Reviewing TP-LINK Archer C5400 - Future-proofing your wireless network!

TP-LINK Archer C5400 is one the most advanced wireless routers ever built by TP-LINK. It is the successor to the Archer C3200 which we loved using and testing. When we received it for testing, we were very excited because this router features very powerful hardware and many advanced features. Our previous experience has shown that, to benefit from the most advanced routers, you need high-end computers and devices that can take advantage of the latest networking features. Such devices are expensive and hard to find. Is this the case with TP-LINK Archer C5400? Read this review and see:

Unboxing the TP-LINK Archer C5400

TP-LINK Archer C5400 comes in a white-green large box. On the top, you can see a picture of the device and a list of its most advanced characteristics.

On the back side of the box, you can see a detailed explanation of the tri-band technology offered by this router and the maximum theoretical bandwidth of each band. When you open the box, you will find the router, the power adapter (as you can see in the picture below, it is quite large), an Ethernet cable, technical support information, the warranty and the quick installation guide.

The unboxing experience is quick and painless, and the packaging includes all the elements you expect from a wireless router.

Hardware specifications and design

TP-LINK Archer C5400 has a powerful dual-core Broadcom BCM4709C processor, running at 1.4 GHz and 512 MB of RAM. It features new technologies like NitroQAMTM from Broadcom and 4-Stream, which are supposed to provide minimum latency when playing online games and increase the maximum theoretical bandwidth to 1000 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency and 2167 Mbps for each of the two 5GHz wireless frequencies. This leads to a total maximum bandwidth of 53334 Mbps, hence the Archer C5400 name. This router comes with eight external antennas. As you can see below, each has its slot and can be easily raised or lowered.

As is the custom for premium routers nowadays, TP-LINK Archer C5400 includes the MU-MIMO technology that serves up to four devices at once, reducing wait time, increasing Wi-Fi throughput for every device, and making each stream more efficient. The router offers support for all wireless networking standards up to and including 802.11ac.

On the back of the router, we have one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, the port for connecting the router to the internet, four Ethernet ports, the Reset button, the Power button and the power jack.

On the front of the Archer C5400, we have several LEDs. From left to right, they are the following:

• One showing whether the router is turned on
• Three LEDs, one for each of the three wireless bands, telling you whether each wireless band is broadcasting its signal
• One for the status of the Ethernet connection
• One for the status of your internet connection
• One sharing whether WPS connections are in progress
• Two LEDs, one for each USB port, telling you whether a USB device is connected to the router or not

Then we have three buttons:

• The first is for turning the broadcasting of the wireless signal On or Off
• One for enabling WPS connections
• One for turning the LEDs On or Off (this is very useful if you are annoyed by the light of the LEDs)

Because it packs so much hardware, this router is larger than others, with a size of 9.1 x 9.1 x 1.7 inches or 230 x 230 x 43mm in Width, Depth, and Height. It also weighs a total of 5.95 pounds or 2.7 kilograms.

You can read the official specifications of this wireless router, here: TP-LINK Archer C5400 specifications.

Setting up and using the TP-LINK Archer C5400

One of the first things we want to know when we unbox a wireless router is whether it has mounting screw slots on the bottom so that you can mount it on a wall. Luckily TP-LINK Archer C5400 has them, and you can see them in the picture below.

After you place the router where you want to use it and connect it to the internet, you can start configuring it. The Quick Setup Wizard asks you to change the default username and password, which is an excellent security precaution. Then, you are asked to select the region and the time zone that you are in. You select which type of internet connection you have, or you can ask the wireless router to detect it for you.

Next, you are asked to enter the connection details for your internet connection. After you enter them, you can configure the three wireless networks which are broadcast. A summary is then shown for the settings that you have made and, after you press Save, the internet connection is tested.

Once the initial configuration is done, you can view the administration user interface and start configuring more settings in detail. As you can see, the user interface uses light, calming colors and it's rather minimalist. It first shows all the basic settings, that are very simple and straightforward. They are designed for users that don't know much about networking and want to leave the advanced stuff in the hands of the router.

