TP-Link Archer GX90 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 6 Gaming Router Review & Comments

Wow - This is so ugly.
 
If Darth Maul and a regular router had a kid
 
I think I've officially become middle aged... because I can't understand under what circumstances I'd pay more for a router than my entire broadband package :/ I long for the good old days where the justification was simply that I could see loads of settings that I would tweak an inevitably make no difference or break my connection entirely resulting in a factory reset until a new firmware comes out and I go through the whole process again!
 
£300 for a hunk of plastic... Horrendous design, does nothing that 99.9% of users will need over and above a standard £50 router.

I don't get this madness for £300 routers at all. I game alot and had zero issues with standard V3 virgin box and Unifi wireless kit in the house.
 
£300 for a hunk of plastic... Horrendous design, does nothing that 99.9% of users will need over and above a standard £50 router.

I don't get this madness for £300 routers at all. I game alot and had zero issues with standard V3 virgin box and Unifi wireless kit in the house.
Indeed its not something that most will need but there is enough of a market for it.
 
Indeed its not something that most will need but there is enough of a market for it.
Indeed - the market for gaming accessories and gadgets is steadily growing and I believe that the trend is not going to change soon.
 
I could understand the design if it was going to be sat next to a gaming PC, but what's the chances of that? Not only would my wife not allow this in our living room, I wouldn't either.
 
This is for those that want 4K & Atmos on their phone, or mega expensive trainers.
 
It will appeal to the same crowd that have plastic grass, hot tubs and leased Range Rover in the drive. Its another e-peen look what I have got - 'my router is considerably more ostentations than yours'. Probably find them sitting on a silver mirror table in the living room.
 
design and "gaming" on a side, but whoever expects that "typical 50€ router" can handle 10-20 devices, or more, which is not that rare in a typical household, is wrong. A long time ago when they were serving a PC or two, that was fine but today all those 5€ ones that we get from providers are just crap for most households.
Today everything has an app, and everything connects to wi-fi. And router does not really care if it is a soundbar, a bulb, a switch, a timer, a something........it needs to handle them all, some more often then the others but for all that they need a bit more power inside than some 5€ SoC from 2013.
Mine FRITZ!box 7590 is not a gaming one, and not that new anymore so is lacking many things that this one has but was not that far in price from this one when it was introduced to the market.
So yeah, while most don't need a 300 one, most wont really be served well with those basic ones either.
 
It will appeal to the same crowd that have plastic grass, hot tubs and leased Range Rover in the drive. Its another e-peen look what I have got - 'my router is considerably more ostentations than yours'. Probably find them sitting on a silver mirror table in the living room.
Who is anybody to judge what people spend their money on as long as they don't go looking for handouts to fund it.

If they want a review, simples. Looks of features that you probably don't need and not great value for money.

BTW, I have £275 router. One the best purchases I've made.
 
design and "gaming" on a side, but whoever expects that "typical 50€ router" can handle 10-20 devices, or more, which is not that rare in a typical household, is wrong. A long time ago when they were serving a PC or two, that was fine but today all those 5€ ones that we get from providers are just crap for most households.
Today everything has an app, and everything connects to wi-fi. And router does not really care if it is a soundbar, a bulb, a switch, a timer, a something........it needs to handle them all, some more often then the others but for all that they need a bit more power inside than some 5€ SoC from 2013.
Mine FRITZ!box 7590 is not a gaming one, and not that new anymore so is lacking many things that this one has but was not that far in price from this one when it was introduced to the market.
So yeah, while most don't need a 300 one, most wont really be served well with those basic ones either.
To some extent yes. But a lot of devices are low usage and people should really move high usage devices to ethernet where possible. Anyway, probably a £150 will do most people rather than £300.
 
Who is anybody to judge what people spend their money on as long as they don't go looking for handouts to fund it.

If they want a review, simples. Looks of features that you probably don't need and not great value for money.

BTW, I have £275 router. One the best purchases I've made.
If you would like to re-read my post I never judged anybody on what they spent their money on, my UDMP cost over £350, I was judging the aesthetics of the device and who that may appeal to, because the consensus so far is that it is 'butt ugly', But I did suggest that there is a certain type of person that it would appeal to (which is currently an internet meme, a bit like the Darren and Karen memes.

The only way that 'jackson pollock meets 'darth maul' would be in my house, would be in my 'lab' for testing and not on public display. I install quite a few routers and network hardware for my clients, this would not be on my list as IMHO there are much 'better' devices out there for similar or less money
 
this would not be on my list as IMHO there are much 'better' devices out there for similar or less money
So can you name a tri-band Wifi 6 router costing less which performs better or just as well? You have to look at what hardware you're getting under the hood, not just whether you find the router design attractive or not. Pretty much all wifi 6 kit is expensive, tri-band wifi 6 routers even more so.

But aesthetics aside, TP Link actually make great value for money kit. Netgear's, Asus' and Ubiquiti's tri-band wifi 6 routers all cost around £400. I tested out a TP Link AX90 recently - which is the non-gaming version of the GX90 reviewed - and was hugely impressed given that I paid £200 for it (around half the cost of the likes of Netgear RAX200). Unless the gaming features of the GX90 are important, I would recommend the AX90 instead, given that its £50 or so cheaper and looks better, ie less aggressive.

