TP-Link - Deco XE5300

I have the AXE5300 with an extra XE75 in the garage. Working great for me. All wireless back haul.

I have set up a Deco system for someone, specifically the XE5300, was very easy to set up for them and was able to get them on custom DNS which is all that was really needed, I need to get back and check the app again for them, I know TP Link is added encrypted DNS to some units and would prefer to get them on my ControlD setup via DoH.

No not really, there just is not much you can really do to the devices in the app, just set it up and that is about it, there are some advanced features but nothing that would break anything. You can choose which band to have mesh over, you can also hardwire them to each other, or use them in AP only mode.

Ok, then you need a higher power cpu model. The M4 is single core — the newer units are quad core. They can’t handle higher speeds and the larger number of devices that are now connected in most homes. My M4s did what yours were doing when in router mode when I ditched my ISP router. So I initially put another router in front of them and put them in AP mode. I have since gotten some AXE5300s and changed my main Deco to one of them, but due to some other pressing matters, haven’t yet taken the other router out of the mix yet. I know I need to since the other router is about 7 years old and no longer getting security updates (not a TP-Link, just an old router I had on-hand).

I would say they all work quite well. So pick a model that fits your needs. PERSONALLY, I would go for WiFi 6E or 7 today, but some are fine with the lower tier models if you don’t need 300+ Mbps speeds wirelessly. I’ve personally helped about 75 people set up / tweak their Deco systems here over the last year or so, and 90% or more were just simple things.

In two houses now I have used TP-Link — they have been very very reliable for me. Am currently using 3x XE5300 (AXE5300 set from Costco) I got from Costco on sale last year’s Black Friday or the year before. Have been great. I’ve got them configured in Access Point mode, and connected to my Spectrum Router with the router’s WiFi turned off. Current I’m using the 6GHz channel for backhaul. In a previous house I used TP-Link Deco M5s throughout my large country home (3700 sq ft) plus additional Deco M5s in one small outbuilding (guesthouse) and one large outbuilding (office, storage and workshop) plus a outdoor pool and large deck area. I had the large outbuilding connected to the main house via a Ubiquiti high speed point-to-point wireless. And had all the M5’s connected to Gigabit switches for wired backhaul and PoE. Again M5’s were in AP mode. And the house was served by a 1GB bi-dir fiber feed from the Internet provider. Overall a great set up. If I were installing today in a new to me house, I’d get the TP-Link Deco BE11000 3 pack on sale at Costco right now. In both houses I had 70+ clients including apple PCs, Windows PCs, smarthome (Google, Apple & Amazon), music (Apple Homepod Minis), plus iPhones and Androidn phones & tablets. No issues at all, and support roaming across the mesh.

Thanks. How much further distance did the 3 pack eero pro 6 mesh units worked in your case? I have tried the Deco AXE5300 mesh and it didn’t even work more than 30-40 ft away.

No one needs wifi 7. Save the money, get the 6E 3 pack at Costco.

As a counterpoint, I have a Deco XE5300 system that is rock solid. I recently decided to invest in moca adapters to let me move my server & hubs, as our cable comes into the house in a really weird place. I’ve found the Deco system really easy to use and configure and quite reliable. OP I don’t know if it’s your specific units, or if you have suboptimal placement, or not enough units, but I don’t think there’s some fundamental flaw with this product like which makes it useless.

First thing about a mesh system, any brand mesh router works better if it is back wired with a cat 6 or 6a Ethernet wire. (Using a cat 7 or cat 8 is a waste of money for the price difference.) Personally I have used two brands. Both have worked well. TP Link and Asus. I just returned by TP Link BE11000 from Costco which worked well. (Most box stores like Sam’s Club and Costco might have the same model number router, but there are differences. The Costco one has a 2.5 GB port for example). I had the TP Link AXE5300 before that which actually worked the best out of any mesh system I had. The reason I returned the TP Link is because of what I read about the potential TP Link ban in the United States. There are many reasons for this from geopolitical reasons to a possible backdoor that would allow hackers to use multiple US based routers to be used as a botnet. My main concern for returning it was if it was banned, there would be a chance there would not be any firmware updates. I could not find any firmware that I could flash onto it if that happened, (I checked OpenWrt, DD-WRT and a few others for alternative open source firmware.) i did not want to take that chance of losing out on that investment, if, the ban occurs. There is no guarantee it will happen. It was me being overly cautious. I was still within my 90 day return window and chose to return it. No one thing I want to be clear on, no brand mesh router is 100% secure, there are security issues that can happen and have happened with any of them. I decided to switch to Asus AIMesh routers for my home. I would have loved to keep WiFi 7, but the prices are higher than TP Link. (I got the TP Link routers on sale at Costco for $399, normally $499 for the price.) I would have loved to get a 3 pack of the Asus BT10, but that was way out of my budget. I ended up getting a three pack of the Asus ZeWiFi AXE7800. It is a 6e system. It works good enough for my home. With Asus there are more options that I like having. I have had some hiccups with it, but worked through them. (For example I have the AI Protection turn on with the malicious sites option turned off because it is too aggressive and there is no whitelist. AI Protection uses Trend Micro’s cybersecurity system at no extra charge. TP Link had a Home Shield Pro, but that is a monthly charge which I chose not to pay. A lot of other mesh routers have security but it comes with a paid subscription model. Part of the reason I chose Asus for no additional charge. I also liked Ubiquiti system the most, but was out of my budget. I would recommend that you check out dongknows.com. He reviews a lot of mesh routers and probably provides too much information. I also watched landpet on YouTube and used rtings.com ) Good luck. (Sorry for the long response. Too much coffee.)

