Question Is the TP-Link Archer BE550 any good ?

[flourgrader]

Hi Guys,
I am contemplating buying theTP-Link Archer BE550/BE9300 Ultra-Fast 9214 Mbps 6-Stream Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Router,

The only thing stopping me is the reviews I have read from several sources.
A couple of the negative point are that it drops the connection to the ONT/ISP every hours or so, hence a re-start is needed, and that the WiFi coverage is very poor?

I don’t necessarily believe all reviews, as mistakes can be made by individuals.
I thought I would bring the Topic into the forum to kick it around and see what other people thought of this router ?

Do you own one, do you have personal experince of using one ?
All positive and negative views are Welcome.
If I was to buy it:

• I have FTTP
• I have a 2.5 Gigabit internal Network
• I would be hooking it up to ONT Openreach modem delivering me 517Mbps
• Possibly moving up to 900 Mbps in the near future.

Thank you for your Views.....

 

[bill001g]

I have not kept track of the wifi7 chipset. In general there are only a couple of makers of wifi chipset and all the router vendors use them. So a asus router and a tplink router that use the same wifi chipset will have the same wifi performance. There might be difference in the software say related to firewall or vpn but the wifi function in consumers routers is run by the wifi chips and because of FCC concerns the router manufactures load the firmware from the chipset vendor into the wifi cpu chips.

Do you even have wifi6e end devices. Without wifi6e or wifi7 device you can not use the 6ghz band so you are spending a lot of money for something you might use in the future.

Next why do you need such fast wifi. Most wifi only devices are small portable devices like cell phones and tablets. They do not have much storage and very fast wifi does not do much for them. Most appliation might use 30mbps and that is if you are watching 4k netflix...which is kinda silly on a tiny screen.

The only reason you need fast speeds is for large game downloads or other file transfer functions you tend to do on a desktop machine. These you should really be using ethernet rather than any kind of wifi to begin with.

Wifi7 is mostly a marketing thing for people that think they need the newest and biggest number. The key things is it now attempts to use 320mhz radio channels. So we again are quickly going to get into massive over crowding of the 6ghz radio band just like we have on 2.4 and 5. The key reason wifi6e works better for a lot of people is there is a lot of bandwidth and not a lot of people using it. As this changes and people stomp on each other I see wifi getting slower and slower rather than faster.

In the end if you actually have a need for fast wifi and you have a wifi7 device maybe it would be worth it. Wifi6e is likely a better option but for most people the 300mbps you get form wifi5 stuff is good enough.

.......a added note. Unfortantly you can't depend on any kind of review of anything wifi. The test environment makes far more difference than differernce between routers. In effect the review is testing the persons house and their neighbors wifi. This is also true for almost all proferssional reviews since most tend to test in the authors house. You can say there are difference in that house but it does not allow you to say if the same diffeence will occur in other houses. When they do test in extremely controlled environments like is required for fcc certifications you tend to see routers with the same chipset perform the same. These type of reviews do not get clicks so you seldom see them.

 

[flourgrader]

@bill001g, Thank you for your opinion and the section
You say “I have not kept track of the wifi7 chipset. In general, there are only a couple of makers of Wi-Fi chipset and all the router vendors use them. So a Asus router and a TP-link router that use the same Wi-Fi chipset will have the same Wi-Fi performance”
That I did not know! TY.

To answer some of your questions:
Yes, I have 2 Laptops with wifi6e
It's not just me that I have to consider when managing the network
There are 8 residents that buy & use their own
devises on the system plus visiting Guests.
A large amount of video files is moved around from Laptops
To Desktop PC.
I don't want to get too tied up in just about WI-FI.
That wasn’t my sole aim when posting in the Forum.
I am wanting an all rounded collective view of this Router Good and Bad?
I would like to re address the point I made in my first post about this router
drops the connection to the ONT/ISP every hour or so, hence a re-start is needed?
If indeed there is some stability issues with it staying connected then I definitely would not be going ahead and buying this router.
In general I want to know all the good points and bad points about this router before parting with my cash, so any other constructive thoughts about this router would be well appreciated folks!
TY.

 

[kanewolf]

There are 8 residents that buy & use their own
devises on the system plus visiting Guests.

IMO, this is a requirement for a more "prosumer" system. Something that could provide multiple access points and have isolation between the 8 residents. Look at the UniFI ecosystem by Ubiquiti.

 

[bill001g]

The key difference is going to be the feature in the router. Think about anything that is not wifi related. Stuff like maybe a backup internet or restrictions of time of day access for clients. Hard to say which feature you consider important.

The key feature that lets a router do NAT and share the IP you isp gives you is now done in hardware assist asic rather than router firmware.

It would extremely strange for a router to disconnect its wan interface from the ONT. This is generally a ethernet connection and seldom has issue. Then again 2.5 and 5g ports sometime can have issues but they too have been around for a very long time and most bug have been worked out. Again ethernet ports are mostly a hardware function and firmware updates make no difference.

You are going to have to find out what exactly people are complaining about. wifi7 stuff is still fairly new so there could still be bugs in the firmware. Maybe the router is getting hung or is crashing. Then again a lot of what people complain about is not really valid. If they have a lot of wifi interference where they live if it not uncommon for wifi to disconnect.