Deco M5 Mesh WiFi Router - Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router, Quad-core CPU, MU-MIMO, HomeCare, Parental Control, Up to 2,000 sq. ft. Coverage, Works with Alexa, 1-Pack

As an IT professional, I have tried hundreds of combinations of routers and switches and wireless AP's. Like everybody, my needs have changed over time. The kids are old enough now to be using the internet, the house is getting smarter all the time, and even my television comes in over the web now. After exhaustive research and feature and price comparison, I decided to move on to the Deco m5. I was using a cisco asa firewall and cisco 3900 series switch with a netgear router in AP mode before, but it lacked the ability to easily implement parental controls. I get annoyed with the kids for staying up late playing on the internet after we go to sleep. I un-boxed the deco m5, very nicely packaged by the way, to find everything in order and ready for install. I powered down my firewall, called the ISP to have the IP address released, (I work for the ISP, so that was convenient) and got the router plugged into the internet connection. I am fiber to the house, so I don't have a modem. I had already installed the TP link app on my galaxy s6, so I was ready to get started. (Everybody else was at work/school so no complaining about the lack of internet while I did all this. YEA!!!!) The app found the deco with no issues and ran through the VERY basic setup process. Everything immediately came up and worked. I have 80 meg service and speedtest.net was reporting 82.7 download consistently over wireless. I started playing with the app, and under the advanced tab is an option to check for updates. I clicked it and it did indeed find one. 5 minutes or so later, the led indicator on the router went green again. This is where things went a little sideways for a few minutes. I spent the next 10 minutes losing and gaining wifi on my phone, and had to force stop the app a couple of times. Everything else in the house seemed fine, it was just my phone. I have six echos/dots in the house, and they all came right back up after the swap out. The echos/dots are usually the problem children to get connected after a power outage, so I was suprised. My wink hub didn't even seem to be affected. everything was functioning normally except the stupid phone. A quick restart on the phone seems to have fixed it. I did have 2 of my 5 wink relays lose connectivity, but I think they may have already been disconnected. A quick restart fixed them both. I plugged the second port into my cisco switch and all my wired devices reported for duty. Next step was to walk to the far corners of the house and run speed tests with my phone, which was still giving me pause because of its recent bad behavior. My home is 1400 square feet, and about 4 years old, with tech shield in the attic. (the aluminum foil looking coating on the inside of the roof decking to block the heat) wifi seemed to be great everywhere with speeds at maximum in every corner. (I bought the single Deco m5 unit) The router is actually in the garage in the corner for now, so it will probably cover significantly more ground once located in the center of the house. Next step was to setup parental controls. Yeah, this is the good part, talk back to me one more time you obnoxious little turd. Setup the profiles and went hunting MAC addresses. The only downfall to the process was finding all the mac addresses. Nothing has a logical name in the table you are looking at, everything just says "android" or "amazon". I started with "amazon", and that is when it hit me. I opened up my alexa app and went to settings, and then to devices. At the bottom of each device's settings page is the device's mac address. I found my trusty pencil and an envelope from some junk mail, and my list was soon made. You can change the name of the devices in the table on the Deco to recognizable names. I then went to the android devices and PC's. That was a little more time consuming, but not too bad. Next, assigning who the device belonged too. You do that at the bottom of the device settings page, just make sure you have already built that person's profile. When you set up the profile you give them a movie like rating system, and can disable or enable various types of websites or specific websites. Next option is setting time limits for daily usage, and last is setting hours to shut them out completely. Kids got pg-13, adults get "adult". Now that that's done, time to explore. I knew it was "alexa" enabled, so that was next. Honestly, don't waste your time. Alexa can do very little besides run a speed test and change the led's status. I was hoping to pause the kids internet just by telling alexa, but that is a no go for now anyway. It also cannot control access to wired devices with parental controls, so if you want to disable the kids smart tv's, make sure they are connected wireless. I probably should have given 4 stars due to the setup issue with the phone app, but everything is just working too good now. the parental controls shine, and the wireless connection seems to be rock solid. Only major negative I will give it, you cannot change it's lan IP address yet, but I have read that this feature is in the works in a future update. If you have anything set static on your current network like I do, you may have to change some IP's in a few devices. (Cameras, network servers, stuff like that) I only have a few devices like that, so I can handle it, especially for the price I paid for this. Overall, if you are on the fence, this is a great little mesh system. I wish it was POE powered and wall mountable, that would have made it perfect, but I guess it can sit on top of the fridge and do its thing. I'll update if anything changes, but I don't suspect I will have any trouble. Oh, and for anybody who is wondering, it does look like you can manage it remotely, as I can log in and change settings right now while I am at work. That could be handy for pausing the internet to make sure the kids do their homework before I get home from work, or to make sure they are doing their chores on time. I wonder if that will work with the old lady too???

