TP-Link AX5400 WiFi 6 Router (Archer AX73)- Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Internet Router, High-Speed ax Router for Streaming, Long Range Coverage

The TP-Link AX5400 is a WiFi 6 router with dual band and long range wireless capabilities. Also known as the Archer AX73, the WiFi 6 technology allows this product to achieve speeds up to 5400 Mbps as a theoretical maximum. Even though actual speeds will probably be lower than that, it will still be fast enough to perform bandwidth demanding tasks such as large file transfers over the network or Ultra High Definition streaming on your local home network.Installation is super easy, it’s basically plug and play. You connect the router to your internet modem, and then connect your devices via the WiFi networks. The A5400 will come with default wireless settings, including a predefined network name and password, for easy initial setup. It is strongly recommended to change these settings to your own, for security reasons. Management can be done either via the smartphone app or (very happy about this one) the web interface. More about that later.Aesthetically, you will notice that this router has a rather interesting rectangular design, and it is equipped with 6 (!!!) antennas. Yes, you read that right: 6 antennas. TP-Link claims that this supports large wifi coverage and good signal strength to all devices with their beamforming and 4T4R technologies. Even though I have no practical way of measuring the performance of these technologies, I can attest to the fact that the AX5400’s coverage is excellent and I didn’t notice any dead spots at home (including the devices located outside my home, such as wifi cameras and doorbells). In case you do experience dead spots, you can add an extra TP-Link mesh device compatible with the AX5400 to solve the issue. I talk more about mesh networking below.One of the major features of the AX5400 is mesh networking. Mesh means that all your routers connect with each other, forming a mesh of coverage rather than having one router that acts as a single point of connection. Your wireless device will always connect automatically to the mesh router that provides the strongest signal. This is called Roaming. Much like in telecom/mobile networks, your Wi-Fi devices might change positions and move around your house. This means that the wireless signal between your device and the router gets weaker with distance. With mesh routers your device will automatically connect to a different router unit that offers a stronger signal, without interrupting the running service and streams. This not only increases the coverage vastly, but also offers seamless handovers and transitions of Wi-Fi services as you change your position in your house. In other words, you get Wi-Fi Roaming capabilities that will vastly improve the reliability of your wireless connection. That, of course, means that you need another TP-Link mesh capable device to achieve this functionality. TP-Link provides a list of mesh devices compatible with the AX5400 on their website.So far I have no complains regarding the AX5400’s performance. The Wi-Fi is very quick and outperforms my internet connection. I haven’t noticed any issues with latency either. One remark I want to make here is that, even though older WiFi cards will still be able to connect and operate with the AX5400, you will need a Wi-Fi 6 compatible wireless card to make the most out of the mesh system. Making the most out of it doesn’t mean that you will experience speeds close to 5.4 Gbps. These speeds are a theoretical maximum, they are achieved in the lab and they are impossible to see in the average home network setup. You will see, though, very high speeds depending on the quality of your wireless card (in my tests, I used the TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000 PCIe WiFi Card), the distance from the router and the obstacles that separate you from it. Bottom line: it’ll be fast, but be realistic with your expectations.But probably one of the things I’m most happy about this router is the availability of a web interface for management. Being the owner/user of the otherwise great TP-Link Deco system, one of my main complaints was the lack of a web interface for network configuration. As a power user, I find it hard to configure my network equipment via the small screen of a smartphone. You can access the web interface by typing the router’s management IP (you can find it listed as Gateway on your computer’s network settings) in your browser. You’ll have to first set up a local password (or create an account with TP-Link) before accessing the router configuration.Once you log in, the first screen you’ll see is the home screen, or a summary screen if you like. You can see the internet status, the router status and some shortcut button to common functions, your mesh devices (if you have any) and the connected client devices. This last bit is quite interesting, since you’ll be able to see the connected devices, their real time speed (up/down), the interface they’re connected to (ethernet, 2.4G or 5G), their “negotiated” max bandwidth, how long they’ve been connected to the router and, finally, a “block” button to deny the device access to the network. Below, I’m going through some of the functions that I find interesting, but I will omit the ones that are so common you can find them virtually in every router out there.On the Wireless screen you’ll find your WiFi settings. You can turn on or off OFDMA, TWT, Smart Connect and, of course, the Wireless radio itself. OFDMA (simultaneous transmission to different devices within the same transmission window) will significantly increase the traffic speed with compatible devices (your device must support OFDMA), TWT will help increase your device’s battery life by maintaining the connection with the router and allowing the device to go to sleep (aka not forcing the device to send keep alive messages to the router too frequently), while Smart Connect optimized the connectivity of the router’s radio bands with the client devices.TP-Link offers a security platform with the AX5400, similar to what they offer with the rest of their flagship devices, HomeShield. The user will get some basic functionality out of the box, and additional sophisticated features and analytics are available with a subscription service.The last screen on the web interface is the Advanced screen, where all the advanced options are located. Power users will definitely appreciate some of these. The first thing that caught my eye was Lan —> Link Aggregation. You can aggregate (combine) up to two Ethernet ports into one (logical) network port, aggregating their bandwidth as well. Of course, you’ll need to aggregate ports on the other end of the connection as well, but that is the other side of the problem. Pretty cool. The router also supports direct DynDNS logins, for those of you who still use a DynDNS client on your computer. Another cool section is Routing. You can use your own static routes defined in the router’s config if you need to direct specific traffic to specific destinations. Use this only if you know what you’re doing, otherwise a bad routing config will probably block your access and traffic. The router comes with a USB port, which is nothing unusual. What is very cool, though, is the fact that the USB port supports (except for mass storage devices) Apple’s Time Machine. Just connect a storage device to the AX5400’s USB port, enable Time Machine in settings, and voila! No need for one of those old Apple AirPort Extreme routers anymore. NAT is, of course, present in this device as well, for your port forwarding needs. Security features include a Firewall, ACLs and MAC spoofing protection (by binding IPs to specific MACs). You have your standard VPN server built in, supporting both OpenVPN and PPTP, IPv6 support for you dual-stackers out there and a bunch of router Admin features (firmware update, backup, remote management, system logs etc.). Last but not least, you can switch the mode of the device between a Router (the device will route traffic and provide routing services) and an Access Point (the device will become a wireless gateway for clients, but you will need to connect it to a router for routing services - this is used mostly to expand the WiFi network).Overall the TP-Link AX5400 WiFi 6 router is a great home routing device and a strong contender in this segment of products. I’m very happy with it for the time I’ve been using it, and I definitely recommend it.

