TP-Link Archer VR2600

High-end wireless without a nutso price.

TP-Link has struck an excellent balance with its new VR2600 modem router. It has premium wireless without going overboard like the Netgear (left), a nice suite of ports, capabilities and apps and an ever-improving setup process that makes getting it up and running easier than ever.

It’s one of the few VDSL modem routers with support for MU-MIMO Wi-Fi baked in, and a 4x4 antenna array gives it plenty of bandwidth to work with. Its peak physical rate is 1,766Mbps, which is plenty to serve high-definition media streams to four or more devices simultaneously.

It also has an Ethernet WAN port built in, and it makes good use of it twin USB 3.0 ports, with smooth DLNA streaming and support for USB LTE modems — with load balancing or failover to the LTE network. It has time based parental controls, and can, of course, be set up with OpenDNS for blacklistbased controls.

One of the biggest areas of improvement for TP-Link has been its mobile apps. In the past, we’ve occasionally been critical of TP-Link’s setup and management, and while it’s still not as streamlined and accessible as, say, Linksys or ASUS, getting the router up and running is a process that now anybody should be able to handle. In particular, the TP-Link Tether app give you access to all of the routers most important features, including parental controls, 3G/4G and security.

Overall, we think TP-Link is onto a winner here, with a great set of features without going nuts.