Archer C1200

I bought this for my senior mother who had an old D-Link router that cut in and out. At least we thought it was the router and not her cable as Cox insisted it wasn't on their end. This had great reviews and my mom didn't need a lot of fancy stuff or a wide range so I picked this one. I'm really glad I did. The set up was easy and my mom doesn't even have a decent new computer. She uses a PC tablet but I set it up using my iphone. There's this Tether app that makes it really easy. I used the same network name and password from her old router but it offers a 2G and 5G network. Not only that but you get a guest network too. I didn't expect that from a router this economical. The Tether app even allows me to make changes from my home that's a whole state away from my mom's router. I can see if she's having problems from one state away. The other good thing about this router are the lights on the front. They light up for different things. For example, we couldn't get online for a few moments and thought "Here we go again--is it the cable or the router?" We looked at the router and the little symbol that looks like a satellite dish and says "internet" was red not green so it was the cable. This light makes it clear when the cable cuts out which I love. But the problem of it cutting out all the time hasn't happened and it's been 3 weeks so it probably was the old router. My mom doesn't use video streaming services--just simple wifi for her kindle, tablet and a Samsung smartphone but with myself, wife, and 3 kids using kindles, iphones, and laptops, it worked great. So it worked well with both Mac and PCs. When my Apple Airport gives out one day (and Apple has said they aren't making any more) I will most likely get a TP-Link router--either this model or the step up from it.

Update as of 1.18.2018: Upon writing a review (1-star), I was contacted by TP-Link customer support with offer to resolve the issues outlined below. I ended-up creating an account on TP-Link technical support site and RMA this router to the company. The process was fast and easy. New router arrived with updated firmware. Old router put back in the box with pre-paid shipping label being already shipped to me with new router. The new router - NO ISSUES. FAST and FURIOUS just as it was intended. Across our 3,200 sq feet home steady speed of 100 mb/s, as supplied by our ISP. So, raising the review from 1-star to 5 due to company being proactive, fast at resolving issues and listening to voice of customers. I'm IMPRESSED!!! Original review: From super strong signal and reliable to ZERO reliability... Purchased in April 2017 and in less than eight months this router has become a headache. I work from home and being on 100 mb/s cable internet our journey with this TP-Link started well with strong 2.4 and 5G signals. VPN and a lot of web traffic - this router was pulling its weight quite well. About a month ago, the router restarted during one day 3 times on its own. Since then, it has never failed to restart every other day for no apparent reason. As I cannot afford dropped VPN or IM communication to wait until this router restarts - it has become completely unreliable. Contacted customer support via chat. The first thing they ask is to see what the requirements are on the power supply without asking if I am currently utilizing this connection or not. Without thinking - pulled the supply out to see what the numbers say and... internet is down with chat being disconnected. Contacted again via chat - staple questions if I am misusing this router, has it been dropped, etc. NO SOLUTION provided after 15 minutes of what it seemed this specialist chatting with others at the same time. Absolutely no focus on my conversation with delayed responses. I cannot recommend this TP-Link to anyone. Or this brand for that matter.

I stopped paying my ISP for their cable-modem and purchased my own equipment. This Wi-Fi Router really met my expectations in terms of coverage and reliability at a very good price. It is pretty easy to setup, it has worked OK so far to provide dual band signal in my 2 stories house with up to 6 devices connected at the time. Even the playback of Video services is good with no buffering at all. I highly recommend it for small to medium-size places. I'm removing 1 star just because the "TP-Link Tether" app is useless, it is not a big deal but only worked OK a few times and then just stopped connecting to the router. It is deleted from my phone now

