Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsOK Range/ Speed. Glaring Issues with OneMesh, Smart Connect, and Tech Support. Bad for smart homes.
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2021
I have a TP-Link Archer AX90 (6600) which is overall a pretty good router- with the exception of what we'll talk about is terrible with this extender. My Office, hence my router, sits on one side of our house and we get limited signal in our garage and driveway area (which is not necessarily on the router as there are several walls and some stone it has to pass through). I've tried other Mesh extenders to no avail (Most extenders change smart device's MAC addresses which disables automations which rely on those MAC addresses or it shows as 2 devices) but thought I'd give this one a try since OneMesh is made for the AX90.
Set up was very easy and within 5 minutes I had the RE500X connected to my router, OneMesh on, and I had all blue lights. I checked my signal in my garage to find that my signal was still still pretty poor. I logged into the extender via its IP address to find no devices were automatically connecting to the extender as was advertised. I worked through every menu in both the router and extender's firmware to attempt to troubleshoot, and defeatedly, I contacted TP-Link tech support via online chat. It did not take long to discover that the tech support agent had absolutely no idea how any of this tech worked and was either reading very basic information from manuals/ the website or trying to talk to someone who knew more. Eventually, she said I'm going to check on something, never came back, and the chat timed out.
So TP-Link Routers have a feature called "Smart Connect" that attempts to automatically balance connected devices across the bands. TP-Link claims "Smart Connect" chooses the most optimal band. However, as I, and a lot of people on forums can tell you, it very consistently does not. My Wifi 6 devices connect to 5Ghz Band 1, which means they connect at 1201Mbps instead of the higher speeds they are designed to run at, and several of my 5 Ghz devices connect to the 2.4Ghz band. There is also no way to override this band selection and, with "Smart Connect" on, you are at the mercy of whatever it decides. To mitigate this, I turned off "Smart Connect" and manually configured the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz band 1 to use the same SSID and created a separate SSID for 5Ghz band 2 for wifi 6 and 5Ghz devices which were connecting to the 2.4 Ghz band. This worked well UNTIL I BOUGHT THE RE500X RANGE EXTENDER.
After going through every menu and speaking with TP-Link's Non-Tech Support, I reluctantly turned "Smart Connect" back on as I suspected this is why nothing was connecting to the extender. Devices immediately started popping up on the extender and I had strong signals in my garage. I wrote a review of my experience under the AX90 to which I received an email from a Tech Support supervisor who apologized for their agent and confirmed that "Smart Connect" must be enabled in order for OneMesh to work. Reluctantly, I decided to run the extender with "Smart Connect" on and sacrifice the speed for the range so my wife could use WIFI in the front of the house. We've ran it this way for about a week or so and I've started to notice little quirks in my network and smart devices. I've come to the conclusions, once again, it is being caused by TP-Link's Smart Connect/OneMesh. Smart home devices can be very finicky and don't like to be changed once configured. As "Smart Connect" keeps moving devices from the router to extender or across bands, they have been glitching, not pinging right, or falling off the network completely; even my Firesticks. As a lot of my home is automated and runs through Home Assistant, glitching devices and non firing automations are a NO-GO. And of course, you can't override "Smart Connect" for devices you don't want it to move.
Which leaves me with an extender that either does not function properly with "Smart Connect" off ( because the devices we want to automatically switch do not) or a destabilized network and broken smart home with "Smart Connect" on. While the Tech Support Supervisor stated that these concerns will be passed on to the engineers (which honestly could probably be fixed fairly easily via software by adding a manual configuration override for individual devices while using "Smart Connect"), it does not change the fact that, right now, OneMesh is worthless without "Smart Connect" and "Smart Connect" is worthless except for a few mobile devices like phones and tablets. "Smart Connect" should be an option to apply to individual devices, not THE ENTIRE NETWORK.
I can't trade a functional LAN for range, nor can I recommend this Range Extender for anyone else who has WIFI 6 or smart home devices. I will probably be taking the extender back and breaking down and running CAT 6 to a more centrally located room; something I'd rather not do as I will also have to move my hardwired servers.