However, if you want to take advantage of the advanced features this router has to offer, you have to switch to the Advanced tab and get your hands dirty. As you can see in the screenshot below, the number of settings that becomes available increased exponentially, and you get control over everything this router has to offer.

One welcome improvement over its predecessor (Archer C3200) is that TP-LINK Archer C5400 has great multi-lingual support. Its user interface is not available just in English. It is available in 25 languages, some of which you can see in the screenshot below. The list of available languages includes Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese or German.

Many users will appreciate that the Help documentation is available with a single click on the question mark that is shown in the top-right corner of the user interface. If you click on it, it displays information about the options displayed on the screen. Unfortunately, for some settings the language used is on the technical side of things and some users will have difficulty in understanding all the settings that are shown, especially when fiddling with the Advanced settings.

One of the things we enjoy about TP-LINK's administration user interface is that it is organized very well: everything is split into sections and subsections and navigating through all the settings shouldn't be an issue. However, some settings are hard to understand, and you do need quite a bit of technical knowledge to set things correctly.

After you set things the way you want to, connect all your network computers and devices. We connected desktop computers, tablets, smartphones, USB hard disks, wireless printers, smart plugs and a console. We had no issues with any of these devices, and we enjoyed a stable wireless network signal.

Also, connections were quite fast, as you will see in the next two sections of this review, where we measure the real-life performance of the TP-LINK Archer C5400. More on that in the next page of this review.

Wireless network performance

Before sharing our measurements, let's take a look at the apartment that was used in our testing and how it is set up. You can see that the router is placed in the living room. With most wireless routers, the signal strength is not that high in rooms like the Kitchen and the Medium balcony.

Our testing was done using a fast 1 Gigabit Internet connection that's capable of uploads on the internet of up to 500 Mbps. We used a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for all our measurements and several software tools. To get a better perspective of the performance offered by TP-LINK Archer C5400 we compared it with ASUS RT-AC5300 and TP-LINK Archer C3200.

We first evaluated the performance of the wireless network that is broadcast on the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency.

We ran an app called inSSIDer and measured the strength of the wireless signal in all the rooms of our apartment. Below you can see that TP-LINK Archer C5400 offered good signal strength, but it was outperformed by ASUS RT-AC5300 in all rooms.

The signal strength doesn't tell us how fast a wireless network connection is. Therefore, we first used SpeedTest to measure how fast is the internet connection in all rooms. Again, TP-LINK Archer C5400 delivered good performance when measuring the download speed but it was outperformed by its competitors.

We were surprised to see how fast the uploads were on the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency broadcast by TP-LINK Archer C5400.

For the next set of measurements, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. In the download test, TP-LINK Archer C5400 was fast but outperformed by its competitors in all rooms.

Again, things improved a lot when measuring the upload speed over the 2.4 GHz wireless network.

The 2.4 GHz wireless frequency that is broadcast by the TP-LINK Archer C5400 is fast but not the fastest you can get. Competing routers, including more affordable ones, like Archer C3200 tend to outperform it.

Next, we evaluated the 5 GHz wireless frequency. We started by measuring the signal strength in each room. Again, TP-LINK Archer C5400 offered good signal strength, but it was outperformed by ASUS RT-AC5300 in all rooms.

We ran SpeedTest to see how fast the internet connection is on this wireless router. TP-LINK Archer C5400 delivered great results, but it was outperformed by its more affordable brother, Archer C3200, who was faster, especially in the rooms that are furthest from the router.

When measuring the upload speed, TP-LINK Archer C5400 delivered outstanding results, beating its competition in all rooms except one.

Next, we measured downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. In the download test, TP-LINK Archer C5400 delivered great results, but it was outperformed by its more affordable brother, Archer C3200.

The same story was true when evaluating the upload speed.

Our conclusion is that TP-LINK Archer C5400 is a very fast wireless router but, to take advantage of all its advanced wireless networking features, you need premium computers and devices with support for the latest networking technologies. Otherwise, more affordable routers, like the TP-LINK Archer C3200 tend to outperform it.