UPDATE 2/7/17 - Still lovin' it. Just an exceptional, solid router that just plain works. Range is amazing, and it just delivers with a fairly complicated setup (again, I have Fire sticks, half a dozen tablets, multiple wireless desktops upstairs and downstairs, PlayStations, multiple IP cameras including one outdoors about 100 feet away from the router, you get the picture). THE ONE HANGUP I had was that it didn't have a dedicated WPS button; well, I was just flat out wrong. There IS a tiny WPS button on the backside right next to the base of an antenna next to the LAN ports. I'm used to seeing the button on the front of routers, and it is so small I just didn't see it on the back, and there was no mention in the basic documentation (but a helpful Amazon user found more info on the TP-Link website and let me know - thanks for that and thanks for reading my review!). ORIGINAL REVIEW: I recently gave Uverse the boot, and went back with Time Warner (now Spectrum). Uverse forced me to use their lousy router (replaced 5 times - don't even get me started - horrible couple of years). I also had a router that was about 5 years old (Cisco / Linksys), and so I figured I would be good to go. Well, performance of my IP cameras, laptops, and Amazon Fire Stick were not so great with my new setup. I figured it was Time Warner's fault, but decided to take a gamble and just flat-out replace my router. So I arrived on the TP-Link AC1200 due to the low price but high performance specs. And I have to say I am blown away with the performance. I have been running it for over a month, and not ONCE have I had a hiccup where I needed to reboot the router. I have now been able to easily do port forwarding for my IP cameras, and connect as many devices as I want, with zero issues. Even my Fire Stick now performs like a champ (almost zero hesitation, even running wirelessly in a bedroom about 50 feet from the router). The range is excellent, signal strength excellent, reliability excellent, and I'm thrilled. My ONLY complaint is that much to my surprise (and maybe because I still have a mindset and skillset more relevant to 2010?!?), there is not a dedicated WPS connection button. All of my IP cameras use WPS to connect, and so each time I had to open up a browser window, log into the router, and go to the advanced settings in the wireless screen to temporarily enable WPS. Not a show stopper because I rarely need this function, but it is a pain to have to go through those steps. Who knows, maybe that is a "security feature", but for me it is just a little extra trouble. Regardless, the incredible performance and stability of this unit has made it WELL WORTH the upgrade over my previous router which on paper still "should" have been good enough for my needs. Very highly recommended!

AC1200 review. Paired this with the TC-7610 modem. Fanciest router I've ever owned. Was about to purchase a combo modem/router for a new living arrangement, but really happy I did this instead. I could tell I wasn't getting good wireless speeds with previous combo units I had used. Love the design. Really sleek and modern looking without being too over the top. I'm getting great speeds out of the lower tier 10mbps service I have for the time being. I'll admit, on my LG G4, using the 5ghz band, I'm a little surprised that around one small corner and through one bedroom door, maybe 15 feet away in total, I still don't get a full signal indicator. Maybe it's something more to do with the G4, who knows. Seemed like the 5ghz connection would drop every so often too, but again, that's something I read about happening on the G4. And I don't have any other 5ghz stuff to test right now. 2ghz band is working great for all my other devices. Easy setup, convenient management software. I like that I can turn off the LED lights. My first time using TP-Link and I'm really pleased. For $20 more than the Netgear combo I was going to buy, I have a full modem and router and no more low wireless speeds. Love the design and look of this router. I'm in a small condo right now so I'm not sure how well it would broadcast in a house. Hopefully I'll get to test that soon. As long as these products don't die soon or anything, I'm a totally happy new TP-Link customer. They seem to have a longer warranty than most others anyway, so I don't anticipate any problems.

I take one-star Amazon reviews with a grain of salt, especially with something like wireless routers where there's a ton of factors that can go wrong (environment, user error, etc). I had a TP-Link router prior to this that had its WiFi die after about four years, but was otherwise solid. I have used some other TP-Link networking products with no issues, so I had no qualms trying out this router. The wireless range and speed of this router were vastly improved over my old one. Really impressive, I could pull down good speeds all over my house. The admin interface was fairly intuitive. Great. Wired performance has been solid, and remains so. A few weeks later I started getting some reliability problems with the WiFi. I tried lots of different settings tweaks - separated out the 5G with a different SSID which possibly helped, and I made sure the firmware was up-to-date. All the usual suspects. I go through with a SSID scanner to make sure I'm not trying to share the same channel as my neighbors. Everything seems okay. About 2-3 weeks later (after the return window), we start getting the problem that is described in pretty much EVERY 1-star review: The WiFi will show up to devices, but is impossible to wirelessly connect to the router. (E.g., your SSID will show up on your computer with four bars, but your computer can't connect to it) Rebooting the router fixes it (usually). Needless to say, I am less than impressed with a box I have to reset every other day to get it to work correctly. This problem is more and more frequent, and I decided to replace the router last week. This week I've finally started to see the other problem mentioned in the 1-star reviews: Reboots send me back to factory settings (including admin passwords and SSIDs) so now I have a router that needs to be rebooted all the time and that won't save my settings when I do. My theory is that it's a heat management issue, but I'm officially done fooling with the AC1200. I'm off to search for a replacement, wish me luck. ** see also all the 1-star reviews on the other Amazon AC1200 listing

