TP-Link Deco X50-4G AX3000 Whole Home Wi-Fi 6, Add on Single Unit for All WiFi 7/6/5 Deco Mesh Pack for Extended Coverage Requirement, Connects up to 150 Devices, HomeShield, Works with Alexa

Many have left technical/usability reviews of this item, and that's excellent so I'll not repeat what's been said. I also try to look for reviewer's experiences of the whole process before making the leap, being familiar only with equipment I've used for many years. I didn't appreciate how good/economical the mobile data service has rapidly become. I'll try to hopefully pass some useful info on, and add to others experiences.I've been humming and hawing whether to get one of these routers for a few months now - the cost may have been a big gamble with no guarantees; however, the usual arrangement of putting up with a sluglike broadband service, poorly maintained lines/equipment, waiting days for engineers, slow speeds when the kids are on Netflix, Prime etc.. was wearing thin. Living rurally I'm lucky to get 4-5 Gbits.The last of three engineers to visit in four weeks, attempting to resolve the same incoming line issue, suggested I look at coming off landline broadband. I noted (speaking to numerous engineers - therein lies a story! - from BT..Sorry 'Open Reach'), that every time I floated the govt promise that everyone -100%- would have fibre (1 Gbit) by 2025 they collapsed on the floor laughing. I already suspected the cost of laying line for rural properties would be enormous, and therefore wasn't too surprised. The promise is recently downsized to 85%. That's clearly minus 15% rural areas. No shock there, and there's still loads of time to reassess further!There is the notion that some providers would love you to accept inflated promises thereby making you reluctant to jump ship because a fantastic service is really (honestly!) just coming over the horizon. Clearly that is not the case.So quickly googling I looked at coverage and type - 4g, 5g etc - for my area. My son is on O2, wife on Vodafone, me on Tesco, and using those phones I checked data reception across my home. Result 15 - 30 mbits (4G). Great! Decent reception confirmed - tick.Ordered the TP Link mobile router. Put in micro sim from my phone. ID (ssid) came up on my Fire so entered passkey (from rear of modem) and connected. Opened a browser and searched for 'speed checkers'. Average from 6 checkers came in at 19 Mbits download and 17 upload. Previous fixed line gave me 5Mbits on a good day and less than 1Mbit upload.I now have an unlimited data sim from O2 (comes as mini sim - no fuss, clicks in as normal). I already have homeplugs (6 x tp link PA211 from Amazon) and they work fine with this unit. No changes are needed. I also already have two wifi extenders - bog standard under £20 models circa 2018 (my house is over 20m by 7m x 2 floors). They happily link to the router just the same as with a home hub or other line router, and in practice they perform much better than with HH5. The home plugs ( + 'wired' connections) measure at 20-25 Mbits, wifi fluctuates from 20+ down to around 15Mbits. Coverage is now full; upstairs and downstairs.Now I know some with 40+ mbits will laugh at those figures but, when 5 mbits was the best I was getting, three times that speed as a MINIMUM is a real result.Like all routers I've ever had in the last two decades you can interface with it using a browser and entering http://192.168.1.1/, so set up is easy. This unit instantly recognised both my Sims. Set up is really just confirming info and "dotting the i's" as wifi was up and running before reaching the set up, as without it access isn't possible anyway if you're not 'wired'. The interface has monitioring and limitation facilities. My unit has detachable antennas.The monthly cost of our old landline package was nearly twice that of a £33 pound/p/m unlimited sim so I'm already ahead, the unit will be paid for in a few months. You can keep your basic email or pay a few quid for a premium email with BT if your worried about losing, or the kerfuffle of changing, your email when terminating your broadband. I suspect other providers will be similar. The loss of a landline, and all the marketing/nuisance calls that came with it, caused very little pain. Mobile minutes are now very cheap.In conclusion I've vastly improved my internet service, almost cut my costs in half and have no more concerns over the age, upkeep, condition or 'committment' of the previous equipment/provider. I'm loath to use the classic 'I wish I'd done it ages ago' but it applies. Mobile internet is a winner and the only real alternative for upgrading in poorly serviced areas so I really hope this unit continues to perform.Simple and easy to set up - Go for it!

