TP-Link AC1900 Wireless MU-MIMO WiFi Router - Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Internet Routers for Home, Parental Contorls & QS, Beamforming (Archer C80)

This review is for the TP-Link AC1900 Wireless MU-MIMO WiFi Router - Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Internet Routers for Home, Parental Controls & QS, Beamforming (Archer C80):I recently moved to a new location. I had Cox Cable at 20mbps. I was able to get fiber at my new location. Not knowing any better my old router of more than ten years was not able to give me my monies worth. I mean I am paying for 300mbps service and only getting 50-60mbps with my old router. There are a lot of "different routers" on the market I didn't understand much about. I learned in my research that I needed at least a router with WiFi 6. I didn't want to over purchase (spend) on something that was way to much capability. So my research led me to this router. I watched video reviews first about it and then Amazon reviews. I decided to take the plunge.I am very happy I made the decision for purchasing this router to use up all of my 300Mbps speed. It was so easy to install and set up using the app. The antennae's work perfect to direct signal to the other end of the house. I have NO dead zones or slow zones for that matter anymore. I set up all my smart plugs for the 2.4g and my Fire TV for 5g and my tablets and phones for 5g. The 2.4g speed is about 120-160Mbps and the 5g is knocking it out of the park at 270-280Mbps throughout the house. Totally Awesome!So at this time I have to recommend this lower end router, not fair to say that, but on the scale of routers, it is. It is fast. I mean web pages appear faster than I can blink. The Fire TV works perfect and SHARP as a tack on this new router. I didn't need anything more powerful than this. I am so happy with the purchase price of $47.99. I just love this router for its ease of management , setup with an app and the speed.I also learned that if you point the omni directional antennas towards the furthest part of the house, you can get an extra boost of 10-20Mbps of speed.I highly recommend this bargain based router!

So I bought this to replace the older netgear antenna-less router my elderly parents have been using for over 10 years. The netgear router was okay but as my parents have been getting more and more smart devices all over the house, we have noticed certain corners and areas get little to no wifi signal or poor speeds.Instead of dealing with wifi extenders and repeaters that my parents would have no idea how to use or set up, I wanted to find a new wireless router that has a good range, but did not want to pay too high a price. They are not gamers and will not be streaming 4K content.PROS: Got this router for $60 on amazon after the promo and all the reviews show the range is amazing. I bought it and set it up myself and then mailed it to my parents so all they would have to do is unplug the old router and plug in the new router. They say the range is amazing and every device now has a solid connection and they see a much faster internet speed. Everything loads up faster too.CONS: The only cons I can think of is that I could not find any openVPN option to use NordVPN with it. Sometimes when I go over their place, I change their wifi to use a different region via VPN so they can watch services in other countries. If it has that option, I could not find it. And another minor CON is, when you flash the firmware, it factory resets all the settings. I did not know that and had to set it up again. Not that big of a deal but most modern routers do not do this. Just make sure to backup the settings first.

My ISP is CenturyLink Fiber, and as such, I needed a router that would perform as close to the 940Mbps rated speed that it provides (actual speeds based on my signal strength are closer to 850Mbps). While CenturyLink does provide a router of their own, I wasn't impressed with the bulky, ostrich egg look of the thing and wanted something a bit more unobtrusive, as the only function of the router is to provide VLAN tagging and PPPoE login credentials, and to remain solid in those roles alone (no Wifi functionality enabled). This is because the router plugs directly into my Nest Wifi setup that handles all the Wifi in the home, as well as some wired connections through a basic switch for better transfer speeds or necessity (Obi200 for Google Voice, for instance). Now, I've only been using this router for a couple of weeks, so it's really too soon to know how reliable this router is. The router I replaced, an Asus RT-AC66U (Version B1, basically an AC68U), was pretty good, but in around 3-4 weeks, it would tend to flake out and my Nest Points would all get disconnected, requiring me to power cycle both the routers. The AC66U would take around five minutes to reboot, even with Wifi turned off, which was a pain, and having to do it that often was just too much. It's a lot to expect a router to never need a reset, but anything more than three months is a dealbreaker for me.Anyway, this is probably more information than you really needed. Bottom line is this thing boots fast, has solid hardware and firmware (at least for my very simple needs) and the price is pretty much unbeatable, especially if other reviews are to be believed and this thing remains solid for months at a time. I ran a speed test through Google Home just to see how the speeds are holding up and they're still right around the 800Mbps range both up and down. This is important, by the way, as I've found that routers that can't match speeds both up and down for fiber are either faulty or not configured properly in their firmware and will eventually glitch out. I've seen this in a number of devices over the years. So, given what I've seen so far, this is a great router. It's easily concealed, small, powerful and apparently reliable, all at a very affordable price.January 31, 2022 Update: So, as someone found my review helpful, I figured I'd go ahead and post a quick update. The router is still performing perfectly. I have rebooted it, but it was never the root cause of the issue. ISP glitches were the cause. Thus, I can now say this router is everything you'd want for the price. As long as their quality stays the same as it is currently, this is a stable little workhorse with plenty of power for a single user. Larger homes with multiple high bandwidth users (likely around four or more) would probably need to invest in something a bit higher end and more expensive to get the seamless experience this provides for a single person.

This router works well for me as a WIFI LAN isolator and security I wish it's WIFI Range could have been better, specifically at the 5Gb band.