Tri-Band BE9300 WiFi 7 Router (Archer BE550) – 6-Stream, Full 2.5G Ports, 6 Internal Antennas, Up to 2,000 sq. ft., EasyMesh Expansion, VPN

If you are looking for a cost-effective router that will put you ahead of the technology time-line, this is it. I was a LinkSys/Cisco fan and I bought this router to replace a pretty decent LinkSys WRT 3200 ACM. The LinkSys acquired some deficiency in the past year of "half-connecting" to just one device, while perfectly connecting to every other device on its 2.4gz and 5.0gz bands. (Half-connecting allowed some, but not all URLs to load). I recently had replaced a LinkSys extender with a TPLink extender because it could not maintain a persistent connection with the LinkSys (another hint the router was going out) and was pleased with its ability to retain its connection... though it seemed I was frequently fighting over channels with my neighbors which was very annoying, having to change them every other week. After researching the market (I looked at Eero, too), I decided this was the one that was budget friendly and buying a more expensive model was not warranted as I'm not a gamer or an extreme streamer - I have 1gz service from Spectrum anyway. I did look for a router that supported USB as I have a couple of USB drives (12gb) for "cloud" storage of my files. This router comes with "Easy Mesh" which I did not pay that much attention to, since the new TpLink extender was doing a nice job (Yes, the two extra SSIDs were a little annoying when connecting devices, but I was OK with that). Setup was pretty easy, though I did want to get into the configuration to set fixed IP addresses for wired and non-wired devices in my home. All that worked perfectly fine. The only irritation I had was LinkSys uses the Gateway of 192.168.1.1 and TpLink chose 192.168.0.1. So all my fixed IP address devices had to be reconfigured (I have a WD Cloud and Canon and Samsung printers)... all of which were time-consuming to figure out how to get them reconnected to the BE9300. Then came the big surprise! I went into the setup on the TPLink "extender" and the BE9300 recognized it and "hijacked" it! The extender is no longer an extender (though it can be configured as one), but it turned out to be a mesh access point. All of a sudden, the 2.4gz and 5.0gz networks on the extender (TPLink RE550) were greyed-out! The BE9300 turned it into a mesh access point! Being a little skeptical, I cranked up m favorite WiFi phone app (WiFi Overview) and walked thru the house (3600sf). This app displays a graphical indication of signal strength in a parabola display of all SSIDs nearby. Since the extender was now a mesh access point, I only had TWO SSIDS (one for 2.4 and one for 5.0) and of course, two "sub" SSIDs. As I walked further away from the BE9300, I could see the signal strength of the mesh unit growing larger and larger. Like any mesh network, it apparently switched to the mesh access point seamlessly on my phone... as advertised without any degradation of visual download speed.. Additionally, a lot of reviews on this product indicated they were seeing increases in download speed, so I did quite a few speed tests with several different test sites. Since my Spectrum 1gz service is still copper, I knew I'd never see 1gz speed, but the top speed with the LinkSys on and off the wire was about 910gz-920gz... not quite a 10% "loss", but still respectable. With the BE9300, I am consistently seeing over 950gz, so yes, I'll agree there is a slight increase in download speed. Another plus here is the BE9300 is Wifi 7 enabled. Yes, currently, the only WiFi device is the iPhone 17 pro, but again, its nice to be ahead of the technology curve rather than be current or behind it. In summary, I have to admit, the BE9300 exceeded my expectations, as I was not really in the market for a mesh system, but almost, by accident, I have one (I glossed over the "Easy Mesh" part of the BE9300). Combined with the slight increase in speed and the WiFi 7 capability already being there, I highly recommend this guy if you want to stay in the $200 range (vs. $400 range) when looking at a new or replacement router. And I got this during Amazon's fall "sale" and it happened to have a $20 coupon from TpLink which made it a very nice deal.

