TP-Link AC5200 Archer Tri-Band MU-MIMO Router

Deal Chatter Computers
#1
#2

[Preview 1][Preview 2][Preview 3]

TP-Link AC5200 Archer Tri-Band MU-MIMO Router
Price: $179.99
Shipping Options:: $5 Standard
Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 Business Days. (Monday, Aug 07 to Thursday, Aug 10) + transit
Condition: New

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#3

Wow, that thing has a lot of antennas.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2hfudmc.jpg

Gets good reviews.

#4

What are the temperature ranges of operation for this device? Can it live, say, in an Oklahoma attic?

#5

Is it just me, or does “MU-MIMO” sound like something a singer would do to warm up their voice?

#6

This thing looks like an engineer got jealous of another brand which has 3 antennas, and said “oh yeah? Yours has three antennas? Mine has EIGHT”.

Most likely copious amounts of alcohol were consumed while designing it.

#7

This is the old version, replaced by the C5400. You save $70 over Amazon by getting the previous version. The new version adds some sort of Alexa integration (maybe for devices that don’t have direct Alexa control, not sure) and does 2.4GHz up to 1GHz rather than 800MHz.

#8

I’m afraid it’d flip over and spider-walk around my house, The Thing-style. Course that could make for some good house coverage.

#9

I was tempted for a bit, but doing some quick research reveals that TP-Link has locked down their firmware, preventing installation of DD-WRT or OpenWRT.

That’s a deal killer for me.

#10

Oh, i don’t like that either. I’m out.

#11

I did a lot of research on this before I bought my TP-Link AC2600. At one point TP-Link did lock down their firmware, but that changed in August of 2016.

Regardless, I do not see the AC5200 on the supported hardware for LEDE or OpenWRT.

#12

For those non-techies who are unhappy with their home wifi, dual-band (or tri-band, like this one) can be very helpful.

2.4GHz for distance; 5GHz for max speed.

I considered getting a mesh system for my house because my bedrooms had spotty wifi. Then I realized I had a dual band router and set up a second network at 2.4GHz – now we get great wifi everywhere on tons of simultaneous devices.

#13

Take a look at this comprehensive YouTube review for the C5400 router,

https://youtu.be/_rdKSgzG5mc

#14

My god. Listening to that guy was torture. I bailed after he dubbed in “This is the best router I have tested…”. As far as “channel”, your “hood” will be different. In my area, 11 is pretty much dead in the 2.4ghz spectrum.

#15

…and yet none of them appear to be reorientable, which I thought was kinda a major point of having multiple antennas. Maybe it has even more internal antennas perpendicular to the external ones?

Wifi antennas are dipoles, which means the signal covers a donut shape with the antenna mast pointing through the hole – i.e., where the antenna points is a cone of weak/no signal – so by orienting antenna masts perpendicular to each other, they can cover each other’s weak spots, or you can point them where you don’t want much/any signal (say, at the neighbor’s).

#16

These TP-Link routers have Beamforming which takes care of that!

#17

C5200 router was the version sold by Costco.

#18

“You gotta be #*&%ing kidding me!”