In all fairness, I must disclose that I worked as a PC tech for many years, so my comfort level and knowledge is somewhat higher than that of the average user ... I've been using an Arris SURFBoard SB6141 cable modem with a Linksys wireless-g (10/100) router for a few years now. That setup has been rock-solid, but my cable company recently upgraded me to faster service at no additional charge. After a few months of feeling disappointed by the new speed (which was better but nowhere near what was promised) it dawned on me that the old router was limiting my speed. I don't use a router wirelessly, so I started looking into wired gigabit routers, but found them to be a bit pricey compared to wireless ones. As luck would have it, while I was doing my research, Amazon had a daily special, which offered this TP-Link AC1200 router for a great price, so I jumped on it. (I was also influenced by the generally-favorable reviews of TP-Link products.) I only received it yesterday, so my review is only about the initial setup. (I will update my review if I discover any quirks down the road.) The Quick Installation Guide that came with the router made setup quick and easy. Once unfolded, you are looking at a 2-sided sheet with a simple, hardware diagram on one side and software setup instructions on the other. Physically hooking up the necessary cables could not have been simpler, thanks to the very concise hardware diagram! I opted to access the setup via a web browser, which I have always found to be a very simple way of programming a router. Again, I do have a fair amount of experience with computers, so your mileage may vary, but I found the setup process to be very intuitive. Within a couple minutes, I had disabled the wireless networking and had my internet access up and running! With my old Linksys router, I needed to clone a PC's MAC address (a bit confusing for the average user.) This router auto-detected my hardware so no cloning was needed. (I also forwarded a port for use with BitTorrent, which was straight-forward as well.) Well, this router confirmed my suspicions about my old one! My download speed is now about three times what it was using the older router. Since I have disabled the wireless capabilities, I can't review them, so please keep that in mind before using my review to influence your purchasing decision!! If I'm reading the specs right, the router can also be used as a print server, something I look forward to trying once I've moved some hardware from one room to another.

I bought this dual band TP-Link AC1200 wifi router to replace an older non-dual band TP-Link router, and the difference of performance is impressive. With the old router my wireless was horrible, but last night I tested it on my iPhone 7 and I got 261 mb/s down and 33.7 mb/s up. Now I cant speak for long term durability yet since I just received it yesterday, but as far as performance and first impressions and ease of install, I would easily give it 5/5 stars. My old router although not near as strong of a performer as this new one, did last for years and still works. So hopefully this one being the same brand will last too. Im even thinking about buying another one of these to use on the other side of my home to boost my signal over on that end as well since they are such nice routers. I will try to update this review on durability later if I can, or if I run into any problems. If you are looking for a strong performing yet easy to install dual band wireless router for a decent price, this seems to be a great choice. Recommended. UPDATE Out of the two of these routers I bought, the first one went bad. I was having a bad time with my internet acting up, dropping me out of games, videos, etc. Had to have 2 cable techs come out, and we finally narrowed it down to one of these routers. The other router seems good still, but this first one I bought is bad. I called Amazon already and they are issuing me a refund. I think I just got a bad one, and will reorder a new one of the same model as they perform very well normally. I will update this again later if I run into any problems. Lowered down to 3 stars until I have a chance to test out the replacement router once I order it.