The signal in the far bedrooms were weak, and the connection on the back patio was practically non-existent. After struggling with extenders and a supposedly single router, I decided to upgrade to this Deco mesh system with an Archer BE230 router, and the difference is absolutely incredible. The set-up was easy using the Deco app and it walks you through everything step-by-step. I had the entire system up and running in less than 30 minutes. That is with an IoT Network, an MLO Network, and a VPN Setup. The performance is where this system truly shines. The Wi-Fi 7 speed is phenomenal. We are Streaming 4K video, online gaming, and working from home simultaneously, and there's no lag or buffering whatsoever. Downloads are amazingly fast, and every single one of our smart devices, from cameras, lights, vacuum, security doors, etc. is more responsive and safe. If you're tired of fighting with your Wi-Fi, this is the solution. It's a fantastic investment that provides a powerful, reliable, and safe network that covers every square inch of your home. I can't recommend it enough!

Fast and easy installation, and a seamless quick addition to an existing deco mesh network using the Deco app. Works as expected with 4k speeds for streaming and gaming.

Overall, this might be the best router I've ever purchased. I have 1000Mb down and it seems like I'm getting the full speed. I have about 30 devices online throughout the day and I haven't seen any slow down so far. Almost all the functions I normally use are present. Renaming devices, address reservation, guest network with bandwidth control, detailed list of devices and other features are available to use. I can even set whether a device should use 2.4ghz or 5ghz or both or use the 1st deco or 2nd deco or auto which is pretty amazing. I have an upstairs and downstairs so I have a deco on each floor. It's works great so far. I have a room that's separated by 3 walls and the signal is ok. Unfortunately, there is something basic that is missing and it's per-device bandwidth control. The deco uses QOS (Quality of Service) which is very limited. I can only pick about 4 device to have bandwidth priority. This is ridiculously limited. I've had routers that were a quarter of the price and I was able to set a bandwidth limit for 30 devices. Hopefully, this will be added at some point (I'm not holding my breath). I think deco is a good device. Time will tell if it's great. I recommend this if you want a decent level of control and features.

This is really easy to set up within their app, which was my greatest fear. My apartment complex's internet is not great and the old router was quite outdated. Through ethernet connection directly from our old router, our video games would spike to 200ms+ every 10 seconds in reactive games. It was driving me mad and this router blended into our living room seamlessly so I bought it. I had never messed with internet equipment but this had to have been the easiest time I've had with electronics. There were no problems during setup. Our wifi on our phones never go out anymore no matter where we are in the apartment. This thing saved me from daily frustration with spectrum.

I'm a software engineer with networking expertise and can say after a month of use, this router is great. I use a lot of the advanced features and they all work as expected. Here is the topology I use: I use two of these devices in mesh mode. One of them acts as the wifi access point with WAN, and the other acts as a bridge and is connected to an ethernet switch that has a rack of servers. The servers are connected to the net by domains that point to a reverse proxy VPS that points to a port on a dynamic dns domain that this device manages, and that port is NAT forwarded to my proxmox vps servers which each have their own IPs. The servers, as I mentioned, are connected via the ethernet that is bridged with the wifi mesh. Whew that was a mouth full, but the point is that these things left me desiring nothing in terms of features even from the deep end of being a power user. For an average user they will be more than adequate. The super easy to set up mesh is a great feature. I mentioned I use it as a bridge to a wired network. That means I don't have to buy wifi devices for the servers, and also don't have to run cable in the walls. I configured it all using the app, and it was all painless. I did have one issue which was the QoS feature doesn't work well. When I have it enabled, games that send a lot of packets cause massive latency spikes. I hope this is addressed in future firmware updates, but for now I just turn it off and everything seems to be running well.

This mesh works very well. So easy to setup and the coverage is fantastic. The speed is good.

Major security risk. It works well, but to access settings. Well, here's the problem. You can only access setting with an app on your phone, there is no windows support. The app requires a TP link account to allow you to access the system setting for this access point/router. I am using my set as access points. My router tells me that this set is sending packets to an unknown to me IP address. I assume this address is owned by TP link, but I really don't know. My question is when does TP link end support for the app bricking the set. The other problem is anyone with the app and your login information can access the set's settings from anywhere in the world and have full control/access to your network regardless of firewalls. I tested this. I went to a friends house, who lives 7 miles away. I used his phone to access my network from his house. Meanwhile my PC on the local network can not access the settings. I am never buying another TP link product again, This is total BS. With out a phone and TP link account you can not setup or use this set and anyone with a phone can access your network from anywhere in the world. Wonderful.