Absolutely love the design, power and range of this router.  

 

I am able to go 4 units either direction ( about 50 ft ) in my condo complex hallway and still get FULL 5G wifi speed on my phone or tablet.

I get around 50% speed at either end of complex ( about 85 feet )....  AWESOME !!

 

My concerns ( that can be adjusted in firmware updates ) are as follows...

 

1) I see many have complained about the auto logout, and i agree that is a royal pain.  How about changing the firmware to allow US to set the timeout window ( LAN SIDE ) and perhaps even have ZERO timeout as long as we haven't enabled port forwards, remote wan management, DMZ etc that actually would be a high risk.

 

2) I would like to see a wifi security option of just WPA2 personal / AES added. Hardly any devices yet support WPA3 and i find 2 of my 5G devices just dont like the WPA2 / WPA3 option.

Dropping down to WPA / WPA2 introduces a somewhat higher risk of intrusions, which i want to avoid.

 

3)  QOS ....   I know a lot of people will like to use QOS, BUT i would like to see an option to totally disable that QOS feature as i have been unable to find " a happy mix " of settings that doesn't actually slow down my internet speeds by about 20%. And yes i tried giving certain devices high priority but hat still didnt work out as expected.

 I finally set it to " CUSTOM " and slid all the adjustment bars to max... but still has impacts.   FYI:  The router i tried just before this was an ASUS AX55 which actually allowed total disable of QOS.

 

4)  VPN ....   WOW ... i was totally shocked when i realized this only has VPN server NOT vpn client settings.  Of ALL my requests, getting VPN CLIENT with wirequard is the MOST important change needed  ASAP !!

 

5) The Management GUI ...  As i have poor eyesight, i have my browser(s) set to dark mode. Unfortunately these router pages turn into a LOT of dull text and when hovering over items they turn to what appears to be yellow requiring me to lean in to like 5 inches away from screen to try to read anything.

Please consider adding a " dark theme " option in general settings.

 

EDIT 1:

 

FINALLY found ( by accident actually ) How to set the wifi security to ONLY WPA2 ... have to select wpa3 then it has a sub option for wpa2. Thats a silly way to set up the web pages.

Setting it that way however has exposed another " bug " ... even though i set my channels manually for least interference with neighbours, NOW the 5G keeps setting itself about every 20-30 minutes to whatever channels it 'thinks' are best.  GMAB !!!  IF i set it manually then leave it alone .

 

Still within return window, so going to order a few others and see how they behave. Most likely this is going back in the box.

 

EDIT2:

Did return this router .....

 

Then tried a Netgear Nighthawk.... poor performance for how much they charge.

 

Finally settled on an ASUS RT-AX86S ( basically an RT-AX86U with less ram )

 

It has about 85% of the signal coverage as this TP-Link did, ( still usable 3-4 condo unis each direction which is more than enough )

And has ALL the missing features i had noted above; along with a full set of leds for connections etc instead of just one big one like this thing.

ASUS's VPN section called VPN Fusion actually allows me to import a list of my VPN provider WIRESHARK credentials and assign them either globally OR each profile to an individual device; and when that device reboots it comes up connected to the VPN every time. Now THATS a great feature >> NO interaction needed.

Only thing missing is being able to schedule the led's on and off. It can be done from the web UI so i think i can extract that part of the UI and automate it with a timer from my laptop  ;)