TLDR: I bought this router about a month ago when my older one started to stutter. After some initial issues with firmware and a round or 2 with TPLink tech support I got everything ironed out and now I am very pleased with the performance. For more details, please read on. I'm a Network Engineer who works from home. Internet access is critical to my ability to do my job. So, when my older Netgear wireless router started to show signs of failure (random WIFI network loss of signal and reboots) that I could not fix with firmware updates, I started searching for a new router. The BE550 is a slightly less expensive version of TPLink's top end router. It lacks the extra LEDs on the front that allow for it to display the weather and a few other cute features, and it only has 4 LAN and 1 WAN(Internet) connections, all of which are 2.5G. there are no 10G ports on this router. Since I don't need to move that much data, it wasn't a deal breaker for me. Install was pretty easy, but I was also taking the opportunity to upgrade my Cable modem to a newer model and to install a 2.5G NIC in my home PC. After initial bootup and configuration of my home and guest networks, I ran speed tests that showed significant improvement in throughput. I have Gigabit service and improved my wired speeds from 690Mbps average to 1.1Gbps average on my home computer. The 2.5G ports are really doing there jobs and keeping the data moving without a bottleneck. Unfortunately, after about 24 hours, the new router became unstable. The wireless signal would cut out, and even wired connections would lose internet access intermittently. As I tested components I ruled out the Cable modem and the new NIC and started to focus on the router. Constant ping tests to google would randomly time out for 20-30 seconds and then return. At the same time the LAN side access into the router would be lost, which shouldn't happen if the loss of signal is on the Internet side. I opened a ticket with TPLink and was surprised by how quickly they responded. After some initial testing with a tech on the phone, the ticket was kicked to the next level of support and all subsequent support was via email. The techs asked for log files and information about my troubleshooting and the analyzed that for about a day. They then sent me a firmware update (which wasn't available via the firmware update process in the router) and asked me to apply it. Once that was done, the router stabilized and hasn't shown any issues for about 48 hours. Like: Design - more like a book than something from a Star Trek movie. WIFI Coverage: Even with internal antennas, I have very good coverage of my 2000 sq. ft. house and my backyard. WIFI Speed: Phones and tablets are easily pulling 8-900Mbps from anywhere in the house. WIRED Speeds: My desktop (with 2.5G NIC) is able to pull 1.2Gbps easily Don't Like: GUI: Maybe I'm just picky, but I think the GUI needs help. It isn't as intuitive as the Netgear router I replaced Price: This is an expensive piece of kit at $300+ Overkill for a lot of people, but there are limited 2.5G capable wifi routers on the market

This is very close to scam model features advertisement. Reason i bought these routers is that my older mesh setup from same vendor (3x Deco M9 and 2x Deco M5 nodes) stopped working two months ago after firmware update - they broke DHCP for Guest network where i keep 50 IOT devices isolated from main network. Which was already a firm suggestion to not use this brand any more. Why I decided to give them a try again, I don’t know.. OK I received two BE550 today and spent entire morning to bind them in mesh (kinda glitchy process, had to reset them multiple times and login to local web UI, of course I updated FW to latest). Neither web UI nor Tether iphone app show backend eth links speed, but at least 1G eth should work for my test (i think it’s less than 100ft of Cat5e cable and worked well earlier) as my Comcast uplink is only 600Mbits, far from extreme requirements right? So again, my setup is wired backend between wifi nodes, and I need full speed of all 3 bands combined with dynamic allocation - wherever I go in my house, I want the top speed from these best customer level WiFi 7 devices! And here we start to struggle with TP-Link: 1) main wifi network can only combine 2.4 + 5Ghz, 6Ghz is separate band. Its basically old 802.1ac where your devices switch between old slow 2.4 and faster but not stable 5 bands. 2) MLO (multi link operation) - which is essential for tri-band - can only be enabled as separate wifi network (SSID) and(!) only combine 5 + 6 GHz, meaning that you always have to be pretty close to routers. 3) MLO (surprise!) appears to be working only off main node, and latest firmware does not support it for mesh satellite nodes. This is official and clear statement from their support line today!! Moreover they told me BE63 model (specialised mesh model) also has this problem! To make it clear for you - new 6GHz band alone makes zero sense if you stick to it, unless you live in studio apartment and router is in the middle. And only way to use third band in BE550 is dedicated 6GHz SSID. Meaning that either you need 8 nodes across the house, or you will have poor reception all the time going from couch to kitchen. I’m going to return these and try Asus tri-band Wifi 7. TP links are just too basic for the price, and I don’t want to rely on it any more.