I am very impressed with this 4G router. So easy to setup, lots of features and I can use the app to check that it is online from home (bought it to monitor a family members house whilst he is away in hospital and its linked to two external cameras. He had no internet and I git a 50Gb data sim from Lebara at £1 for 8 months (with no commitment to a contract after). Its been up a few days and has been stable and working well. My brother is so impressed he is going to get one for his campervan (shame it doesn't work of 12v or using a usb cable)

I live in a non-cable area where the BT infrastructure is terrible. Our absolute top broadband speed that we can get through conventional methods is 4Mb, yet the 4G signal is excellent, regularly giving us 40-80 Mb on our phones (how backwards is that). Since I knew devices like this were a thing, I contacted EE and as a fairly loyal customer I ended up with a 64GB data sim for £27 per month. They sent me a little diddy "Osprey" 4G router to go with it, which would probably be fine for actual mobile users but it is somewhat unsuitable for home use due to the lack of UPnP. Plus, I liked the idea of switching between home and 4G broadband on the one device, so I ordered one of these.The other reviews saying that it was a true plug and play type of thing didn't really match my experience. One issue is due to no fault of the hardware itself - we get our broadband through Sky, who it turns out actually go out of their way to try to stop you from using your own kit. As I'm not totally without technical ability I managed to circumvent all this, but if you're looking for the "plug and play" experience but have Sky as your broadband provider I'd have to recommend against a device like this. Incidentally if anyone wants to know what I did to make this work feel free to leave a comment.Secondly, while it seemed to work fine initially (and was actually our sole source of broadband for a while for reasons I won't go into), one day about a month later I switched over to 4G and was surprised to find the speed we were getting had slowed right down. It was at roughly the same speed we got through the fixed line broadband, which was horrifying when you consider the entire reason I'd bought into all this. Worse, it would completely drop every now and again. It still worked fine in home broadband mode which you would have thought would have placed the blame squarely on EE, or at least the 4G hardware inside the unit, but as it turns out it was actually the most basic of things - I had to choose a different wi-fi channel for the router. Nothing at all would have suggested a problem with the wi-fi - everything was showing good signal, even when the net had completely dropped. However setting the channel manually, and setting the bandwidth to 20hz made the 4G connection literally 10x faster and stopped the drops. Bizarrely, it would seem that if left to its own devices, the device will sometimes automatically set the wi-fi channel to something that interferes with the 4G. That's astonishingly stupid.So yeah, in summary, even if all the evidence points to something else, try messing with the wi-fi channel if you have problems as the auto channel detection is apparently rubbish. However, that aside, the product is now working perfectly and I am more than happy with it day to day.UPDATE: Removing a star. Internet drops have started to rear their head again in spite of messing with the wifi channel. It is looking like the same issue myself and others have reported - all signal bars are fine, yet the internet keeps going down for a few moments, and more frequently than is acceptable. And again, only in 4G mode. Being pretty sure this wasn't EE's fault (the signal, speed and reliability we get on our phones is outstanding) I started wondering what was unique about the 4G setup versus switching to broadband. This led me to the DNS server - for reasons I won't go into, in 4G mode it was using TP-Link's default DNS server, and in broadband mode it uses Sky's. Wondering whether the TP-Link DNS server was flaky I switched over to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 if you're interested) and since then, the connection seems much more stable. I couldn't get it to drop once while stress testing it last night - but I won't say emphatically that the problem is resolved because I said that about the wifi channel didn't I? Something for people to try though, if you have the same problems.I'll update again when I'm satisfied the problem is resolved, or if I needed to do more work. Starting to envy the people for whom this was "plug and play" - it hasn't been my experience in the slightest.FINAL UPDATE: Well, it's been a good nine months and things have definitely settled down, so I'm re-adding a star. 4G is generally slower than our mobiles, but it's fine and definitely faster than our awful Sky broadband. To recap, using Google's DNS was ESSENTIAL, and you may also get better results by altering the wireless channel and bandwidth settings. In reference to the comment on this review, I haven't marked it down for any of Sky's issues at all.