Wired network performance

To test the quality of the wired Ethernet connection, we used a desktop PC, equipped with an Intel Core i5 4460 processor, running at 3.20GHz, 16GB of RAM and a very fast Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor, running at 1.9 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a fast 256 GB SSD drive from Samsung.
We started by measuring the download and upload speeds using SpeedTest. As you can see below, TP-LINK Archer C5400 managed to deliver impressive speeds, much faster than its competitors.

In the graphic above you see that TP-LINK Archer C3200 and ASUS RT-AC5300 reached uploads of only 200 Mbps. That's because, at the time we tested these models, our internet connection was capped at 200 Mbps for the upload speed. Since then, our ISP has raised the cap to 500 Mbps.

Then, we transferred an 883 MB file between the same two computers connected to the network, both of which were using an Ethernet cable. Again, TP-LINK Archer C5400 was an outstanding performer.

Our tests have shown that TP-LINK Archer C5400 is very capable of delivering Ethernet connections at 1 Gbps.

Extra features

TP-LINK Archer C5400 offers the following additional features:

• Wireless schedule - you can set a weekly or daily schedule for the broadcasting of the wireless signal.
• Guest network - you can enable up to three guest networks, one for each band. Visitors should not be allowed to access your network, for increased security and privacy.
• Smart Connect - this service balances the load and assigns devices to the most appropriate band so that it reduces delays and interruptions.
• QoS - a basic Quality of Service feature that helps you control how the total bandwidth is split between devices and applications. Unfortunately, this service cannot run while the NAT Boost feature is enabled. You have to disable NAT Boost before being able to control the bandwidth in your network. Unfortunately, TP-LINK doesn't explain in its documentation what the NAT Boost is, how it works and why it is enabled by default.
• USB applications - which allow you to connect USB storage devices like an external hard disk or a printer and share them with the network.
• Parental Controls - this module allows you to control the internet access of devices on your network as well as block access to certain websites based on keywords. It's a rather basic parental controls feature which has limited usefulness.
• Dynamic DNS - allows you to assign a fixed host and domain name to a dynamic IP address. It can work with the No-IP and DynDNS service providers.
• VPN server - you can set the router to work as a VPN server using OpenVPN and PPTP VPN protocols. The router also allows VPN pass-through for clients that are connecting to external VPN services.
• IPv6 - support for IPv6 addresses and internet connections.
• System Tools - a collection of logs, statistics and diagnostic tools that allow you to troubleshoot problems.
• TP-LINK Tether App – an Android and iOS app that allows you to manage the router from your smartphone. The app is very basic, and it doesn't help with administering more advanced features. You have to use your computer and a web browser for advanced administration tasks.

While TP-LINK AC5400 offers some useful extra features, the number of tools offered and their usefulness is slightly fewer than what you get from competing wireless routers from other manufacturers. The feature that we like best is the possibility of setting your router to work as a VPN server so that you can access your network while traveling.

Pros and cons

TP-LINK Archer C5400 has many pros to consider:

• It's future-proof regarding support for the latest networking technologies
• It has very powerful hardware that is capable of delivering stable and fast wireless network connections
• It offers true 1 Gbps Ethernet connections
• Its firmware offers excellent multi-lingual support, which is a welcome change for TP-LINK wireless routers
• It is easy to setup and use
• You can mount it on walls

However, there are some downsides to consider:

• To take advantage of its advanced features, you need new and expensive computers and devices with support for the latest networking technologies, meaning that the total investment in your network will be very high
• For current networking hardware, more affordable routers, like TP-LINK Archer C3200 deliver better performance
• Competing AC5300 or AC5400 routers offer even more advanced features in their firmware

Verdict

Wireless routers with a total maximum bandwidth of 5300 Mbps or more have one problem: they are too advanced for their time. With existing computers, smartphones, tablets, consoles and printers, you don't have the chance to experience the ultimate speed that they are capable of. TP-LINK Archer C5400 is no exception to this "rule." This router is fast, is powerful, with many advanced features and excellent multi-lingual support. However, modern-day computers and devices don't offer good support for the newest wireless technologies that are included TP-LINK Archer C5400. Therefore, more affordable models, like TP-LINK Archer C3200 tend to deliver better performance because they are "less advanced." A router this feature-packed is an investment for the future and the future of wireless networks. If you can afford it, go ahead and buy it. You won't regret the purchase.