TP-Link AC1750 Smart WiFi Router (Archer A7) -Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Internet Router for Home

Archer a7/ax21 2.4g speed for iphone 11 from 300m verizon fios

5* review for successfully resolved my low 2.4g speed problem, excellent support from tp link and fast 5g speed that exceeds verizon fios max speed of 300mbps.

The purpose of this review is to compare the 2.4g and 5g speeds of the tp link archer a7(ac1700) wifi 5 router and ax21(ax1800) wifi 6 router using an iphone 11 which supports wifi 6. The highest speed i can test is 300mbps limited by my verizon internet plan. Measurement results using show that using the wifi 5 router, the 2.4g speed is 60m/80m (ul/dl) and the 5g speed is 307m/330m, whereas using the wifi 6 router, the 2.4g speed is 110m/120m and the 5g speed is about same.

Newer routers’ real life 5g speed is very high and normally is not a problem, but real life 2.4g speed could be slow. It is not entirely sure which part of the wireless link is limiting the 2.4g speed. Below examines the speed limit of the wifi standards involved, the router and iphone 11. The routers are tp link’s archer a7(ac1700) and ax21(ax1800). Measured speeds at 2.4g and 5g will also be given.

Router (tp link) specs and supported wifi standards
1) archer a7(ac1700) has has 3 antennas is a wifi 5 router
2.4g : 450mbps
5g: 1300m bps
supported standards: ax21(ax1800) : 802.11ac(wi-fi 5), 802.11b, 802.11ax(wi-fi 6), 802.11n(wi-fi 4), 802.11g

802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax are also called wi-fi 4, wifi 5 and wifi 6 respectively.

2) ax21(ax1800) has 4 antennas is a wifi 6 router
2.4g: 574m bps
5g: 1200m bps.
Supported standards: ax7 (ac1700) 802.11b, 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11ac

a7 (ax1800) is a low cost ($60) popular (listed as “amazon choice”) wifi 5 router which supports 802.11 ac whereas ax 21 is a low cost ($90) wifi 6 router which supports 802.11 ax. Wifi 6 (max speed 9.6g) not only has higher speed than wifi 5 (max speed 3.5g) but also can support more devices using orthogonal frequency division multiple access. The main differences are given in picture 1.
(picture 1 from : https://www.mwrf.com/technologies/systems/article/21849959/whats-the-difference-between-wifi-5-and-wifi-6)

comparing the specs of these two routers, one has a higher 2.4g speed while the other has a higher 5g speed. But in real life, according to my measurements, at 2.4g, the wifi 6 router has almost twice the speed than the wifi 5 router. I don’t have a high enough wireless speed plan to test the 5g speed. In my house both routers have the same speed of 310m, limited by the max speed allowed by verizon fios 300m.

Speeds specified by the wifi standards are speeds the router manufacturers trying to meet and they are not the limit, but speeds advertised by the router are the speeds that customers want the router to be able to reach. They become upset if they are unable to get the speeds advertised by the router.

Routers often do not specified under what link conditions these seemingly advertised high speeds could be realized. For example what is the required bandwidth, the number of antennas (the so called mimo) and how pure the signal has to be (the signal to noise ratio). Is the bandwidth 20, 40, 80 or 160m? Is the signal to noise ratio has to be greater than 10db?

In real life, link speed depends on how far from the router (the signal strength) and radio interference which falls in band (the signal to noise ratio). The former can be solved by doing the speed test right next to the router, where the transmit signal from the router is at maximum. But for the latter, unless one has a so called faraday cage, there is no way to block in-band interference especially at 2.4g, which are used by microwave ovens, bluetooth and many household devices. Interference is hard to quantify without using a spectrum analyzer and could become an excuse if one calls the router support line complaining low speed.

Another limit is the device itself, and in this case iphone 11. It’s specs are given below.