The TP-Link AX5400 WiFi 6 Router (Archer AX73) is a high-speed router that provides excellent streaming capabilities and long-range coverage. I have been impressed with the fast and reliable connection this router delivers, making it perfect for streaming movies, gaming, and working from home. The dual-band gigabit wireless internet ensures smooth and uninterrupted performance. Overall, I highly recommend this router for anyone looking for a top-notch WiFi experience.

I am a Ziply fiber customer and this router works great! I directly replaced my Arris NVG578HLX Ziply provided combo router with this AX5400 without adding an additional modem. I have a ethernet cable coming out of my ONT, not a coax cable. So I was hoping I did not need a modem for this router, and I was correct.There is an initial set up step that asks you if you are using a modem, or are connecting directly from the ONT to the router. Just be sure to select the direct from ONT option. This worked for me!I placed this new router in the central location of my house, and the antennas proved to reach much farther than my prior Arris combo router, very pleased with the performance so far!I used to set up my new routers with a direct connection to the router with the ethernet cable. But this is the first time that it was easier and quicker to use the Tether app on my smart phone to set up this router. Very slick and easy. Default set up is a breeze.

I started with a 2-star review for this, but have since revised it to 4. I've come to realize that compared with competing products, what it can be reasonably expected to do, it seems to do pretty well so far. Setup was easy, features seem solid, coverage has been pretty good. Read on for more detail:First, my gripes and the basis of my initial 2-star review:I picked this up along with a new Motorola 8600 for an 800 Mb cable internet upgrade. I set it up, connecting my PC directly through one of the GB wired ports on my TP Link 5400AX, and speed was around 300 Mb. I initially assumed it was a Comcast problem, but they just came out and tested the internet coming out of the modem, which tested at over 800 Mb. The router seems to be failing to route at anywhere near the speeds needed.Why giving this a 2-star review because of this horrendous issue would be misleading:First, a 300 Mb internet routing limit probably won't be an issue for most users. But if you have a higher speed plan and you're someone who intends to fully utilize it, it's a big problem. I was initially very displeased with the performance of this device. Indeed, I think it's pretty shady for TPLink to market speeds that it can't deliver. However, in researching competing products and combing through the reviews, basically everything I could find under $400 from EVERYONE, including Asus, Linksys, Netgear, all has stories of the exact same thing - actual speeds well under the router port speeds, and similar to what I observed with my 5400AX. Maybe lan and wireless lan is close to advertised speeds, I'm not sure - that doesn't represent a huge use case for me so I haven't tested it. I'd be willing to bet it performs better and the routing capacity is where the throttling occurs. But point being my big issue with the product seems to be shared by all the other competing in-category products, so it wouldn't be very informative to give a 1-2 star review. If you want a wireless router that is going to route at greater than 600 Mb, as far as I can tell it's going to run $350+, and even those I found seemed to have stories of throttling, connectivity, and firmware issues. Here's the path I wound up taking instead:After lots more research I ordered a Ubiquiti Edgerouter 4 (basically every other wired router I found, including lesser Ubiquiti models, ALSO suffered the same issue of throttled speeds way under port speeds). I'll be connecting that to my modem and combining that with my 5400 AX in AP-mode to provide wireless lan, and a gigabit switch for wired connectivity. I'm pretty optimistic this will provide the connection speeds I want, at least 800 Mb for wired, and decent coverage/speed for the price point via wireless through this device. I can't say from experience yet but it's worth noting that Ubiquiti routers are not renowned for being easy to configure - if you aren't familiar with configuring network equipment this may not be a good design for you, or you might need to line up some help to pull it off.Summary: If you have 400 Mb or slower internet, this is a solid buy, as far as I can tell after reading dozens of reviews, no worse than anything else remotely in the price range. If you have higher than 400 Mb internet and want to actually get those speeds, you'll probably need to look CLOSELY (look deep in those reviews for reviewers who had your internet speed or faster, with the exact model you're looking at, and actually speed tested their connection after setting up - basic users won't even be aware this kind of issue exists) at higher end routers in the $350+ range (I didn't find one I was comfortable with after reading all the reviews), or run this in AP-only mode in conjunction with a wired router that you know will handle your ISP connection speed (again, read those reviews closely and look for speed tests). Splitting functions out this way is a bit more involved, but can reduce exposure to a single expensive device failing on you, which is kinda nice. Stories abound of such failures in the review pages of the high end wifi routers.