UPDATE: 23 May, 2024 Now it's been awhile. I have to write: If something is messed up, it's NEVER the EAP225 WiFi units or this thing! It's been months since it's been rebooted! We have enough off-grid solar so the internet stuff and the comp room can stay off-grid all the time. It never gets rebooted nowadays and it's always there and it doesn't mess up! It has a gigabit (24 port) switch and two (8 port) 2.5 gigabit switches plugged into it. A total of 4 NAS's; three of them 2.5 gigabit dual LAN's; one with dual gigabit LAN's. And three computers, all 2.5 gigabit. And the Yeacomm 5G gateway is also 2.5 gigabit. Nothing bothers this thing. I'm still not using its WiFi, because of those EAP225's, which are also great. I read a few reviews, before, raving about this thing's WiFi, though and people write that it works great. The wife is Korean and she watches Korean soap opera's all day. We usually download way over a terabyte a month here. The Yeacomm connects at about 400 megabits down and 110 to 130 megabits up. ___________________________________________________________________ This runs a whole bunch of stuff - WiFi and LAN - typically about 15 devices. I'm not going to rate the Wifi because I'm not going to use it yet. 1) I have two EAP225's; they're VERY strategically located and they mesh with each other. Unfortunately they won't mesh with this thing. 2) I don't have anything else that will even do WiFi 7 yet. I got this mainly for the five 2.5 GbE ports - one WAN and 4 LAN's! I've also got a Yeacomm (Speednet) NR610 (also a very nice, but expensive device), and my internet is blazingly fast! Just very snappy. Internet tasks are usually as fast as doing stuff locally on the computer. You can easily tell when it's the website that's slow. That Yeacomm has a 2.5 GbE port and I was drooling at the thought of getting that 2.5 GbE speed to the LAN. (I also have a gigabit switch, a PoE switch [for the EAP225'sand the Magic Jacks that only do 10 MbE], and two 2.5 GbE switches.) Really nice that all my stuff plugs into this! The WEB interface on this device is a thing of beauty! Everything is very logically laid out, most changes, you don't have to reboot for, and if you know your network stuff, you'll find it nice and easy to use. If you don't know your network stuff, you're still in luck! It took its time communicating with the Yeacomm (LTE CPE Modem) (and a bunch of other devices) on the first boot - maybe 3 minutes or 4 minutes - but it configured itself very well! I have two Magic Jack lines and those didn't work right away. It took some hair-pulling-out time to straighten it out. But I've had one way audio problems with those before. This time, this router had the provisions to fix it (on one of them only.) That's not this router's fault; it's just the way it is. You need to forward a range of ports on two different devices and you can't. It took a very long time to get fixed. It was like a combination lock. Turns out the final step was some settings in the Yeacomm. The Magic Jacks now talk directly to the cell phone tower. One of them works perfectly and the other one only has one way audio when calling [mostly] cell phones. If I had another 2.5 GbE port on the Yeacomm, I could do it, I think, but as long as I can get calls on both lines and call out on one of them, I'm happy. Everything else worked like a champ with settings that this router came up with all on its own! The only thing I changed (not counting the Magic Jack settings) is making a bunch of MAC | IP reservations. When you set it up, you get a light show for awhile. Then the lights can be turned on or turned off with a WEBUI switch. You can also set up a night time mode and have them on in the daytime and off at night, specifying the times. You can plug a USB hdd into the USB port and use it as a very fast, very big network share. It's almost like having an NAS. It's been totally stable and reliable so far. It's a lot of money. I had to talk myself into it. I shopped for about a week. That should tell you something. Now that I've gotten to use it, I consider it well worth the money! I give their tech support 5 stars, not because of this thing, but because I've used their tech support in the past and I already KNOW it's exceptionally good! I have a lot of other TP-Link stuff. Advanced, hi-end stuff. Half of the 12 connected devices shown in the pic.

I was pleasantly surprised by the features of the TP-Link Tri-Band BE9300 WiFi 7 Router, Archer BE550. My only two criticisms are the odd arrangement of the 2.5Mbit LAN ports and the lack of some obscure features like WDS bridging. There are also no individual LEDs for each LAN port. You have to use the web interface to check if a LAN port has established a good link. I recently upgraded my cable broadband to 1 Gigabit DS / 40 Mbit US. This router had no trouble with 1 Gbit communication over the wired LAN and about 300 Mbit over a 5 Ghz. wireless connection. I don't have any wireless devices that will test higher speeds, so the router probably can support higher speeds. I noticed a big increase in speed versus my older Netgear R7000 Nighthawk (with Advanced Tomato firmware). That router had 1GB LAN and WAN ports but could not download faster than about 250 Mbit over the wired LAN. The user interface is different than most other routers, but it has everything that a typical user requires. My only gripe is that it does not support pasting a MAC address in the field when adding a DHCP MAC to IP address assignment. That is only an issue if you are adding devices that have not yet requested an address from the DHCP server, such as manually configured devices. My work around was to paste the MAC address in the description field and then type in the MAC address in the field above that. Then I just entered the correct description afterward. A big advantage to this router is the affordable price. I have a few TP-Link products and they have proven to be at least as reliable as the more expensive brands, and have nearly all the same features. The most useful settings are easy to access in the setup menus, but the more seldom used settings can be hard to find. If you aren't very technical, that can actually be an advantage. If you are doing something unusual, it may be a little frustrating. The cooling vents on the side of the router are working out better than the routers with vents on the bottom. I do have the router on a wire rack with ventilation underneath, but this router should be OK even on a solid surface like a bookshelf. I haven't noticed any intermittent problems or excessive temperatures after using the router for a few weeks. The LAN ports on the back are not all oriented the same way, with two having the locking tabs on the left and two having the locking tabs on the right. Most other routers have all the locking tabs on the bottom or the top. It may be awkward to plug in the LAN cables if you cannot see the back of the router.