Wi-fi specifications for iphone 11
802.11 standard, name, frequency maximum phy data rate maximum channel bandwidth maximum mcs index maximum spatial streams
ax@5 ghz 1200 mbps 80 mhz 11 (he) 2/mimo
ac@5 ghz 866 mbps 80 mhz 9 (vht) 2/mimo
a/n@5 ghz 300 mbps 40 mhz 7 (ht) 2/mimo
ax@2.4 ghz 195 mbps 20 mhz 9 (he) 2/mimo
b/g/n@2.4 ghz 144 mbps 20 mhz 7 (ht) 2/mimo
(from: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/iphone-wi-fi-specification-details-dep268652e6c/web)

https://mcsindex.com gives more details about how the speed on each band is affected by modulation scheme, number of antennas, bandwidth and wifi standards used, not only for iphones but for routers as well.

From the iphone 11 specs, only “n” and “ax” support 2.4ghz if we ignore the older standards “b” and “g”. At 2.4g, the maximum speeds for “n” is 144m whereas for “ax” is 195m. The max bandwidth for both is 20mhz which needs to be set in the router. Setting the bandwidth to 40mhz could lower the speed as the noise power will be doubled.

However, at 5ghz the speed for ac (wifi 5) is 866m with 80m max bandwidth whereas for ax (wifi 6) is 1200m also with 80m max bandwidth. These bandwidths should also be specified in the router. Setting the bandwidth too high or too low could lower the speed.

From the iphone 11 max speeds, it is clear that the wireless link’s speed is not limited by both the a7 and ax21 routers and the standards, but by the iphone 11 at 2.4g and by verizon fios at 5g.

I have verizon fios 300m download and upload. Initially, i used an a7, thinking that at 2.4ghz, the router speed is 450m which is higher than iphone’s 144m(“n”) and 195m(“ax), surely shouldn’t be a problem. But speed test showed that i got only 60m download and 80m upload from the best channel and 20m bandwidth (i tested all the channels and bandwidth combinations).

60m is too slow for me because i have several devices (such as security cameras) using 2.4g. So i called tp link support line to see what i had done wrong. Most customer supports didn’t know what the problem was the and finally i was connected to a high level support. She said that in real life, i had to multiply the speed by 30-50% and guided me through the various specs of the wireless link. I don’t know where the 30-50% comes from, perhaps it was her empirical experience. If i use the average of 40% and assume that applies to the lower speed of the router and the iphone, which is 144mhz. 40%x144m is 57m. This was about what i got at 2.4g using the a7 router.

But she also said something about wifi 6 router and got me thinking perhaps a wifi 6 router could improve the speed. (i must say that i got excellent support from tp link, i had gotten calls twice from the specialist unsolicited and many followup emails. All trying to help me solve the low speed problem.)

i then change the a7(ac1700) to an ax21(ax1800), which does support wifi 6 “ax”.

The main advantage of using ax21 is that it raised the iphone 11 max speed at 2.4g from 144m to 195m, a gain of 51m. And as a result, in real life, the 2.4g link speed seemed to have increased by about the same amount. Speed test showed that at 2.4g, i now got ~90-110m(download, previously 60m when using a7) and 100-120m(upload) with the channel and bandwidth set on auto. Though the download speed is still less than 195m, the link speed has increased by changing to a router that supports ax and has 4 antennas. Have no idea if a more expensive router will further increase the 2.4g speed.

However, at 5ghz, both routers give 307m download and 330m upload, limited by verizon fios max speed of 300m.

When doing speed test, i shut off all 2.4g emitters. I live in a rural area and i suspect there is little interference.

A7 has 3 antennas whereas ax21 has four. Is the speed improvement at 2.4g due to the additional antenna or the support of wifi 6 or both?

I have a pretty extensive home network at my house. In the past i’ve used predominantly cisco/linksys or netgear devices. Lately however, i have stop using linksys devices because their reliability is not what it used to be. This router is replacing a two year old linksys router. Routers utilize solid-state circuitry and shouldn’t be failing as often as they do.

Netgear router‘s seem to be reliable although my reason for not using netgear is due to their awful firmware. I had a pair of netgear nighthawk router’s set up in my house. Those routers were purchased because they supported opendns which allows you to have very reliable and easy to configure content filtering for children and for advertisements. Despite the fact that the router is advertised as supporting opendns, netgear pushed out an update which rendered opendns unusable. Netgear partnered with disney and are forcing you to use the absolutely awful and practically useless disney circle content filtering for children. Not only does it not work and ends up filtering just about everything, rendering the computer useless, but there’s no way to turn it off and return to using opendns.

