TP Link Deco Whole Home System

My Old Man Taylor C. Talk Unboxing The Deco M5 Mesh Router.

 All in all, I am very happy with the system. It comes in decent packaging but nice product. Set up wasn’t too hard if you have general knowledge it is a breeze. I did have an issue with one of my units being recognized. I reached out to tech-support and they were a joke. I ended up figuring out the issue on my own. The phone in tech-support is my only negative experience with these units. They cover my entire home and probably three doors down from me and still getting a strong signal. The built-in security suite works great for parental controls, content blocking, and even specific device usage time. The built-in virus protection and firewall is a nice added feature as it blocks port scans and other intrusions on all of the smart devices in your homes like TVs, Amazon Alexas, thermostat, and any other smart home devices that doesn’t have a built-in firewall or virus protection to protect your network.

PROS:
Built-In Security Suite
Parental Controls
Easy To Us App
AMAZING Coverage
Small Footprint
Access point or Router Mode

CONS:
Phone In / Chat Tech Support
Heat Vents On Bottom Of Unit So They Get Warm
No Wall Mount Option
No Parental Controls or Content Control Setting On Guest Network
Limited Number of Device allowed to group to a single person

If you are looking for a mesh network that will give you full speed wired and wireless that is fairly easy to set up and isn't big and bulky I highly suggest buying these units. I have now purchased 2 more kits for family members for the upcoming holiday season.

My Old Fellow Keith experience Mesh Networking at a Reasonable Price!.

One month in, and we have been extremely pleased with this router so far. We have seen performance equivalent to what is stated in the specs. We bought the 3 pack, which was more than we needed for our 2 story townhouse, but the sale price was cheaper than buying the two pack. We are using only two at the moment, which is giving our home full, high speed coverage. Streaming video in multiple places at once has proven to be no issue. There are some corners of a couple of rooms where buffering used to happen with our old router, that no longer have any issues. It has also given us extended coverage outside for the patio and courtyard, more than 50 feet from the house. Speed tests show marked improvement outdoors, and the range is significantly enhanced.

The router itself is a disc shape with a 4.5 inch diameter, and is white in color. We have the second unit sitting on the fireplace mantel in our bedroom and easily blends in. It could also easily be covered. There is a single green led on the top of the unit, but the app does offer a Night Mode to turn off the light at night if it is not wanted, or you can choose to turn it off all the time. Each of the three disc are identical in size. The one you choose to attach to your modem becomes the “main” one.

When comparing this brand to others, look at the specs carefully. This is not the fastest mesh network available, but it has plenty of speed to match our service speed (300 Mbps). We have several IoT devices (Hue bulbs, Wemo switches, 3 Echos, HomePod) along with phones, tablets, computers, printer, TV/video streaming, security system, and video surveillance. The setup was very easy, and I’m happy with the app. If you have children, there are substantial parental controls available, including limiting amount of time of internet access, when access is available, blocking types of websites or specific sites (I wish I would have had these options when my kids were teens). There is no web setup for the router(s), so you do need some type of mobile device (I used iOS, so I can only speak to that version of the app). The app also offers settings for IPv6, address reservation, port forwarding, DDNS, and VLAN. The only other drawback I see is that there are only two networking ports on each disc. On the “main” disc, one will be used to connect to your modem. So if you need more than one item with a wired connection to the router, you will need a switch.

So far, I feel like the Deco system offers a great price/performance combination, as we got this for under $170 on sale. As of August 2018 there are several highly rated mesh networking options on the market at the moment. This one meets our needs and performance expectations at a wallet friendly price point. My recommendation is to know your needs, and pick a system that prioritizes them.

My Old Neighbor Benjamin experience No more dropped signal!!.

Oh man, I am so glad I pulled the trigger on these!! We just moved and had to change our ISP. We are paying for 100mbs but was constantly testing at 25. The bigger issue was the constant loss of signal. I purchased this mesh system uncertain of my results and I am simply beyond pleased. I only needed 2 units for my 2-story 1920 sq ft house: one in the basement, the other in the living room on the opposite side on the main floor. Now I am constantly testing between 90-105 mbps with no loss or dropped signal! setup was a cakewalk. Worth every penny!!

