TP-Link Archer AX1450 WiFi 6 Dual-Band Wireless Router Expired

I'm happy with it. I don't have it strategically placed…I have it on one side of the house, and I get a good signal throughout the house. It's strong enough to go through the entire house, to the other side of the garage and supports a security camera mounted outside. The signal at that distance (over 60' through multiple walls) gets weak, but it's good enough to keep my camera connected and streaming. If you are doing a mesh setup, it should cover a very large house. I've only had it for 11 days, but I've had no issues so far.

I have no idea how to tag the other person (without making an extra post) who wanted to know more about this router. If someone knows how, please do so.

I am a very basic user and just basically did plug and play. I did the same for my spectrum router. Here are the results between the 2. I used openspeedtest and also used spectrum's speed test on their website after logging in.

SPECTRUM ROUTER - WIRED
TEST1: 401.04 DOWN, 1.00MS JITTER, 12.0 PING, 23.36 UP (all numbers will be in this order going forward)
TEST2: 428.24 1.5 11.0 22.15
TEST3: 598.96 0 13.0 23.2

SPECTRU ROUTER - WIRELESS
TEST1: 597.71 0 13.0 23.85
TEST2: 597.12 1.5 13.0 23.83
TEST3: 591.19 0.5 14.0 23.71

SPECTRUM.NET TEST: 578 DOWN, 21.8 UP, 573 DOWN, 21 UP


TPLINK ROUTER: WIRED
TEST1: 542.01 3.0 7.0 23.36
TEST2: 405.65 0.5 8.0 23.09
TEST3: 380.98 1.0 13.0 21.51

TPLINK ROUTER: WIRELESS
TEST1: 408.0 1.5 13.0 19.38
TEST2: 480.09 0.5 16.0 23.69
TEST3: 402.91 2.0 19.0 22.81

SPECTRUM.NET WIRELESS 422/15

SPECTRUM.NET WIRED: 570/19



For fun, I also tested the routers on FAST.COM. I didn't save the speeds for the spectrum router, but this TP Link router did 660 DOWN twice. I think the Spectrum router on Fast.com also did something similar, near 600 down.

The TPLink router seems to perform lower than the Spectrum router, but for the very basic user who only watches shows, does normal web browsing, or games very casually, this is probably worth it because you don't need to pay the rental fee every month, and it'll end up being worth it in something like 6-7 months. If you do work or play games competitively that require very low latency, this probably isn't good for you.

I'll try to update after a few days of use, but the only uses I have are playing League of Legends, youtube, etc. Take my experience with a grain of salt.

bummer. good price but offers no options for customizing it.

Its not supported by DDWRT, Tomato or OpenWRT so i'd pass

Results seem comparable, but at about $15 cheaper, I'll gladly use the Belkin. I just have to load up openwrt!

For most consumer routers though security is not a very high priority. https://routersecurity.org/RouterNews.php

Thanks for sharing your results with us. If you ever get around to installing OpenWRT on your Belkin let us know how it goes for you. I've never used it before.

I didn't record them all but after installing openwrt, doing a wireless test, the speeds actually dropped about 100mbps for downloads. Hoping it doesn't impact real life performance but can't help but feel disappointed. I guess I'd take lower performance for continued support and updates!

Be aware tho that I have no idea how to maximize openwrt use, or how much these updates truly impact the typical user. I'm very much in the "better safe than sorry" boat as my knowledge of networking is very beginner

Congrats on getting OpenWRT installed at least. That itself can be a challenge sometimes. I'm sorry to hear your wifi results weren't as good as you had hoped for. If your already running the last stable build 23.05.2, you could try the nightly "snapshot" build to see if it would improve things any. https://firmware-selector.openwrt...kin_rt1800 Also if you haven't already you might wanna check out the OpenWRT forums, there could be some info there that might help you. I have no experience with OpenWRT myself, only Tomato.

I agree with you, even if nothing else changes with your results. I'd much rather have the continued support and security updates than having a little more performance.

Thanks! Will try it out. Happen to know what is the main difference between this and the latest stable build?

No, you're thinking of WiFi 5. WiFi 5 supported only the 5GHz band, so all WiFi 5 routers did WiFi 5 on 5GHz and fell back to WiFi 4 for 2.4GHz.

One of the features of WiFi 6 is that it supports both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, and one of the benefits of upgrading from WiFi 5 to WiFi 6 is that you're getting a 2-generation upgrade for the 2.4 band. While 2.4 isn't exciting like 5, it is the longer-range band, and WiFi 6 offers improvements to efficiency and congestion management for that band.

The vast majority of WiFi 6 routers will have two WiFi 6 radios, one for 2.4GHz and one for 5GHz. This model, which BTW, is exclusive to Wal-Mart, cheaps out by having just one WiFi 6 radio for the 5GHz band and using a cheap legacy WiFi 4 radio for the 2.4GHz band.

Anyway, "AX1800" is generally the low-end budget spec for a "pure" WiFi 6 system (almost 600 on 2.4GHz, plus 1200 on 5GHz). "AX3000" is a midrange pure WiFi 6 system (almost 600 on 2.4GHz, plus 2400 on 5GHz from the use of wider channels). And you can spot the gimped systems by the "AX1500" or "AX1450") (300 or less on 2.4GHz, plus 1200 on 5GHz).

The real kicker is that "pure" WiFi 6 routers that support WiFi 6 on both bands are not that much more expensive. For example, look at these past SD threads:
https://slickdeals.net/f/15515443
https://slickdeals.net/f/15902134
https://slickdeals.net/f/15969214
https://slickdeals.net/f/15961666