I called tech-support about it and not only did they not even understand the terminology that i was using while discussing the problems with the router, but they were truly slow and stupid. For a simple question, it would take them five minutes to look up an answer when anybody with a grade c in high school computer science should be able to answer those questions.

They were idiots and i was stuck with a router that i purchased for a specific advertised function which they removed less than two months after i purchased the hundred dollar router brand new. That’s pretty pathetic and i won’t support netgear any longer due to their unfair business practices. On the front and rear of my house, i employ two tp-link wnr841n routers. They were only $20 when i bought them about five years ago. These two routers cover my front yard and my backyard for when i have guests over or am doing yard work.

These inexpensive routers have been running for all of this time, protected only by old candy boxes which i painted and sealed for exterior use. That being said, these two tp-link router‘s have been outside in the weather at temperatures as high as 103 in the summer and as low as 15° below zero. They have never failed once. I never have to reboot them [although the firmware has an option to schedule automatic reboots which i do once per week to refresh dns and netbios entries], i never have to do any updates on them, and so far i’ve never had to replace them.

Over the last six or seven years i have been purchasing almost nothing but tp-link router‘s for people that ask me to help them with their network or computers. I have never gotten any complaints from anybody about their router, and the oldest one that i bought is about seven years old and it still works, although i’m not using it anymore because my two main routers need to support 802.11 ac. This is the second router of this model which i purchased. The first one was purchased for a friend of mine who had problems at his house with a d-link router that stopped working after just over a year. That was about a year ago so far and he’s never called about it. No news is good news; i assure you.

I bought this to replace my netgear nighthawk which i mentioned earlier. I installed it about two weeks ago and so far have not had a single issue with it. The interface is very fast and the wifi signal is very reliable. The way they laid out the gui is nice but the menu on the left has a pretty big flaw.

The menu on the left employs a collapsible menu design which extends past the bottom of the screen if you open any of the menus, rendering the other options impossible to see or interact with. There is a scroll bar for you to use but the scroll bar is tiny and automatically disappears into the background so you don’t even know there’s a scroll bar there. Tp-link should re-think the menu design. I would also like to see them allow you to save changes per page without restarting the router. I experienced some minor inconvenience while setting up my router because on a couple of occasions i wanted to make multiple changes to the settings before rebooting the router and enabling those changes, however the router doesn’t provide a method for you to save changes without rebooting right away.

Despite the couple of firmware design mistakes, i am quite satisfied with this router and would definitely buy again. It’s undoubtedly going to be an even better (damn near perfect, probably) certainly be more satisfied after i install open wrt on it. I will continue to be a tp link customer for as long as they keep their prices low and quality at or above where it is now.

I am a very senior citizen with limited computer experience. I had a 10 year old archer c7 router that i wanted to replace with a new c7. I had a problem understanding the installation video so i contacted customer service to try to understand if there was a problem. I did a chat with customer service and then they sent me an e mail. I had further questions and my e mails were answered within hours. I did not exactly get an answer to my question, but that may be because i didn’t know enough terminology to frame it correctly. I was trying to find out what they meant in the instructions that said do not connect router to modem if there is another network on modem. My internet provider refers to the setting where i connect to the internet as a part of their network. So i was trying to find out if that connection to the modem was something i should worry about.
I finally got an e mail saying that i should make sure that no other devices were connected to the modem. It took a while, but they kept trying. I was able to set up the router and used the quick setup guide at the
tplink web site. One problem i had was that the instructions and the web site did not really stress enough the need to go to the network setting of your internet provider, and connect to the internet there. ;
on windows eleven the network settings are hidden, and when you click on the internet connection icon on the lower right hand part of the screen you don’t see the various settings. By settings i mean the place where you enter your router password and connect to your internet service provider. In earlier windows the setting appeared when you clicked on the internet icon. Now you have to hit a > icon on the menu to find the internet connections. The internet connection for the c7 is tp-link_90c2. Once you connect there you have a seciure internet connection. My problem was that after i ran the quick install i got a message you can now use the internet, and i was connected to the internet. However it was not a stable connection, and i lost it twice before i figured out that i needed to go to the windows 11 icon and then to my internet providers connection to get a stable connection.
I rate customer service very high for quickness of response and patience with new user in trying to help me understand the product. I rate the instructions as not so great. I rate my ability to read the instructions as poor. Maybe they pointed out the need for the internet connection on windows 11, but it wasn’t in big enough print or underlined enough for me to get it.
The product is also very good once i got it set up. I am getting more speed than my internet provider says it is providing me. Maybe some of my neighbors mgh is coming into my apartment. I am still getting a slight bit of buffering in loading some web sites, but i don’t think this is a router problem. I don’t know because i cant use wifi analyzer with my c7. There is no way to pick your channels, you have to hope that the c7 does it correctly. Customer service patiently explained to me that i should relax, big brother router was going to solve it. Maybe so, but i still get some buffering. However it is just on a few sites, and for a few seconds so i can live with it. Overall, i give the whole experience five stars, but the interface was a little confusing or maybe it was the instructions i should give four stars.