TP Link Deco 6E - had it for about 2 years and it's been good and super reliable. There were some concerns recently about TP Link routers phoning home to China, so something worth looking into I guess if you're worried. The management app (so take it for what it is, requires a phone app to manage) is decent, although a little annoying with the upsell of the safety suite. The feature set is great - guest network, IoT network, QoS, VPN server and client, 3 ports (only gigabit though) on each device, and 6Ghz wireless backhaul (or wired is also supported). At the time the Wifi 7 model just came out and was much more expensive so I didn't really see the point. If I were buying a new router today I'd probably go for a Wifi 7 model. Another upgrade in that is it looks like the Wifi 7 model has 1x10Gbps port and 2x2.5Gbps so that's some good future-proofing right there. Came from having Google Wifi, which I think was overall a little bit better, but I'm not upset about it. Obviously Ubiquiti is the gold standard if you wanna go that deep into it, but for a more casual (and much more affordable) solution I am not upset with my Deco. It's about $300 for 1 - have a 3-pack (~$700). If you don't need mesh, I've had good luck with Asus routers in the past and last I heard reviews for them are pretty good. Around $300 the TUF BE3600 looks like it might have all modern features you'd want.

Happy New Year fellow Sonos addicts! I’m older and probably the most tech-challenged participant on this sub. Even still, I stumbled across something yesterday that might be helpful for other Sonos lovers, particularly those like me that shop for electronics and have absolutely no idea what they are doing. BLUF: When shopping for Mesh WiFi systems you may want to check to see if the ones you’re considering provide the capability to manually change the channel selection (i.e. 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz). I was very surprised to learn yesterday that they don’t all have this capability. For example, EERO has automatic channel steering but has no way to manually select the channel. I found three that do provide the manual channel selection: TP Link, Orbi and ASUS. I’m sure there are others. So why post about this?: The Sonos app has always worked perfectly for me but I’ve had mind-numbing connection issues that turned out to be my WIFi (imagine that). Namely three Sub Minis and two Move 2s that on initial setup my TP Link Deco 6e WiFi mesh system automatically steered to the 5 GHz channel. All the other components were on 2.4 GHz. The fix was just a matter of going into the Deco app and changing the components from AUTO (RECOMMENDED) to 2.4GHz. The Move 2s I mentioned above worked great on the 5GHz but I couldn’t group them with other rooms on the 2.4 GHz. Switching to 2.4 GHz resolved the issue. One of our fellow Sonos sub participants owns an EERO system and is grappling with this “channel steering” issue right now. If they read this post I hope they will chime in and share their solution. Hopefully this will be useful.

👍 That’s great and I certainly hope you never do! It took me forever to figure what was happening with my first Sub Mini problem. It was actually Sonos Support that figured out the cause. From there it was easy because of the Deco app. I could tell from the person’s posts yesterday that they were exasperated with troubleshooting their issue. It’s just a “happy accident” that I have a TP Link Deco system. I just bought a Deco 7 for a second home we own.

Aha! Now I’m tracking! Deco is just the name of the TP Link mesh WiFi system. Within that system each WiFi or hardwired component is called a “client”. For each of the WiFi clients there is a section called Connection Preferences. You can do several things in that section and one is manually change the WiFi band. The screenshot I posted is that area within Connection Preferences to choose the preferred WiFi band: Auto (Recommended) or the 2.4, 5, 6 GHz bands. When I had the Sonos connection problems, the Sub Mini’s “client” setting in the Deco app was Auto and the system selected the 5 GHz band. I just changed that setting to 2.4 and it resolved the problem. What I learned yesterday is that many of the mesh WiFi brands don’t provide a way to change the WiFi band. I accidentally bought one with this capability and it’s come in handy five times. The point of my original post was to spread the word. With Sonos gear we need all the advantages we can get! . Sorry for using “channel steering” in the wrong way. Thanks again for your response and helpful advice! All the best in ‘26!! https://preview.redd.it/4iuha0dr52bg1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1820043ffcdcc6be34dc833d4cfaaba55402f336