Also, the only difference between the ARCHER A8 and ARCHER A9 router is that the A8 does not have a usb or router level VPN support. Even the cruddy spectrum router from my ISP could hold signal longer and stronger than this TP-LINK router. I'm sorry but this is unacceptable to either have this bad of quality control or just broken hardware BRAND NEW right out of the box... I don't care if it is even just a single defective unit and every single other one works, this level of quality control failure, and failure to update and fix bugs and other problems means I WILL NOT BUY ANY MORE TP-LINK PRODUCTS. Decided to mess around with settings and test everything for about a week while I waited for a "renewed" (open box, used) NETGEAR Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router (R6900P) that ended up being cheaper than this ARCHER A8. After about 3 days the 5G would drop signal for 5 seconds every 10 seconds! (and this was even with a daily reboot schedule that often failed and required actually power cycling the router) Then the 2.4G started having failure to load issues, the signal would stay connected but was so slow that websites and games would have constant server disconnects. Smart connect or separate 2.4 and 5G wouldn't fix any of this. It got the absolute worst when 9+ devices were trying to connect to it and no amount of QoS tweaks or port forwarding or NAT Boosting would fix it, even using MU-MIMO capable adapters on the 2 gaming computers still had constant disconnects. TP-LINK used to be pretty good years ago, but recently they barely support ANY of their new products, this particular router has had only one single firmware update in an entire year and it is still hopelessly broken. ------------------------ BOTTOM LINE: ------------------------ Avoid TP-LINK ROUTER PRODUCTS LIKE THE PLAGUE! Get a used NETGEAR Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router (R6900P) - AC1900 instead https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C65K9H9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (CHEAPER THAN THIS TP LINK abomination) I plugged that NETGEAR router in and in less than 10 minutes of setting up and tweaking had a super stable connection that has not wavered once in days with over 15 devices connected from tablets to cellphones to 4k TVs to consoles and 2 high end gaming computers.

(Used for gaming and 4K stream) These routers work great, but the low end TP-Link routers are only good for about 2 years (I buy them refurbished). This is the 3rd set I've purchased. It's the same issue every time at around the 2 year marker. You will start to have packet loss issues more and more frequently requiring router reboots once a day. I'm using 2 wired devices and 6 wireless devices on this router at any given time with no issues. I use one router as a Gateway device in place of my Telco provider equipment with all wireless disabled. The second router is hardwired into the Gateway deeper inside the house where WiFi is needed. These never need to be rebooted or have any issues at all, until it's time to replace.

Works great, really satisfied with the quality, and I would buy this again.. I can recommend this product...