UPDATE 2/29/2020: As I’ve had more time with the deco, my love for the product has only grown 10-fold. I have had absolutely zero connectivity issues, and the user app is perfect for the average person! In the app you can rename all of your connected devices making it easier to identify them. You can also set certain devices to “priority” to maximize their bandwidth! It’s beyond simple creating a guest network, and the “alerts” when a new device first connects to your network is incredibly helpful! I can’t say enough good things about this product and experience thus far! Give it a go for sure!

My Old Chap John Talk Replace my Apple router.

I am so deeply entrenched in the Apple eco system. I hated to take down my Apple AirPort Extreme router, but I was tired of trying to get WiFi throughout my whole house because I couldn’t find a range extender that did the job, and I tried several. I swallowed my pride and replaced Apple with this TP-Link Deco, and am I ever glad! 20 minutes start to finish, three units on two floors. Easiest setup ever, and flawless. Max WiFi everywhere in house. Speed of WiFi exactly same as speed of modem. Great job, TP-Link!

My Buddy Ironladd say Garbage.

Easy to set up and install, but horrible WiFi that takes a while to manifest as a real issue. I have 5 Nest Cams and before buying these, I would get one Off-Line about once a month. With this awesome Mesh Wifi, I now get 3-5 reporting "off-line every single day and when I go into my nest cam history, for any of my cameras, I can see huge blank spaces throughout the day for every camera. The only think I changed was my wifi router. I don't have time to spend on the time with Tech Support. I just wanted an off the shelf solution that works and this was a complete waste of my time and effort and is NOT worth the money. I get complaints my my kids every day about our wifi now. One of the worst decisions of my life. As soon as I can find the time, I'll rip this out and replace it with anything, even tin cans and string would make me happier at this point.

My friend zman say Update after TP-Link updated the firmware...Now extremely pleased!.

My original review is below, but I was pleasantly shocked when I opened the app one day and there was an option to toggle each band on or off, plus other good additions. The tech on the phone had originally said it wasn't possible, but apparently they found a way and listened to their customers. SO, I'm going from 1 star to 5 because of this...and because they are flawless in their performance...I just can't say enough good about them. I've had them for several months now and I've never had one single issue. The app is great and I can add my 2.4ghz Iot devices quickly. Great product!

The coverage and performance of the system is outstanding, but unless you try to connect a 2.4ghz device far enough away from any deco AP (or router depending on your settings), the presence of the 5ghz signal will prevent you from connecting. I have several different devices that only run on 2.4ghz and the only way I've found to add them is to be far enough away from the M5 that only the 2.4ghz radio can connect (2.4 reaches farther than 5). With the same exact devices trying to connect, the ones farthest away connected right away. Only after I took the others farther out did they connect.

These broadcast both signals on 1 SSID, so there is no way to choose which radio you connect to, and there's no way to change it in the "cute" app they provide. I gave it 1 star instead of 5 because it's a basic thing to be able to choose which radio, on both ends. They're much cheaper than the competitors I guess for a reason.

Tried contacting Tech Support and it was a nightmare from the get-go. It's very disappointing that they haven't addressed this and all indications are that they won't.

My Old Man Daniel J said Stay Away If You Have More Than a Few Devices.

TL;DR - This system crashes routinely if you have too many devices connected

This system can't handle it's DHCP. Typically, you would think that a high end expensive router would have a fair number of advanced features and high end software, but for the Deco you'd be wrong. We have a number of IOT devices which routinely get IP conflicts, causing the entire network to shut down any network connectivity for 5-15 minutes. The only solution I found was to assign static addresses via the Address Reservation option in the Deco, but unfortunately that only allows up to 16 devices to have their address reserved. You might think this is enough, but with our household of IOT light switches, outlets, and especially all of these Alexa devices, that runs out QUICK. So eventually you have more devices than you have solutions, and there goes the neighborhood.

