TP-Link Archer BE900 Quad-Band WiFi 7 Router

I recently upgraded to a 1Gbps connection and my old router was proving to be a bottleneck, so it was time to upgrade. Granted this router is probably overkill for most people’s home networks, it is certainly so for mine, but this router is about as futureproof as you can get right now, so splurge it was — it should be able to handle any updates to my network over the next few years that I can think of, and WiFi 8 isn’t due until at least 2028…

When the router arrived I was amazed at the size of the box it came in, the box was BIG! The router itself is about the size of a full-sized hardcover Webster’s dictionary and is designed to sit vertically on the shelf or other surface it is sitting on. One thing: it runs pretty warm, so I would suggest that you provide plenty of ventilation around it. I would not stack it on a bookshelf surrounded by books as you might be tempted to do. Mine sits on the top shelf of a record cabinet surrounded by free air space. Since it is only about 4 inches wide it did free up quite a bit of space over the older, festooned with antennas, style of router I had. A quick note about the fancy displays. Initially I set up the LED dot matrix to display the current temperature, but it was clear that the display was just going to be distracting so I quickly turned it off. The touchscreen display on the other hand is useful. You can swipe through four different displays CPU and memory usage, network throughput and number of clients, time, and weather forecast. When you tap on the WiFi icon you are presented with virtual buttons that allow you to turn the Guest Network on or off, activate WPS if you are using WPA2 or lower network encryption, or turn WiFi on or off. When you turn the Guest Network on a QR code is displayed, which allows guests to connect to the network easily by scanning it with their phone camera — pretty cool.

Set up was as simpler than the last TP-Link router I set up. I turned the radios off, plugged it in via ethernet to my laptop and set the SSID and password and configured a few other parameters. I then unplugged the old router and replaced it with the BE900. Once I had it plugged in, I needed to set up a few address reservations which proved to be much easier as the new UI has a button which, when pressed, pops up a dialog box which contains the MAC address of the selected device — all you have to do is enter the IP address you want to assign to it. Nice touch. Although while setting up the SSID it appeared as though band steering, “Smart Connect” in TP-Link lingo, does not appear to be supported, setting the 6Ghz radio SSID to the same as that for the other 3 radios worked great, my phone connects to the 6Ghz radio w/o problems and my other devices all connect to the 5Ghz or 2.4Ghz bands as required. Setting up link aggregation for my NAS was straightforward and TP-Link now supports LACP so the router and NAS play nice together in the link aggregation scenario.

Once set up, it was time to have some fun. Since my phone is the only device to support the 6Ghz radio, I gave that a try first. The old WiFi 6 router I had the phone would max out at about 750Mbps, now it ran around 950Mps, the same as the all wired connection from the NAS. Impressive. The laptop in the same room now ran at about 850Mbps down and 950Mbps up, with the old router it was around 650Mbps both ways. Desktop in the office about 30 feet away and through a couple of walls runs around 700Mbps down and 625Mbps up. Overall, the BE900 provides a nice bump in performance from both a WiFi 7 device (my phone) and WiFi 6 devices (the two computers). I have about 20 clients all told in my apartment which consist of a bunch of A/V equipment (mostly wired, all of which only support 100Mps link speeds), a TV and streaming audio player in my bedroom, a printer and a bunch of smart home devices. All perform well, and even Alexa seems to respond more quickly with the faster uplink.

Overall, this is a great, I would say little, but it’s not, router. It is easier to set up than past TP-Link routers, has more useful features in the management UI and has a nice UI associated with the touchscreen display. The performance is blazing fast and it is barely even stressed by the workload that I put on it, although I plan to move backup tasks to the cloud as soon as I get my act together. The BE900 is expensive, but being at the bleeding edge can be costly. You can get performance which is almost as good, although some features are missing, from the BE550, but for the baddest router in town this is a real contender.

This is a very fast, easy to setup router. Can be set up with a cellphone app. However, for true versatility you should use your PC. I don’t use the default IP scheme (192.168..) I think doing so in any router is a potential security issues. There is one thing I did not like,the touch screen. Not a true touch screeen, its just a swipe screen between 4 display pages. Poorly responsive. Three pages are somewhat relevent, data throughput number page, ping page, and CPU, Memory usage. In my setup I used the 2.5gps port on my XB8 cable modem to feed into the 10gps Ethernet input of the BE24000. Which I use the one 10gps output to feed my 2.5gps swith with a SFP+ port with a 10gps more module via heavy Cat 8 cable. 2331mps downloads and 330 mps uploads ( which is more a function of the modem ). A 2.5gps port from the switch feeds into my PC’s 10gps Ethernet port. An expensive router, but at a reasonable sale price if you consider its performance.