I bought this TP-Link Archer BE550 Pro to use in Access Point mode, fed by a 2.5 Gbps ethernet cable from my AT&T fiber router. Replaces a decade-old Wi-Fi 5 dual-band Netgear Nighthawk extender/AP to get Wi-Fi 7 Tri-Band. The first big question I had, that nearly prevented me from ordering this one, is that 10Gbps WAN port in back. Is it multi-gig, or is it fixed at 10Gbps? Nowhere on the box or on the webpage says. Even more confusing since other similar TP-Link models have a separate 2.5Gbps WAN/LAN port marked along with three 2.5Gbps LAN ports. Well turns out the answer from TP_Link customer support is yes, the 10 Gbps IS a multi-gig port that specifically will work fine with 2.5 Gbps (and I'm assuming 5Gbps and 1Gbps but I didn't ask) and linked up just fine with my 8 port 2.5Gbps TP-Link ethernet switch. All of this means this Archer BE550 Pro router is future-proof, since I eventually expect to upgrade to 10Gbps throughout the house in a couple of years when the prices come down. This BE550 Pro router comes with a short funky flat ethernet cable with shielded RJ45 connectors that I'm sure must be rated for 10Gbps (but works great at 2.5Gbps, of course). All you need for 2.5 Gbps though is Cat5e or Cat6 (what I'm using in the house) cable. Another hiccup is how to access this router's web setup page, or more specifically, how to find out what IP address it landed at on your network to do that. The Tether app does a great job with initial setup and some of the basic settings, including the ability to switch from router mode to access point mode. But then...anyone who has spent years with routers will say "where are the rest of the settings" and assume the the router will probably come up with a settings web page with more at its IP address. But where? The AT&T router is at 192.168.3.1 (I use a .3 subnet on the publicly un-routable 192.168.x.x for home network) but remember this is in Access Point mode, so the BE500 Pro IP will be somewhere else. Running a IP scanner doesn't really help much, nothing to ID the device, which by default will land in your DHCP IP block (I run both static IP and DHCP blocks). Turns out the answer is in the Tether app. Click on its entry under the first "My Devices" screen, THEN click right on the picture of the router itself on the next screen. That will come up with an info screen and on there will be the Archer BE550 Pro's IP address. Just log into that IP in your browser and use your TP Link website password for the password. You are in! :) The web setup pages do have a pretty extensive list of settings. So far I'm very impressed with this router, in all three bands, and especially the IoT setup. I'm using 2.4 GHz and 5Ghz IoT bands for the solar panels, Ring doorbell, water softener, and remote control of a Mitsubishi mini-split A/C system. The Wi-Fi 7 6Ghz band is working great to a cell phone and an external Tri-band Wi-Fi adapter on a laptop. The Tether app alerts every time a new device has joined one of the networks, which is handy. Recommended!!