My wifi router went out after 8 years of use. I came across this one in the shopping list and felt i would give it a try. I’m not a real technical person to begin with. It arrived on schedule, and gave detailed instructions for hook up. I have used it for over a month and have always received great signal from it. Normally with my 3 grandkids here it’s streaming multiple devices at a time as in tv’s, laptops,ipads, phones, and even some of the neighbors devices when they needed with no problem keeping up. It was fairly easy to set up and understand. Again i’m not a technical person and the only thing i didn’t understand is the duel connections and how they work and how to use it.

I have three routers all of them very near the top of their line in their brand. This the one that is currently active and has been such for some time. While none of them are bad, this is just the best. As a matter of fact, i bought one of these for my son last christmas. Neither of us have had any problems related to the router. It is also the easiest one to make adjustments to if you want or need any changes. It is also a fantastic means of keeping track of what is on you network, without using any other device or software.

Ok i was upgrading because my kids love to game together. I legit don’t know what i’m doing. I don’t know what’s fast, but i read others reviews and decided to give it a try. Figured end result would tell if it was faster or not and my kids would tell me. It had you download an app, also super easy. Set up the account. Follow the instructions for set up, which is just the series in which you plug things in and turn on. Not kidding if i did it you can. We got everything set up the new wifi named and connected all the computers etc. And let me tell you. It is fast. A large game, destiny, usually takes 11 hours with our old router to upgrade-download-update-whatever it does *kids told me* and it took about 40 minutes. And today they have a nice pc and 2 xboxes running off of it plus 2 laptops and all our phones. No problem. Oh my house is like 1400 sq ft. Don’t know of that matters for wifi signal. But just get it! Oh and you can do things on the app to connect alexa n some other things i don’t understand but am told are cool haha!

Had another router for about 10 years and was having issues. My internet provider sent a service tech here to install a phone and i mentioned to him the issues with the internet, his suggestion was to purchase a new router. I didn’t want to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a new router so he suggested this tp-link which i purchased, it fixed my issues and increased my in-home speed by three times. The router is located in the lower level family room, with the roku tv’s and computer upstairs, never a problem running all at the same time.

We were in the market to replace an older netgear router. We were having to restart the old router every few days. Our home is nearly 4,800 square feet so we were unsure if this router would cover our needs. Also, my husband was dreading switching over to a new router as things normally don’t go as smoothly as one hopes. That said, this router is the bomb.com. It seems to be giving us faster speeds, covers our smart devices with ease and was an easy set up as i didn’t hear any cursing from the other room during set up. Lol

if you are in the market for a new router, you can’t go wrong with this one. It’s only been a couple weeks but so far, so good.

