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The product I bought is the 2-pack, but TP-Link sells this mesh system a a 3-pack as well. Of course, the 3-pack will cost you a hefty $1,500 so I think most customers will go for the 2-pack package. The latter is not too cheap either and you will have to cough up $1,000 to get it, so the expectations from this product are quite high.
The BE85 brings some great technology features to the home network. First and foremost, WiFi 7. This wireless technology promises amazing network speeds to the range of over 10Gbps under ideal conditions. WiFi 7 is a very new wireless standard and there are very few client devices out there supporting it now. For this review, I did not have access to a WiFi 7 client, but I did have the next best thing in my possession: a WiFi 6E device, the latest MacBook Pro M2 Max. Later in this review I will talk about some of the tests I performed using WiFi 6E. The BE85 comes with three wireless bands: 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 6Ghz. The latter is the new kid on the block. The 6Ghz band offers higher speeds and reliability compared to the other two traditional bands and Deco BE85 makes good use of it. This band can be used either for connecting 6Ghz compatible clients (such as my Macbook Pro) or to connect the two mesh routers via a backhaul channel using the 6Ghz frequency exclusively to isolate their connection from noise and interference. It’s worth mentioning that you can use 6Ghz either for client connections or as a backhaul between the routers, but not at the same time. Speaking of backhaul connection, that can of course be established using a wired connection as well.
Another great feature that this router system brings along is the 10Gbps ethernet (RJ45/SFP+) ports. As a power user and having my own home lab, this is the feature I was mostly exited about. Each router offers two 10Gbps wired ports, one dedicated and one combo port. The combo port is a fantastic feature and fellow users that use fiber optics with SFP+ modules will appreciate this as much as I do. So, the combo port is actually two ports: an RJ45 and a SFP+ port sitting on top of the same bus. That means that you can use only one port at a time, but you do have the option to connect either an RJ45 cable or a fiber with an SFP+ module. I have opted for the latter since I connect the router to my optical 10Gbps switch. Very convenient. Note here that no SFP+ module is provided with the product, so you need to provide your own. Port connectivity doesn’t end with the two 10G ports. The routers have two more surprisingly fast RJ45 ports ranked at 2.5Gbps. This is great for those of you that have an internet service of over 1Gbps speed but don’t want to waste a 10Gbps router port for it. I have connected my 1Gbps internet modem to one of the 2.5Gbps router port and I still have plenty of ports for fast or faster connections. Excellent! Finally, TP-Link equipped this the routers with a USB 3.0 port for network sharing, making sure that the USB technology of these routers will be up to date for a while since it operates with the 3.0 standard.
Installation and setup of the routers is quite easy via the Deco smartphone application. Being a user of a Deco mesh system before, I already had the Deco app on my phone. All I had to do is plug in the routers and add a new network in the Deco app. The two new routers showed up very quickly and without any issues or delays. The router does provide a web interface that you can load on your internet browser but it’s mostly for viewing basic configuration. It’s been a pet peeve of mine that TP-Link doesn’t provide a full web GUI and I will repeat again my request to develop one. Their Deco app is great and offers multiple options but power users that configure their routers heavily will always prefer a web GUI that can be used on their computers.
My testing focused mostly on seeing how good the WiFi performance can be in daily, non optimal, conditions. Theoretical speeds are good and serve the purpose of validating that the product contains the technological standards that it claims, but I was more interested in seeing what I can expect in practical terms in a home office environment where isolation (walls), interference and wireless noise is inevitable. The Deco BE85 is connected, via the SFP+ port, to a TL-SX3008F JetStream 10Gbps fiber switch. My network storage server is also connected to this switch via a Mellanox CX-3 network card over 10Gbps fiber to ensure 10G network traffic speeds. To avoid disk read/write bottlenecks, I have two storage configurations on the storage server: small superfast storage using M2 SSD disks and a fast storage config using 4 SATA3 disks in a Raid0 configuration that provides maximum performance. My 10G client is my Mac Studio M1 Max, whilst my WiFi 6E client is my Macbook Pro M2 Ultra.
To calibrate the testing environment and make sure that there are no bottlenecks, I tested a file transfer over the Cat8 wired connection to my Mac Studio. As you can see in the attached image, I comfortably reached 10Gbps. Now it was time to test the wireless connection with my Macbook Pro.
