Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDissapointment, frustration, returned it
Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2014
Pros:
AC speed
Gigabit AC router for cheap
Cons:
Randomly freezes up
Odd shape
Speed issues
Setup not quite as good as other routers
Lack of activity indicators
AC speed:
I must say the wireless speed was a nice boost over my old router, but that was is expected when moving to AC. It's just a given.
The price:
The price was the best thing about this router. If you can get a stable version it may an alright router for the price; however I wasn't that fortunate.
Freezing issue:
Mine froze twice in the first 8 days and simply unplugging it and plugging it back in didn't always work. There is one firmware update newer than what ships with the router, but it doesn't address the freezing issue. Because of the mix of users that have experienced this issue, I'm thinking it could be related to the carrier's IP delivery. In my case cable. I bet if you have a static IP, you might be alright with this router, but that's just a hunch.
The shape:
Maybe just a personal thing, but it doesn't fit in with any other hardware I have in the house. Very wide and you can't see the indicator lights unless you look at the top. Since I don't have mine sitting on the floor the indicators are not even visible. Additionally with all the cables plugged in it's back heavy and the front lifts off the desk. Odd because this thing is huge.
Speed issues:
This one is surprising. It's a gigabit router after all. I didn't notice until I plugged in my cheap Rosewill 300M router (100 MBt). It seemed odd that pages were loading faster, so I played a little. I did a speed test with the Rosewill, then with this router, then a control without any router. The results were surprising. Not going to harp on that though because there may have been some feature that this router had that the Rosewill didn't and that caused the slowdown.
The setup:
Many other reviews already hit on this so I'm not going to go into the issues. I'll just say the setup didn't go as smooth as it should have. Even knowing exactly how I needed to configure the router I still had to re-configure and re-configure before I had it working.
Lack of activity indicators:
This is a trend I hope dies soon. Microsoft started this by removing the network activity indicators that were in Win XP. Well TP-Link did the same thing here. The lights you see just show there is a computer connected and is plugged in. Doesn't even have to be turned on and the indicator light will turn on. So what good is this? The best way to determine your computer is doing something it shouldn't is to see activity on that port of a switch or router. Come on TP-Link, if a $25 router can do this why can't yours? That definitely isn't asking too much.
Summary:
This may be my only 1 star review. I never return items. I tend to suffer through the problems, and would have been willing to do that with this router, but there were just too many issues. It only took 2 weeks and I contacted Amazon for a return. Glad I did. I plugged in a $25 Rosewill I bought for my parents and had it up and running in maybe 2 minutes and had a speed increase to boot.