I strongly recommend this router with a strong wifi signal and simple setup online. Just remember when using both ethernet and wifi on a single modem’s ip address to avoid ip address conflict by connecting the router to the modem by ethernet cable and then use another ethernet cable to connect the router to the computer. My router is 35′ from my modem but with the latest flat insulated cat.8 cables there is zero speed penalty for doubling back. (the cables came from the jadoal store on amazon.(https://www.amazon.com/dp/b08f5dcrxn?psc=1)

I’ve been using my modem for a long time, and spectrum recently sent out new ones that they are requiring you to upgrade or ‘service will be interrupted’. So, i set up the new modem and my tp-link router was not giving my devices wifi anymore. Extremely frustrating. I called the tp-link support and irish patiently walked me through all of the steps and helped me re-connect. Now everything is back up and running smoothly. No thanks to spectrum, but huge thanks to irish at tp-link tech support!

I have been using this archer-7 router during the last three years….did a lot of web surfing, tv watching through this router ever since covid shutdown. It was fairly easy to set up. However, recently i wanted to reset the wi-fi password, but i could not remember the original password, so i dialed customer service, the agent was friendly and proficient….she stepped me through the process, i was able to reset the password with a pleasant experience. I will recommend tplink products because the products are reliable, and customer service is great! .

I bought this in 2020 while on spectrum 200 mb/s down and 10 mb/s up. It worked like a charm just that i only wished i’d get more coverage but that could be solved with an extender or going the moca route which i did and was still good.

Come around to august of 2022, i got 1gig fiber installed by tds and was still using this router and noticed a big bottleneck through the ethernet ports (limited to around 360 down/up). I thought i was going to get 1 gig through because of the ethernet ports being able to support 1 gig but even though it may be able to support 1 gig on the ethernet ports it does not have the capability to output close to 1 gig. Therefore i just turned it into an access point for upstairs to get more coverage and bought a new router that was able to output almost 1 gig via ethernet.

Overall it ran its course and i would say that it did its job, just kind of wished that there was more information bolded/highlighted of what it could output.

Tp-link has good customer service, but prepare for a long wait to get connected, a rep that does not speak very good english, and conflicting information between reps if you call back with another issue. I decided my ethernet extender was not doing much to improve my wireless equipment, and heard about deco mesh pods, which do a better job of extending wireless speed around your house. I read the write up on these “pods” and it didn’t explain that it is actually a router, which will give you a knew ip address. If you have a router and continue to use it, the setup can cause conflicting ip addresses if not done right. The tp-link reps are not trained to handle this issue the same. All my equipment, router, deco mesh pods, and now added a switch box to resolve the issue are made by tp-link.

Tp-link ac1750 smart wifi router (archer a7)
i was reluctant to replace my 15 yr old linksys router, but it finally stopped working. I really didn’t care that my internet speeds were slowed down by the old router. It didn’t drop the internet often, when it did, i just unplugged it and plugged it back in & was almost instantly back online. Plus the geek squad set it up for me. During the 15 yrs, i unsuccessfully tried to setup another router & was intimidated by the experience. This time i had no choice.

My experience setting up the archer a7 was not a good one…however, a couple weeks later after much frustration, i realized all the problems i experienced were user errors.

What i did that i shouldn’t have done:
–my first mistake was using the 15 yr old ethernet cable. I figured it worked for the linksys it should be good. After a week of the most unstable, frustrating wireless experience ever…it sometimes dropped every few minutes, i finally decided to try a new ethernet cable. I didn’t use the short one that came with the archer, i had a long one that i could attach to my laptop. In case the wireless was still dropping, i wanted to wire my laptop to the modem. Well, the new ethernet cable made a difference for about 24 hours, then wireless started dropping again. Boy, was i upset and frustrated!!! Plus, my hp laserjet pro wouldn’t print wirelessly. Geesh…was i upset.
–my 2nd mistake was using the 15 yr old adapter. All the old cables, and cords on the modem and old router were/are short. It was difficult to even pick the modem up to attach/detach anything which is why i used the old adapter which was plugged into an extremely hard to reach outlet. After another week of absolutely, insane frustration and hours of research, i finally used the adapter that came with the archer…and yes the cord is even shorter than the old adapter cord, but finally wireless stopped dropping and actually hasn’t dropped since.
The only remaining problem was getting my hp laserjet to print wirelessly.