There are two kinds of tests I performed to test the wireless connection: 1) sitting next to the router for maximum proximity, and 2) sitting in my home office, having walls, interference and noise that you would normally expect in the average office or home environment. You can see the results of my tests in the attached pictures with annotations on the pictures. Here are some of my takeaways:
1) Next to the router, using WiFi 6E (6 Gghz) I can see the highest speeds: 1.25Gbps. There is still potential noise since the router is still in the house, but the very close proximity of my Macbook Pro to the router is the best case scenario in testing this in a home environment. To put things in perspective, this is faster than your average Gigabit ethernet wired connection.
2) Sitting right next to the router, I also tried the 5Ghz band. The measured speed wasn’t bad but definitely lower than the 6Ghz band. It averaged around 1Gbps which is still great. This showcases that the Deco BE85 is a great router even for client devices that don’t use the latest WiFi standards.
3) On the other corner of the router room (it’s a big room with furniture and electronics) I maintained a 1Gbps throughput over 6Ghz WiFi.
4) On the first floor of the house (both Deco routers located on the second floor) the speed didn’t seem to be affected much. I still measured a healthy 1Gbps of throughput which is much more than what’s needed for typical living room/bedroom applications (movie streaming in 4K, YouTube, gaming or productivity).
5) Last but not least, my most common use case: sitting in my office where I work on a daily basis, with many active terminal sessions and file transfers. In between the test computer (MacBook Pro M2) and the router, there are walls, furniture and plenty of noise and interference from electronics, power wires inside the walls, mobile devices etc. I was expecting the speed to drop and that’s what happened, but it didn’t drop as much as I thought it would. I still got a good 400Mbps-700Mbps with most of it trending upwards to the 700Mbps level. That exceeded my expectations compared to my previous Deco setup.
Overall I think the BE85 WiFi performed great in my realistic, daily use cases. Sure, it didn’t reach the many Gigabits that the WiFi standard promises but one thing to keep in mind is that those measurements are theoretical maximums that can be achieved only in strictly controlled, completely noise-free and interference-free environments, with high quality fine tuned hardware and software. The every day user should not expect to see such speeds very often.
A couple of things regarding the other aspects of the BE85 before I conclude my review. 2.4G and 5G networks are grouped together, while the 6G network is separate. You can disable only the 6G network but not the 2.4G/5G group. You can create an IoT (Internet of Things) network dedicated to your smart home devices (smart switches, lights etc.), which is neat for network separation. One big thing is the Operation Mode: you can choose between Router or Access Point. The latter will turn the BE85 on WiFi access points only, if you’re using your own router. In my case, I’m using a router based on OpenWRT so I turned my BE85 into access points and it works great. As mentioned above, you can use the 6Ghz wireless channel as a backbone between the two routers. This will solidify the reliability and speed between the two routers but you will loose the ability to connect your 6Ghz compatible clients. The only way to have 6Ghz for clients, while having super fast backbone connection between the two routers, is to use a wired backbone (preferably 10Gbps). Guest network is now a given and it can be enabled/managed very easily via the Deco app. The BE85 can support over 100 clients, something that very few users will ever need. I can confirm that it works well with the 55-60 clients that I currently have at home.
Since no product is perfect, including this great mesh router system, there are a couple of quirks that I need to mention. The first one that bothers me with all TP-Link Deco routers is the fact that the web interface is very basic with not many configurable options. The only way to configure the routers is via the smartphone Deco app, which is great but not suitable for power users (imagine doing large scale access control with client MAC devices via the smartphone app/screen). I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: TP-Link needs to cater to power users, especially for a $1,000 product.
The second quirk I’ll talk about is client WiFi compatibility: for some reason the hub of my home security system doesn’t like the BE85 and most of the times can’t connect to the WiFi. I am not sure why but I suspect it’s hardware related since the same hub was connecting fine with my previous Deco system. Other than that, I have no real complaints about the BE85.
Overall the Deco BE85 this is a great mesh router system that will satisfy most, if not all, needs of the home user. It offers plenty of technology, performance and features. It is not a cheap router system but it does track well with the pricing of competing WiFi7 routers out there (Netgear Orbi, Linksys Velop). If you are in the market for a solid, WiFi7 and 10Gbps capable router system, you should definitely consider the Deco BE85.