My friend 60+ married experience TP-Link Deco M5 are absolutely the best MESH NETWORK I have ever tried..

I have also tried Asus, Orbi, Google and Eero. I was never quite satisfied until I installed the TP-Link M5 Mesh with four nodes!! Wow what a difference.

My home is not huge , it's a 1.5 story with dormers, built in the 40's with the lath+plaster walls and Flag Stone exterior walls. passing a signal through the floors and a couple of walls was always problematic. Getting a Wi-Fi signal out to the front yard (Wi-Fi security cameras & a Ring Doorbell) or to back yard for entertaining or to the garage for watching OTA DVR on TV (12'foot from the house) was at best -70Dbm. I could only get -65Dbm at 5 foot away from the exterior wall.

Now I have four TP-Link M5 nodes. One in the middle of the house on the first floor, another on the second floor, another at the NW wall and another at the SE wall.

I am now getting signal between -32Dbm to -43Dbm everywhere in the house and amazing signals Outside. -46Dbm at 12 foot from the Front Wall and -47Dbm at 20 foot from the outside Rear wall. When I place another in the Garage (which is getting a-53Dbm Signal) I can expect to flood both the Garage and up to 40 feet out into the back yard by the pool.

TP-Link Deco are by far the best Mesh Wi-Fi around.
I have one node connected via ethernet backhaul, two others with Wi-Fi Backhaul and the fifth I expect to connect via an existing TP-Link powerline out to the Garage.

My friend DaviWilso experience So far so good!.

These mesh routers are amazing! I switched to these because my old Apple router was no supported by Apple and I'm glad I did! These mesh routers are so easy to set up and they work so seamlessly. I have an HDHomerun prime that streams my cable signal through the house and I was never able to get it to work on the wireless network since it used too much bandwidth. With these, there is absolutely no stutter in the playback and I can watch the TV signal anywhere in the house now.

I saw some older reviews where it said that some features like port forwarding weren't supported yet, but due to software updates that is no longer true. It seems as though TP-link cares enough to listen to concerns and actually fix these issues unlike my previous router.

The only thing that I was kind of disappointed about was the priority controls. It seems like if you set one computer as the priority, everything else drops to like 0.1Mbps. I was watching a show on Amazon on the prioritized computer and it was running fine, but when I went to IMDB something on my phone, It was taking forever; I have 100mbps internet so this shouldn't have been a problem. It seems like it just a little too aggressive with the prioritization. I liked the idea of the prioritization but I don't think it's executed very well so I just put it on the default standard mode.

My Old Chap Bozo experience Great Mesh Router.

This has been a great purchase. I was using Netgear Routers (R6700) in my home and business. I also had Netgear WiFi Extenders in use at both locations. When our business moved to a new location, I installed the Google WiFi system. After several months of use, I was impressed by the performance and simplicity of the mesh WiFi. I decided to purchase a mesh system for my home, and I found the TP Link Deco on Amazon at a considerably lower price than the Google WiFi.

The installation of the Deco was simple and very similar to the Google WiFi. The performance of my internet was vastly improved. The speed and the stability of the connections was increased. The surprising thing was that even devices connected by Ethernet cable were improved. I have a Verizon Samsung Network Extender connected by Ethernet, and the speed tripled with the Deco.

I like the control of the router by app much better than the traditional approach. Reserving IP address for devices and setting QoS for VOIP was a breeze. It is also much easier to monitor the network.

Range was improved. I have a two story home with numerous devices connected. The transition as you move around is seamless. The speed of the connection is also more consistent regardless of where you are in the home.

After using the mesh WiFi systems, i prefer them to traditional routers. Both the Google WiFi and the TP Link Deco have exceeded my expectations. Purchasing the TP Link at approximately $100 cheaper made it the better value, but you can't go wrong with either.