—lesson learned…when it’s suggested to use new cables, etc. I need to follow that advice. I was so ready to rent a router from our cable company, spectrum, but kept putting off calling them.

—-today, i finally got the laserjet to print wirelessly. At the beginning of this mess (that i pretty much created myself) i had to reinstall the printer driver which i did during the time the wireless kept dropping. I didn’t & still don’t have time to spend researching all the errors i was experiencing, but finally realized i needed to reinstall the printer driver again. This time the instructions i followed were a bit different and a few steps had different results which made more sense. The 2nd reinstall solved the problem. My laserjet is finally printing wirelessly again.

Actually i don’t have a lot of experience with all this stuff, but have spent time through my years of using computers that i kind of learned my way around. I used the internet extensively to search for answers and understand terms that were new to me.

Because i have so many wireless devices setup, i didn’t want to have to set them up again so i used my old network name and password.
With the new archer a7, i am finally getting the internet speed i’ve been paying for and so far, haven’t had a drop since i used a new ethernet cable and the included adapter.

A wifi router should be easy to set-up, and then invisible. There’s a one-button set-up for those who want that. I prefer to configure mine manually, and ran into no problems. The user interface isn’t the best i’ve seen, but was easy to adjust to, and i had no trouble doing what needed to be done.

Since then, the router has been invisible, doing its job silently and smoothly. Wifi coverage is noticeably better than with the several-year-old linksys i replaced.

Easy set up for a basic non gaming situation. Two tv’s a laptop ..smartphone and guests. I did have to reenter password day after set up….i don’t know why? Replaced an older netgear 25 which was obviously starting to have issues with connectivity that i paid double for what i spent on this router. I live in a large apartment complex and from what i understand are notorious for poor connections. I would have given 5 stars if i hadn’t had to reenter password again. For the price its a good deal, lets just see if i can get a decent lifespan out of it.

Bought this to compensate for failings in my new fiber optic receiver. The receiver (modem/router) was too new to talk to legacy devices that don’t support ipv6 (ring doorbell, older laptop, older printer, etc).
This works very well and as intended. Only negative, i could not connect with the app, had to plug in directly with a laptop to get it configured. But very happy with actual performance and uptime.

Strong signal and relatively easy setup are strong points. To go beyond the basics, there is an app to help in configuration. Still, this one and it’s predecessor has a problem with locking up and having to be restarted.

This product is okay. It boosts your wifi a little bit, it extends it pretty decently, but for some reason the 5ghz feature turns off and on when it wants to. The ui is very good on the other hand and very user friendly. The tech support is also great. This product is alright. I would only buy it if you have the extra money. Im only giving 4 stars because the ui and tech support are awesome.

I bought this for the range and coverage as well as the vpn functionality. I wanted to make it to where any device connected to the network had the vpn function automatically. Unfortunately i have a subscription to cyberghost vpn and wasn’t able to set it up with the stock firmware and didn’t want to use the openvpn. So i flashed the router with dd-wrt firmware. I was able to set up the vpn function so every device connected to the network automatically had the vpn but there was a severe downside i was not aware of. Normally my download speed is 80 mbit/ps and upload is 15mbit/ps. With the vpn function enable it restricts the download speed to what your upload speed capablity is due to how vpns function. It hides the ip address by sending packets of data in and out simultainteously and therefor can on recieve data as fast as it can upload data. Most routers just doesn’t have the processing power that a regular laptop computer has. If you want a router for whole home vpn you need to shell out serious money in the range of $300-$500. My connection handles multiple streaming tvs, multiple kids cell phones, with no issue at all normally. With vpn function enabled it can’t handle 2 devices. Not all is lost tho, i have it wired with an ethernet cable to my isp modem, i shut off radio broadcasting for my modem and am using the tp-link as a gateway. So all devices connect to it. Its about 6-8 mbits/ps second faster than my isp modem and the range is better also. I have a brick wall that not even a 2.4g singal would go through and with this tp-link the signal goes through the brick wall just fine with no issues. In i will buy another router with better processing power in the future and flash to dd-wrt so i can use this router as a range extender. We live in an apartment but wife and i are getting ready to buy a house.