TP-Link AX5400 VDSL Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi 6, Dual-Band, 4x Gigabit WAN/LAN Ethernet ports, 3 RJ11 Ports, Connect up to 200 devices, VDSL2 Speed, HomeShield Security, Works with Alexa (Deco X73-DSL)

I was with Sky broadband for many years and the Sky Q system caused huge network instability with hardwired boxes dropping on and off the network and speed falling off a cliff. When they wanted £40 a month i swapped to Vodafone. Loosing the mesh Sky gave me even if it was poor meant i needed something to replace it with. Knowing issues that you can have by adding a mesh system to an existing router i chose the TP Link system as i can configure it with my FTTC service. Whilst the Voip element no longer works i am really not bothered as every one now calls the mobile and there seems no way to get it to work. Set up was very simple indeed, the app is very intuitive and as long as you have the settings from your ISP don't forget the VLAN setting for vodafone 101 it was up and running in around 15 mins. The nodes i also purchased the X50 were the same easy. The app is very clever and i can name items connected if not known by the app which is a nice touch. Finally i did like the ability to turn off the LED lights which means less LED light pollution in the bedroom at night. Wifi coverage is very good although one more unit in the extension would make it full signal everywhere in the house but i am nit picking as everything has a decent signal with good decibels. I do highly recommend this unit if you don't need your isp's voip and the ability to set it up on fibre using the WLAN option is also a future proofing feature which is great.

I bought this product to upgrade my home network and I’m very impressed with the performance and features. The installation was easy and the app is very user-friendly. The mesh system covers my entire house with fast and stable Wi-Fi 6, and I can easily manage the devices and settings from my phone. The router also supports VDSL, which is great for my fibre broadband service. The design is sleek and modern, and the router has plenty of ports for wired connections. I highly recommend this product to anyone looking for a reliable and powerful mesh Wi-Fi system.

As a bit of a techie, I was hugely disappointed to discover that the only way that you can adjust the settings with this modem, is via the App, on your phone. So, if you want to set up Firewalls, NAT tables, Port redirection, or anything like that, you have to use the app. You can't just use your browser to log into the modem and edit your settings from there. When you use your app, I believe that all your settings go to a server in China, and your modem retrieves its settings from there - or its something along those lines anyway. Apart from that, its a good stable modem. Unfortunately for me, my App no longer links to the modem, so I cant get any engineering level access to it all all! I have yet to test technical support, as its been years since I had to ask someone else to help me access my modems internal settings! Such a requirement seems fundamental to me, and should not need technical support. So, good wifi, but a hopeless user interface.

I've had problem upon problem with routers crippling when more than 30 devices hits the network, I purchased the Deco AX5400, plugged the telephone cable in and turned it on. Downloaded the Android Deco app and it automatically found the device without having to connect to the wifi (that's handy and you'll see why). Here I was able to set up the wifi name, password and also the DHCP table which I wanted to be the same as my previous router to avoid resetting everything to pick up a new set of IP's. The Wifi 4-5 and 6 is fast, much faster than most of the mid tier routers or even routers at this speed without VDSL built in, and the VDSL speed (actual internet connection and speed) has improved and I was using a DrayTek which is renowned to be a step up on standard VDSL modems! It's just fast and reliable, you might not care about how the devices are named as its not so great at pulling information from the devices connected (depending on the quality of the devices you are connecting) but easy to go in, set names, set groups and areas and change imagines/icons to make it all neat. There is a notification that I advise you turn on. It means anything new that joins the network you'll see right away and can take action in, renaming, adding to area or even blocking! Regarding speed and ISP setup, there was literally none and I'm with TalkTalk so it automatically handled this. I usually have MUCH more admin access to these kind of devices but I decided to go with a more home friendly device and can confirm that it is mostly high level settings with some advanced settings you will probably not ever use. If you need them then you already know what you are doing.

Having used a TP-Link VR2800 router with M5 and X20 Deco units which have been solid and supported up to 40 devices simultaneously, I thought why not upgrade to a DSL router that supports mesh instead of having to use 2 devices (VR2800 with an attached X20). I thought the transition would be seamless given all my other nodes were TP-Link branded but how wrong was I, setup was simple enough as I've used the Deco app for a while now. However, there were some differences in the UI mainly due to the fact that TP-Link want you to pay for HomeShield Pro so features such as parental control require a subscription. The problems started when I tried to use the QoS feature this allows you to prioritise certain devices others if there are lots of devices consuming the bandwidth on your network. I was shocked to discover that there is no feature to limit a devices bandwidth, this can be done on the VR2800 which was released in 2018. Now the is specific reason to do this and anyone who has a mesh network and SkyQ will know when you download shows it will consume all the download speed on your network 72mbps in my case, this then bounces other devices like laptops etc off the network which isn't the greatest when you're on a video call. The issues didn't stop there either the QoS feature on the router doesn't work at all details of which can be found in the TP-Link forum, ultimately I was contacted by an engineer who is looking into the issue but that will no doubt take a while so I decided to soldier and kept the router. After a week or two I started to experience poor quality during video calls and voice calls on my laptop, I also witnessed the router randomly disconnecting from the other deco nodes. This was very surprising given my house is small, none of the internal walls are solid and I have more than the required number of deco nodes which means I pick up my internet signal halfway down my street (when it's working). The dropouts in the calls were severely affecting my capacity to work as a remote I.T. professional so I decided to do some further investigation with the router, I was aghast at what I found next. For no specific reason the load on the CPU in the router would spike to over 93% and this was without anyone streaming music or video. Bearing in mind the old setup I had barely reach 40% CPU Load when everyone in the house was streaming on multiple devices and that the X73-DSL is a new device that is supposedly capable of handling 200 devices on its own, you can now see that there are bugs that TP-Link need to resolve and should have waited before releasing this device. Again, this issue is documented this on the TP-Link forum. Suffice to say after suffering these issues I still encountered further problem due to the CPU Load spiking for no reason when the router was being used to stream video on multiple devices it began to disconnect from the internet at this point I had, had enough and have now returned the router and returned to my previous setup and regained my sanity.