Review Update August 31, 2025: In recent months Apple has updated the iPhone 16 to use MLO [Multi-Link Operation] efficiently. This way, all three bands will be used as needed. When the iPhone 16 first came out in September 2024, there was only the 2.4GHz or 5GHz or 6GHz bands in use on the iPhone. Now, i couldn't be happier that I'm getting full functionality from the BE9300! Original Review August 29, 2024: I wanted to believe the hype for WiFi 7, because I was already in the TP-Link family with WiFi 6 TP-Link AX1800 Router. Installation was simple for me, like the majority of guys on here. However, there is probably a good explanation for why a large number of people have struggled with the BE9300. I cannot speak to that, but I’m sure the reasons are valid. I used the Tether mobile APP, and set the BE9300 up as a new device, using the SSID and password that came with the BE9300. However, I kept all my Tether mobile APP passwords, only updating the Local Network SSID and its password from the new BE9300. You won’t want to reuse Local SSID names and passwords for different routers 🤣. Tether Mobile APP is a powerful tool, use it first if you can. The overall improvement in my home network has affected everything that has a WiFi radio or Ethernet port. For example: I now have very stable connections, greater HDR color depth in streaming video, and deeper bass and more crystalline highs in streaming audio. In a sense, it’s like I have a new audio/video system. Also, my Withings Body+ Smart Scale linked to Apple Health APP, using TP-Link AX1800 router or Spectrum AX6E router, could NEVER display my Apple Health APP daily steps for more than 24-hours at a time, before they would disappear. And resetting the Body+ would be the only way to get the steps back, but only for another resetting cycle. Oddly, daily weather predictions were stable, as were the Body Composition metrics. Just the daily steps were constantly AWOL. Since installing BE9300 in my network, those Apple Health APP daily steps consistently display as intended into the smart scale. All this improvement, and I only have one WiFi 7 device 😂🤣🥲. I have the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has a WiFi 7 radio. All iPhone 16s utilizes a Broadcom Wi-Fi 7 chip, supporting the full Wi-Fi 7 standard across all 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, including Multi-Link Operation (MLO) functionality. Thus, iPhone 16 can enable the full performance of Wi-Fi 7 globally and optimize the potential of both the increasingly accessible 6GHz spectrum and regions with only 5GHz availability, leaving the 2.4GHz spectrum for legacy Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IoT. All WiFi 7 devices will have this functionality in the BE9300. My main takeaway is that the BE9300, has increased bandwidth to my home network such that all my connected devices get the full signal requested without any throttling at all. Thus, everything is faster, fuller, brighter, clearer and more stable. I have noticed that iPhone 16 Pro Max alternates between 5Ghz and 6Ghz in the BE9300. It makes that decision based on moment-by-moment conditions in my home. Apple will probably tweak future iPhones to use 6Ghz more in the future. My main home theater is a Marantz SR6015 7.2.4 AVR with a 65” LG OLED TV. This system loves BE9300. I feel future-proofed for the foreseeable future, and the $300 cost is an excellent investment.

The big Pros: Putting the WiFi 7 aside, this router is amazing if you need all the ethernet ports it has. It can be the best future proof bang for the buck at the moment and is one of the few devices certified by the WiFi 7 Alliance, which is great. Meanwhile, Asus and Netgear routers aren't certified yet (as of today, june 2024). So if you 're looking for a mix of 2.5G and 10G ethernets this is the hardware and finding so many 2.5 and 10G ports in a single device is too expensive. The big Cons: HOWEVER (big caps), the WiFi 7 signal is very very unreliable. TP-Link implementation is still lacking and much of the Tether app is badly programmed. I found some gross bugs that should never be released to end users, such as both the SSID and the Password fields showing the password (yep! the SSID Name reveals the password), uncensored, and even if you re-insert the correct SSID name, save and reboot, the Tether app will still show the wrong values and behave as the password is being used as the SSID Name during the handshake, which leads to connection errors. A lame and inadmissible programming error, and it is not the only issue of this kind. I managed to work around this bug by accessing the router page from my PC through ethernet. Many configurations that makes up the wifi 7 signal can't be activated at the same time. There are clear problems with conflicting SSIDs with the same name or different passwords. Once you activate MLO, all hell goes loose on the WiFi 6 and MLO signals. The only channel that is consistently reliable is the 2.4G band, which is inadmissible as well. One does not sell a kidney to have a WiFi 7 router that only works on 2.4G bandwidth. Firmware updates are scarce and up to now not a single one fixed the WiFi 7 reliability issue, and also seem to introduce more small stupid UI bugs, like their app poping repeated connection error messages then connecting anyway with no problem at all. Conclusion: If WiFi 7 is something you need for important that demands it, move away from every brand and wait 2-3 months. None of them seem to have hit the spot on it yet, all of them are having the same signal instability (WiFi drops every 5sec incessantly until the router SO enter in a loop of crash and reboot) only a handful of the chinese manufacturers are certified yet. So all manufaturers that speared ahead of the competition are basically testing unofficial stuff in hopes of milking as many wallets as possible from the early adopters.