Tp-link Deco P7
The power to connect
Another fine mesh
After BT’S Whole Home Wi-fi started the ball rolling (at least in the UK), there are now quite a few different mesh router products that promise to spread a strong Wi-fi signal all round your house. We’ve reviewed a dozen or so, and tested some of the best last year (see Issue 523) to help you choose. Tp-link may not be the biggest name in this field, but it wins on the amount of options, adding the P7 to the Deco M5 (see Issue 508) and M9, each available in packs of two or three units.
Why the ‘P’ instead of ‘M’? Well, this system has something different from all the others: Powerline. One of the key ingredients of a really effective mesh network is the ‘backhaul’ – a separate data channel between the router boxes that’s independent of the data moving between each box and your connected devices. This is normally another Wi-fi network, but in some cases you can connect the boxes with Ethernet cables to provide a fast backhaul with no wireless interference. What Tp-link has done is to build in Powerline networking – which sends data through your home’s mains wiring – as a backhaul.
Our tests confirmed that even though the P7 doesn’t have particularly high specifications either for a mesh router or a Powerline adapter, the combination is reasonably good at delivering a decent signal over distances and through walls. We managed around 135 megabits per second (Mbps) whether one or two floors away from the base, comfortably faster than most broadband, and we only defeated the two-box system by venturing out to the end of the garden, where adding a third unit got us usable speeds.
Tp-link recommends replacing your existing router with the first unit, but if that’s not practical you can add it on, which may require slightly more fiddling with settings such as port forwarding. You can even add it to your existing network as an access point, but this disables the comprehensive parentalcontrol features.
The app helps you set things up and choose where to put the satellite box(es), and there’s support for IFTTT, the easy-to-use automation platform, to set up actions like automatically emailing you when a new device connects to your network.
Delivered decent signal over distances, through walls and a couple of floors