tp-link | AC1200 Wifi Extender | Up to 1200Mbps | Dual Band Range Extender, Extends Internet Wifi to Smart Home & Alexa Devices (RE305) (Renewed)

In the days of COVID... this is how the story begins. Let's set it up. Combine the elements of Work from Home, quiet space at a premium, available enclosed semi-outdoor space, and awesome weather, and you have a situation where the enclosed patio becomes not just ideal for the day-to-day work schedule, but it becomes AWESOME! Only problem is the wifi is on the other end of the property with a solid home construction bulkhead in between along with a sheer wall and other means of interference. I was dropping Zoom meetings, getting late messages, I had a solid 4-5 seconds of speech delay, and my phone would not alert me to anything.At that point I thought, maybe the router just isn't strong enough. It's only about 40 feet away but still. So I took a chance on a reasonably priced and well-featured (this one) version of a wifi-extender and I am now at full speed. No drops, no lagging, full speed even through a VPN connection. I wasn't sure this was going to be the answer to my speed issues since the base connection isn't terribly fast, but it absolutely worked.I do need to bring up a quick caveat... the word "extender" may be misleading. The means of extension is by acting as a relay. Thus in order to connect to the home network via the extender, you actually need to connect to the extender instead. If you are prone to moving about the house/property/office, and you need the strongest available connection, you may find that you need to manually switch back and forth to whichever is strongest in the particular location you are at in relation to either the wireless router or the extender. For my purposes this was fine since my work computer stayed put... I just had to switch wifi networks on my phone when I worked in that location.

I was looking for a 5GHz access point to connect to my 2.4GHz ISP router that solved the issue of living in a high rise building with a saturated spectrum from dozens of neighboring 2.4GHz networks (and barely a couple of 5GHz). I could have used any other type of router or access point, however I try to avoid wires hanging around. This was the perfect solution: plug it, connect the ethernet cable and configure it. Easy to install, although it is initially prepared to act as a WiFi repeater, it wasn't difficult to reset it as an Access Point via the free app that can be downloaded for any smartphone.Coverage is just fine for a small apartment, in case of using it as a network extender it can fit to a medium sized apartment. Don't look for complex settings as port forwarding, mac filtering, etc, it lacks of them.

The WiFi range is a bit disappointing but maybe it's just my situation and how I've set it up. Other than that the range extender is awesome. You can also set it up as an access point which means you can plug it directly into a router via Ethernet and it can provide a brand new WiFi signal. While in extender mode, that Ethernet port at the bottom of the unit can be used to hard wire either your computer, game console, DVD player etc... Just note that the signal will not be as strong since it is piggy backing a WiFi signal to the extender. The App is also fairly straight forward. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars only because they don't make it clear on how to switch from extender to AP. It took me some digging to find the setting for this but once I did I was running on all cylinders. Overall I def recommend this unit and would buy another one in a heart beat

When the AC1200 is working it works very well and extends the Wifi signals covering dead spots.However I have spent 2 days on /off trying to figure out why connected client devices stop working on the wifi and fall back to the main router... The I could not access the A1200 to check out its diagnostics... Finally I figured it out... Every few hours, this device drops it's RF signal and it's clients. The router still sees it's there (verified with both a TPlInk and another router) ... but the wifi extender signals are gone. A unplug / reboot restores service but who wants to do that cyclically. (Firmware also verified to be the current release.)This is a factory recetified unit, and, I expect that's why it was returned. I probably passed TP-Links checkout, but, it fails after several hours. After intial testing, I tossed the box and packing... So I'll not be returing it... and will need to buy another unit.One final note... The AC305 manual manual talks about it's OneMesh capability. However, it doesn't seem to work and it's not on TP-LInk's offical list of OneMesh So look for another model if you want OneMesh.Finally... Along with the Ac305, I purchased a TP-Link AX73 router... This is working very well....

Recently purchased this alongside a tp-link Archer C7. Was super excited to receive both as they would work great in my home. Unfortunately this is Rev. 1 and does not feature the ability to be used as a Mesh receiver alongside my router. Product works great as an extender but would’ve given 5 stars if it was the upgraded mode with mesh.

works very well. No documentation though

This is the 3rd one I've bought. Each time I find a poor wifi area in my home, I buy one of these and it is instantly solved. Super simple to setup (even for a non-tech savvy guy like me), takes only a minute. Trick is to initially set it up very close to your router so it can make a great connection. Then you can simply unplug it, move it to where you are having an issue, plug it in there and you're done. It really is that easy. And in the year+ that I've been using these things, I've never had to reset the connection.

GOOD