Amazon product ASIN B00VP6FKLM
 
I think I've officially become middle aged... because I can't understand under what circumstances I'd pay more for a router than my entire broadband package :/ I long for the good old days where the justification was simply that I could see loads of settings that I would tweak an inevitably make no difference or break my connection entirely resulting in a factory reset until a new firmware comes out and I go through the whole process again!
One reason to pay more for a decent router is that you'll get better support.

I have one that cost me more than £200 in 2017 which is still regularly receiving security updates. If you look at it as a 7 to 10 year life span device, it's hard for the manufacturer to support it if they have to sell it for the cost of a nandos meal for two 😂
 
My 20 quid router is still going strong after 10 years. :D I suggest price is not a reliable indicator of capability or quality. Though or full disclosure, I only have about 4 things hitting it up for Internet access.

Let us be clear about what we mean when assessing the capabilities of this and that AP/router to "handle" a certain number of devices. There's two aspects to this that I think we should tease apart:

Firstly, there's purely the Wi-Fi ability. How many clients can the AP service concurrently. When planning big systems, I start to get nervous when this gets to the order of 20-30, though that's mostly about the service performance delivered rather than the concept that the AP "couldn't cope." Though I've seen it go higher. (Caveat, this is enterprise kit I'm talking about.) I would be very surprised if even cheap SOHO kit couldn't handle 10-15 clients, but if it's a matter of concern, then we ought to be checking the datasheets.

Secondly, there's the ability to handle the Internet traffic, particularly the capacity of the NAT and the firewall. This affects both wired and Wi-Fi devices alike. AP's don't do NAT/firewall, this is only something your "edge" devices connecting to the Internet has to handle (ie your router, whether it's Wi-Fi is enabled or not.)

For NAT and SPI firewalls to function, they have to monitor the sessions passing through the NAT/firewall to/from the Internet and build various tables in RAM (usually) that maintain all the port mapping and so on. The more devices you have, the more sessions that they want to open, the more sessions need to be maintained, the more RAM required and the more powerful the processor needs to be to run it all.

Unfortunately, in most SOHO kit, information and statistics about this sort of thing is not available in the UI (and certainly not configurable.) Maybe pro-sumer kit like Draytek, Ubiquiti et al might offer it. Even if it were available, I suspect for most (lay) people it would be unintelligible even if it were available.

I submit that discussions about such things are little better than guessing, if we are being honest with ourselves, in the absence of any information from the manufacturer, stats. from the kit, or some objective and methodical test regime.

If would like an anecdote dear reader, years ago I had a SOHO router deployed on my "guest" network "at work." Despite it's paltry 16MB or RAM, it was fine until numbers of devices got upwards of about 70-80 whence it would crash regularly. We replaced it with a low end "proper" Cisco router (with an ADSL interface) and half a Gig or RAM (not to mention access to more stats than you could ever wish for) and it was fine for years afterwards.
 
Last edited:
I would not place such a router next to my computer, but I can totally see why a pro-gamer would be unbelievably happy having it next to the pro-gaming desk setup. Such a setup allows pro-gamer's personality to shine. In the sea of pretty boring routers and range extenders, GX90 offers an original alternative. Let's remember that the concept of aesthetics is very subjective. Some people prioritise a peaceful, quiet product appreciating its functionality, some prefer a loud product that stands out. One man's trash is another man's treasure. If it matches one's star wars/star trek/fantasy/science fiction room's theme then I think it is a great proposition. Plus, as @psychopomp1 mentioned tri-band Wifi 6 routers tend be expensive. Wi-Fi 6 running at a top speed of 6.6Gbps below £300, that's a solid offer. Being able to create a third network using the second 5.0Ghz band at a speed of 4.8Gbps, and assign it as dedicated band for gaming exclusively sounds fair. Let's not forget, however, that many products still do not support WiFi 6.
 
I would not place such a router next to my computer, but I can totally see why a pro-gamer would be unbelievably happy having it next to the pro-gaming desk setup. Such a setup allows pro-gamer's personality to shine. In the sea of pretty boring routers and range extenders, GX90 offers an original alternative. Let's remember that the concept of aesthetics is very subjective. Some people prioritise a peaceful, quiet product appreciating its functionality, some prefer a loud product that stands out. One man's trash is another man's treasure. If it matches one's star wars/star trek/fantasy/science fiction room's theme then I think it is a great proposition. Plus, as @psychopomp1 mentioned tri-band Wifi 6 routers tend be expensive. Wi-Fi 6 running at a top speed of 6.6Gbps below £300, that's a solid offer. Being able to create a third network using the second 5.0Ghz band at a speed of 4.8Gbps, and assign it as dedicated band for gaming exclusively sounds fair. Let's not forget, however, that many products still do not support WiFi 6.
I would but the lady indoors would not be happy at all, so had to settle for more TPs sedate aesthetics.
 
Any gamer (or anyone else) that could place a router next to their computer, would be better off ditching Wi-Fi altogether, cable up and use ethernet. Ethernet is faster and much more reliable. Plus less traffic competing for Wi-Fi air time is generally a "good thing." Cable where you can, Wi-Fi where you cannot or it's more convenient (e.g. phones, tablets, etc.)
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom