TP-Link AXE5400 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router, 2025 PCMag Editors' Choice

Bought this on sale, it was pretty intuitive to set up however I was very confused on how to properly get openvpn working but that is more of a skill issue then a router issue. The ports are plentiful and fast enough for my main PC and my second server PC. The signal is mostly reliable but its likely recomeneded to set it to where it auto switches as the 6E is limited with range but still covers a good 1000 square feet in my testing, just barely starts disconnecting and having issues at the 1400-1500 square foot point but I'm fine with it for what I spent for it. The 5g and 2.4ghz lines have much wider coverage just slower!

The Wi-Fi 6E is great Has about the same range as 5G because it's not a big jump The thing is if you ever do a survey what you'll notice is the cable companies aren't giving anybody anything higher than five and even the tethering is outputting five in fact my iPad M4 probably outputs 5 even though it accepts the Wi-Fi 6 and 6e 60 can't share bands It jumps down to six when I get a little further away through walls it even goes to five sometimes but because it's all working the way it's working it is never an issue If you have it set up right where you keep all bands on 2.4 GHz set to 20 for the bandwidth pipeline 5 GHz set to auto for the pipeline 6 gigahertz set to auto for the pipeline. Use the same broadcast SSID for all three That's how you allow it to engage 6e and even though it maneuvers stuff around I can tell the difference that even when it's not on 6E there's a difference in how it handles things because of the way it works but that's how you activate it Nobody knows and it's okay if it's not on it I would be getting crazy interference and and drops and spikes and all kinds of stuff or be unusable on 5 GHz on a dual band router In fact I had a dual band TP-Link you definitely want the AX that's the other thing You want to keep all all the things set to like all the protocols You don't want AX only but you want them all on for 5 GHz and for 6 Gigahertz Again same broadcast SSID for all of them same passwordPut it up nice and high It's usually best to just leave all the antennas completely vertical I've tested all the different types of angled settings It's best to truly leave it that way if it's on the same floor and just put it as high as possible close to the ceiling cuz Wi-Fi branches out and then comes down. I performed Wi-Fi surveys prior to purchasing this one They're so much default you know routers from the companies and I live in an area where nobody's even really wise enough to like use their own modem like I do and the routers I only use the router When I want a game like down the hall and and you know through some walls and everything so it's important you know that you don't need a killer speed or anything but it's important that you know you still getvirtually collision free performance and that's what it does It might drop it down to six or well as you get further away through a door and stuff and a little for if you a little bit further than that through heavy paying glass or anything it might be on the five but it'll still perform properly which that would be with any router really I bought this on Prime day and got it for an amazing price it was only $140 now Wi-Fi 6 came out in 2019 6e was I believe 2022 possibly 2023 I don't see the internet providers bothering giving us Wi-Fi six devices of those stupid modem router combos and the area I live in there's just nobody here really maybe one person but there's really no one around me that's even smart enough to even like do something like that They don't care so I always hardwire my modem and just switch the wires I keep each one connected to my device I keep rubber band on each end color coded and I just swap my modem and then I only do the router I plug it in for when I want a game wherever cuz 5G also wide band is fine from the cell phone company for gaming as well but if I'm in my own place it only makes sense to use my gigabit and honestly when I'm in my room I still do the same thing because when I'm right near it it truly does give you gigabit speeds It'll always be between like $800 and a little over a thousand you know 1,024 would be a gigabit but you'll see it'll peak up to like for briefly up so like in the 15 1600s you know but it'll average just over a gigabit It'll give me my full upstream My upstream is only 35 I don't have fiber thousand up thousand down like I used to cuz I live in a different area but I get virtually my full upstream even in the worst conditions it's just the worst conditions you know you'd be tinkering all the time with a 5 GHz where I live a dual band Again it's different when it's in 5 GHz mode when it's set up for that Many devices don't even support Wi-Fi 6 or 6E for example my Xbox Series X does not on the old router it was unplayable On the new one if I bring it down that way it plays like a dream and it's only on you know the 5 GHz band and a lot of times when I go through the door into this one room based routes from Wi-Fi 6 to that and even though it's flooded with it it has to do it the architecture of how the greenfield band works the Wi-Fi 60 and how it all works together It's like even though it's dropping it down there's other parts I'm trying to explain this in layman's other parts of the code and the ways developed where it's still using the perks of what Wi-Fi 6 and 6E give you even if it has to drop you down to five Yeah you'll get slower speeds but you won't have to deal with other people's 5 GHz connections interfering with your connection if it drops you down to five It's still treated the same as long as your device supports it and it's set to accept it either if it's got an on-off switch or auto for 6E you always want to leave that on or set to auto like the iPad a lot of the newer iPad support it I guess the iPhone's my Samsung Galaxy S 23 Ultra supports it When I go to the other room I like to do mobile gaming on my iPad M4 so it'll start off at 6E If I leave through a door down the hall it'll drop the six and I could walk past the area I want to go to it'll stay on six If I go through this door with this double payne glass window it'll traditionally drop down to five or I should say generally sometimes it does stay at 6 If you check it but if you're not obsessed with checking it and you you know you might get first and if you forget about that you know you can tell the difference just just look at the speed test I mean there won't be as fast but they won't be like up and down and up and down like a traditional dual band if it's on the five that's the point I mean yeah if you're downloading something you might you know if you just don't want to use ultra wide band even though I have an excellent ulcer white band connection in this area I mean you may want to swap suit if you're far away when you're downloading something but gaming doesn't go off of that it goes off of latency You can nerf your speeds down to very low and also you know how chatty it is before it releases stuff like 60/120 instead of the thousands of the set to I'm sure some people know what I'm talking about but no this router is great If you're having trouble if you leave in a heavily congested environment that's just full of stuff where you can't get far away I mean you know but you're you can still get your connection but once you get there you know then you're constantly fiddling with channels and stuff no this is a set of forget it deal and it's going to get down to six then the like 5 but it's still technically operating a 6e like the benefits of it cuz like I said my series X only accepts five PS five Accepts six. But I mean just think about the fact that the series X on the dual band 5 GHz in the same area will have lots of issues but it has no issues whatsoever and it can't even do you know it's on five even without checking and it's fine and generally in the worst conditions from that far away I'll still get 30 to 100 download and 25 to my max 35 up but sustained like nice and smooth not all up and down or what pauses and breaks which means even collisions might be coming to play but it's using because of the way it's designed it's using the enhancements of what having those bands unified to create a 6E Greenfield Band network can provide and that's the whole point for buying one in the first place really And even if there's a couple people that have Wi-Fi 6 You don't have to worry about it especially if you have a 6e but that's the way you do it A lot of people don't know it but yeah do what I said about the three bands and that automatically engages 6E if you can pull it and it also has an operating in a different style Everything else is set to auto channels output frequencies like you know 2040 80 120 except you want to Nerf the 2.4 down to 20 not 2040 Hope this helps

We have lived in my house for over 10 years. It’s an older house built in the 60s, There are 6 of us in the house 4 adults, one 13y and one 7y. We have 3 ring devices, 4 Alexa’s, 6 fire sticks, 6 computers, 6 gaming consoles, a generator, and we all have iPads, cell phones etc, so there are a lot of devices connected to our wifi, so we’ve never had great luck with the range or performance of our internet signal. Things would buffer alot or we’d have dropped signals, so I was always restarting the router. We use to have Brighthouse but currently have Spectrum with just internet, We upgraded our internet to 1GB over a year ago and was given a dual band wifi 5 router that never really worked for us perfectly, I believe it was because it couldn’t support 1GB, but didn’t know that until I got this router. We were using an extender so we could connect to our generator and ring camera that was located outside, and just so you can have an idea, on our generator the wifi signal was at 2%, which was fine but if we wanted to connect anything else outside it was almost impossible. So we contacted customer support about the issues we were having, and they sent us there newest router the wifi 6e router, mind you we were still using the extender. It worked good for a couple days then it stopped. A lot of buffering and a lot of devices wouldn’t even connect to it like my Oculus Quest 2, my husbands work computer and more! I couldn’t even connect our ring camera outback, and the generator outside was getting 0%-1% signal, so the signal would drop a lot. I figured it was because a lot of things still aren’t compatible with wifi 6. So we called support again they did manage to get everything working for about 5 days, then it would stop again. So we called support for the last time and they told us to try to buy a router ourselves. So I happened to come across this one. I was pretty skeptical, thinking it may work as well as the dual band one we had only maybe a little better. The setup process was so easy! Didn’t have to call Spectrum at all! I do wish that the parental controls, security+ and, QoS was free. But they do give you a free month with any of them. So I did the security+. The app you use with it is great! There are a lot of tools in the settings. You can have it auto connect to a network or set it up separately so you can choose 2.4, 5 or 6G, which is what I did. You can have a guest network, optimize your network performance and a lot more! Everything connected perfectly with excellent signal! So I figured I would try to connect the generator and ring camera outback without the extender just for kicks, since I was feeling optimistic😎 The ring camera connected perfectly with excellent signal! Now was the most important test, the generator😵‍💫 Connected it for the first time and I see 22% signal!!! I was SOOO excited! Then I went to the farthest part of my backyard with my cell phone where Iv never had wifi signal before and I had 3-4 bars of wifi signal!!! I couldn’t believe it! This thing has GREAT range, GREAT performance, and is easy to set up and use, what else could you want! It’s been a couple weeks now, no buffering! and everything works flawlessly! I couldn’t be happier! No one complaining for me to fix the wifi anymore and no restarting it twice a week! I would definitely recommend this to anyone that has horrible or just ok wifi signal. The only flaw I can say about it is needing a subscription for the extras. Otherwise just go for it! You don’t like it just return it.

I purchased this router based on the many very positive reviews posted here and online. I needed to replace my 5 year old Netgear router which was dropping connections so much that it was difficult to use, much less rely on. This AXE5400 router installed well, found all of my network-attached components, and seemed to integrate well with all of them. I like that it has three wireless classes; home, Guest, and IoT. I use all three in my home network. I have not used (nor do I want to use) their "Tether" app. I just don't see the need and I don't need another app trying to sell me something. I did not suffer any loss of needed functionality by not implementing the app, but it is annoying getting the pop-up every time I open the web interface. Oh well. The internal menu is fairly easy to understand and manipulate, even though most "assumptions" it makes during initialization are good and don't need to be altered. Assigning fixed IP addresses and opening port sharing was straight-forward and easy to do. However, using the attached USB port for attached drive sharing needs some improvement. Though it recognized my attached USB drive without issue, the network drive name it assigns is "g"... and there's no way to change it. So, even though you can change the volume name (I used "NAS") the drive is going to be "g". So, addressing it looks something like //nas/g. That's just a minor tweak issue. But what was more annoying was how Win 11 Pro handles mounting the network drive. In the TP Link USB Drive set-up, you can toggle on "secure sharing". I chose to leave this OFF while I reestablished all of my network components. My Win 10 Home computers connected and recognized the network drive fine. However, my Win 11 Pro machine kept asking for "Network Credentials". Well, I hadn't set up "network credentials" and couldn't figure out what it was really asking for. So after much research and numerous altered settings and resultant dead-ends, I turned ON "secure sharing" in the router, added a user name and password for secure sharing, and went back and tried to connect my Win 11 Pro machine, entering the new credentials when asked. And BINGO! It worked! I guess Win 11 didn't care whether I wanted to use unsecure sharing or not. It wasn't going to have any of that nonsense! So, I don't know if this is a TP Link thing, or a Windows 11 thing, but that was what worked for me. Otherwise, this router has been a great improvement over the old router. Good price, good functionality, easy set-up; 5 stars. Annoying app pop-up ad and poor interaction with Win 11 and USB drive sharing, minus 1 star.

Simple setup, app was super helpful, performance noticed immediately, ports were needed (I have all 4 used) and the interface is intuitive. 15 minutes to swap out my failing router (of 11 years) with over 48 connections (used simple strategy of same SSID names for the 2.4 and 5.0 GHz bands along with same password assignments = quick and simple installation.

I upgraded my Internet speed in spring 2020, in the early part of the pandemic to 1GB to keep up with 4 laptops, 1 desktop, a Ring camera with chime, a Ring security system, two Roku sticks on smart TVs, 1 Ubiquity WAP, and two NES Switches (among other Wi-Fi devices), TV streaming, and online PC gaming. As our Internet-home grew, the devices with Wi-Fi connected devices exceeded 20. With the upgrade, I had to replace my coaxial router/modem to a permanently installed Frontier modem and an Arris NVG468MQ router that could take a WAN Ethernet port. The Frontier-provided Arris router was not new, low range, and buggy. I went through 3 of these Arris routers in 2.5 years with full Wi-Fi bars but with exactly the same errors ("Connected, no internet", "No Internet, secured", etc.). Nearly pulled my hair. The family was not happy either. Although the Arris router is compatible with 1GB Ethernet upgraded speeds, it appears to cap at about 600 MB. Believe me, I NEVER, ever, got close to 600 MB with Arris. At an OK speed check I would get 30-60 MB Wi-Fi speeds and sometimes crack 100 MB on my Wi-Fi connected laptops, and maybe a bit higher on my Ethernet-connected desktop. On my Samsung S20 phone I would get 80-120MB speeds. When the Frontier tech visited to check my Internet problems on the second Arris router, I gave him the list of errors (4 in total, two that I named here) and right away he said it was the router and just gave me another one (the 3rd one at that point). Since I had him at home, I asked him if I could buy a router from Best Buy or Amazon and just "plug it in?". He said, "Yes, your Internet setup is plug-n-play, just make sure the router has a blue or red Ethernet port." With that information I started some light research figuring I had maybe a year before the "new" Arris router would get buggy again. Well, it took about a month and I started getting the same exact errors as the previous Arris routers I had replaced. Although the Arris router "corrected" itself a few days later, I was done with Arris routers from Frontier. I sped up my research urgency for a new router from better known brands. At this point I felt I had control over the brand and price point I could buy knowing that I only needed a router and not a modem since Frontier installed a permanent modem when they upgraded my Internet to 1GB speed. Having read about 6E enabled routers--catching up on the newest router/Wi-Fi standards--I figured that a 6E router would be the best option for me as a "future-proof" investment. I narrowed the search to TP-Link, Netgear Nighthawk, and Asus models. This TP-Link AXE5400 beat all the other brands in price for roughly similar, or at least comparable, reviews, features, and range. I purchased this TP-Link AXE5400 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router (Archer AXE75). TP-Link AXE5400 had excellent reviews on Amazon but also across the Internet from reputable technology websites and sources. I did not rely only on Amazon reviews given the issues with bogus reviews. The "plug-n-play" setup at my home with a Frontier 1GB speed was just that easy. Within about 2 minutes of connecting the TP-Link AXE5400 router, all the lights came "on". I rushed to my Ethernet-plugged desktop and opened my browser. Right away I saw the TP-Link landing page asking for an admin login and password setup, and an Admin account. Several steps later, I reused the previously used SSID and password credentials to minimize connectivity disruptions on all my Wi-Fi-enabled devices and in a flash I was connected to the Internet. I might have spent maybe 20 minutes total, from unboxing to setup to Internet, with some thought-provoking time needed to come up with a new login and password for my TP-Link account. My desktop Ethernet-connected speed test blew me away: I broke the 700/800MB download/upload speeds! I ran a speed test on my Samsung S20 but got the 100+ MB speed that I had gotten with the Arris router. I wondered if it would make a difference if I "forgot" the SSID on the phone and then log back in to the same SSID and password? Sure did! After I "forgot" the SSID on my phone and logged back in and ran a speed test, I broke the 800 MB download speed on the phone. Fantastic! My laptop speeds exceeded the 200 MB download/upload speed marks. Another laptop hit the 190/200 MB download/upload speed marks. Although I am kinda rushing with this review, I feel I made the right purchase and that this TP-Link AXE5400 will outlast the last 3 Arris routers that this router replaced. I will return to review in a few months with good or bad impressions at that time. But, right now, I am a happy dad with a happy family. (Update: September 21, 2024): Ok, so I didn't return after a few months. Rather, a few years. 😳The TP-Link is still going strong. No issues. No problems. No headaches. No regrets.

