This problem is huge. 

Everytime I leave my computer alone to fall asleep, it sleeps. But upon waking it, 5ghz network is nowhere to be found. Disappearing act! Houdini! Why? 

SmartConnect is turned off, so this is not the culprit..... what is going on with this faecal router? 

Power settings in device manager for my Network Adapter are set to "Maximum Performance"

All routers used in my past stayed connected to the router, and were instantly connected when I would open the lid of the laptop. 

This laptop is old but not too old. It is 2017 running i7 core. 

What's going on TPLINK??? I don't like your router. And now I cannot send it back because I am outside of return window. Please send me a functioning router that keeps connection! Dang. What a waste of money and time spent on this router to have this kind of issue. Not cool, TPLINK.