LABS TEST / WIFI 6 ROUTERS
B
oasting Wi-Fi speeds of up to
AX5400 and festooned with six
aerials, the TP-Link Archer AX73
certainly looks like it will offer good value for
its £170 price tag. Like the Linksys MR9600,
this is a shallow, low-slung rectangular unit
measuring just 147mm from front to back.
This again makes it more suited to potentially
being stowed away, although of course, for
the best coverage, you’ll want to have your
router out in the open.
The aesthetic here isn’t quite as slick as the
Linksys. The six aerials sprouting from the
back and sides simply outnumber the four
of the Linksys and they lack the same sleek
profile. The front of the router doesn’t have
quite the same home theatre look either,
although the diagonal ventilation pattern on
the top of the unit, which looks like a Wi-Fi
symbol, is a rather neat touch.
TPLINK ARCHER
AX73 /£170 inc VAT
SUPPLIER ebuyer.comA couple of
minor points
slightly irritated
us when setting
up this router as well.
The first was the tight plastic wrapping used
on each antennae, which was a pig to unwrap
or tear off. The other was the power supply,
the bulk of which extends upwards from the
socket, rather than down. All the other units
on test had the bulk either extend down or
straight out, which tended to interfere less
with other plugs when plugged into a multi-
plug adaptor.
Along the front of the router, you get
seven status LEDs for power, each Wi-Fi
band, internet connection, LAN activity, USB
and WPS. The actual WPS button is hidden
around the back, though, along with buttons
for turning off the LEDs and Wi-Fi – good luck
hitting the right one without having to peer
around the back of the unit.
The rest of the rear is filled with the same
four Gigabit LAN ports, WAN port and power
input and switch as the other routers on test.
A single USB 3 port is situated on the right-
hand edge. It only supports USB storage,
but does include local and remote access
options, media sharing and Time Machine.
When setting up the AX73, we were
particularly impressed by the inviting
interface. It manages to feel intuitive and
easy to follow for novices, without feeling
like it’s trying to be too clever. It’s also
immediately obvious early on in the setup
process whether you want to use ‘Smart
Connect’ (combining the two Wi-Fi bands
into a single SSID) or use separate Wi-Fibands. Some other router interfaces were a
bit less clear on whether they offered this as
an option.
Once it’s set up, the rest of the interface is
again particularly well laid out, and it’s also
easy to find how to add another OneMesh-
compatible device to set up a mesh network.
Sadly, when it came to performance, the
AX73 wasn’t all that clever. We started by
testing the Smart Connect option, as it was
the default, but it decided to smartly connect
our AX1500-capable laptop over 2.4GHz,
giving us 124Mb/sec maximum speeds, so
we decided it was better to separate out the
Wi-Fi bands.
Once that was done, performance
was largely mid-table, which is a little
underwhelming given its AX5400 rating
and six aerials.Conclusion
The TP-Link Archer AX73 has a slick interface
and is a relatively compact unit considering its
AX5400 rating and six antennae. However,
its performance isn’t quite as impressive
as you might hope. It’s still competitively
priced and perfectly capable, but the Asus
RT-AX68U outperforms it and offers
more features.VERDICT
Solid mid-range performance, but there are
slightly better options available.ARCHER
+^ Solid Wi-Fi
performance
+^ Decent feature set
+^ Slick web interfaceARCH NEMESIS-^ Not as fast as you
might expect
-^ Power plug too tall
DESIGN
14 / 20FEATURES
14 / 20OVERALL SCORE
72 %
PERFORMANCE
22 / 30VALUE
22 / 30SPEC
Weight 734g
Dimensions (mm) 273 x 147 x 49 /
167 (W x D x H) / with antennae
Ethernet 4 x Gigabit LAN, 1 x Gigabit WAN
Wi-Fi Dual-band (AX5400)
574 + 4,804Mb/sec +
Streams 2.4GHz 2x2, 5GHz 4x4
USB ports 1 x USB 3
Processor 1.5GHz triple-core
Memory 256MB flash, 512MB RAM
Extras OneMesh support