I've only had this router for a day but honestly it's amazing how much better my speeds are already. I have it set up as an access point attached to a MoCA adapter and it's basically getting the same wireless speeds as wired which is kind of crazy. My old router would usually only get around 400 Mbps down on the 5 GHz band, this one easily gets around 600-800 Mbps on 5 GHz and then if I switch over to the 6 GHz band I'm getting around 1200 Mbps. So just from that alone it's already a huge upgrade from what I was using before. Setup was really easy too, probably took me around 5-10 minutes total. The TP-Link app is actually pretty good too, everything is pretty easy to find and I didn't really have any issues getting it set up as an access point. I haven't tested the wired speeds directly from the router yet though because of how I have everything set up. My MoCA adapter Ethernet cord goes into a switch and then I have Ethernet from the switch going into my PC and another one going into this router for the access point. So my PC is basically still wired straight through the MoCA connection while this router is handling the Wi-Fi. I'm also going to test the USB storage on it because I'm guessing it's kind of like a small NAS setup where I can plug a flash drive into it, put movies or shows on there and then access them from other devices on my network. I've messed around with stuff like that before with ReadySHARE so I'm curious to see how well TP-Link does it. I'm going to try that next and see how it works. Obviously I've only had it for a day so I can't really say anything about long term reliability yet, but so far I really like it. Going from around 400 Mbps on 5 GHz with my old router to 600-800 Mbps and then around 1200 Mbps on 6 GHz is a pretty massive difference for me, especially since I'm only using it as an access point through my MoCA setup. So far I'm really happy with it and honestly I wasn't expecting the Wi-Fi speeds to be this close to my wired connection. Love this router so far.

This router is fantastic in providing excellent coverage. On my 7000 sqft lot, I am able to get full strength signal across my entire property. The 6e wifi band, for those devices that support it, is great but the distance for that signal is a bit limited. Now, this brings me to the Ethernet. Connecting via ethernet is fine, but NOW 2 of my 4 LAN ports no longer work. It's only been a year that I had this router and it already is working at half effectiveness. Not only that, but now my speeds across the board are halved with no way to increase the speeds, even after having an ISP tech come out and verifying that it's not them. I pay for 1Gbps speeds and using brand new CTA6 and CAT8 cables, nothing of avail. It's a shame as this is a good device, just be ready to replace this in a year.

Superb router for houses with dead spots, builds a seamless mesh network with TP extenders. We've had perfect WiFi across the house since buying this.

Excelente producto, no me ha dado lata alguna y cumple con las expectativas deseadas.

the best ... wifi 6ghz \ e net speed 300 to 400 Mbps u dont need more than 200 Mbps btw ...

TP-Link AXE5400 Tri-Band worked reall well , speed is fine , easy setup , recommend

The router has an American power cable causing problem with usage