Update after 18 months The modem element seem to have problems maintaining a download connection over 8mbs instead of 65-70mbs that line is capable of. I don't know if this is a recently updated firmware problem or hardware failure problem as line has been checked and is OK Original review This is a modem and mesh router in one. It is fairly easy to set up via the TP Link Deco app, which you download to your phone - easier than trying to do this the old fashioned way by a pc logged into the modem via an ethernet cable. The interface tries to make it easier for a non technical user, so it is not as modifiable as traditional modem/routers - eg it is not possible to change wifi channels manually to avoid interference - the reasoning is that mesh systems have more considerations than a simple router based network . When setting up with more than one Deco device - ensure each has a unique name. Be careful not to accidently change which deco device is the main (controlling) device. Unsurprisingly the speed of the network increases massively if you connect deco devices via wires rather than wirelessly - and you can chain devices I believe. So far, I have found two limitations. The first is a firewall as this appears to be part of a subscription service - the Security + service from TP link. Firewalls have been an integral part of modem software for many years so if security is a major consideration for you, pay the subscription or get something like a Drayek modem and user the Deco devices as wireless routers. The second is the interaction between some Samsung phones and the Deco mesh - In particular the A53 model. I think this relates to the 5ghz and 2.4ghz networks having the same name and the phone hardware or software can't cope with this. There is a workaround, which is to enable the guest network on 2.4ghz only and reduce security on it to a minimum. This gives a reasonably long range - but slower - network that the phone will connect to with no issue.

So fast and easy to install (10 mins). The mobile driven app is at first odd not to be a PC Web page app but this is the way to go. I get alerts when new equipment enters my large network so I can keep track of what gear is on the system. Only shortcoming is the range which is less than the Netgear 4XS 7800 that it replaced. Wifi signal is barely connecting with Deco whereas Netgear was almost always connecting. Hard to hard wire extender to deco to get firm distance connection

Bought to upgrade my home wifi to a Mesh service. The setup was fairly easy and initially, it worked OK apart from a complete refusal to provide a WiFi connection to my OnePlue phone (the only device in the house that caused any problems at switch over). The Deco app is very basic and doesn't give any real insight into what the device is doing, but given the market, it's aimed at that's probably not an issue but the fact that the most useful features are hidden behind a paywall is. An optional web interface would be useful. WiFI coverage was nowhere as good as I'd expected (and certainly not 2700 sq ft) so I added an X50 and all was good for a while - decent speeds and a reliable WiFi connection. Then a few weeks in, it stopped talking to the DSL connection to my internet service provider, BT. After several frustrating hours of swearing and resetting the device repeatedly I managed to get it back online - not because of what I did, but BT eventually owning up to a service outage that they hadn’t published. Again, several weeks passed and it happened again, same fault, same frustrations and this time, in consultation with a BT help desk engineer, who was adamant there were no outages, decided it wasn’t compatible with their VDSL service, probably a firmware issue. A day passes and my backup router goes offline and low and behold, BT has two service outages now live, backdated nearly 48 hours. When I got the old router back online, I broke out the Deco and, surprise, surprise, it worked - nothing to do with firmware at all. I revised the rating to 3 stars - the device works OK, but seems to be very sensitive to service issues that my old Netgear router wasn’t, the user interface is very basic (can’t even change the base IP address) and the expanded management features are behind a paywall, but the mesh wifi 6 is good and speedy. It's worth pointing out that the Tech Support at TP-Link is useless and when I spoke with them, the operator had no clue what they were talking about (I'm an electronics engineer working in Telecoms, so I have some notion). Beware of this!

The speed and signal are fast and stable more than I expected. Recommended

I was after a unit with VDSL to replace my aging modem. This one gives exceptional wifi connection and activity speeds for my smart home devices, so much faster than my 6yo router. Range isn’t great but it covers my home effectively.

A stylish looking device, very user friendly interface, great access controls. It works very well at close range, effective range is 16m is any direction, if you are further away it doesn't really work. Some features require a subscription.

Deco product is not good. You get constant issue and mine bricked itself for no reason. This seem to be common issue across Deco product.

I'm really pleased with this purchase, it works extremely well. Even more impressive is the excellent customer support I received from TP-Link with various after-sales queries I had - I am now sold on the brand.