TP-LINK Archer C2600 MU-MIMO Wireless Dual-Band Router Review

Introduction

Most solutions hitting the market as of late are coming equipped with a technology called MU-MIMO. This technology is being deployed in many solutions to improve wireless bandwidth by enabling simultaneous host to client transmission. This simply means that the host or router will serve multiple clients at the same time where previously devices would "take turns" transmitting data.

One of the newest solutions coming from the lab at TP-LINK is their AC2600 solution. This router is a four-stream enabling 800Mbps on the 2.4GHz band via 256QAM and 1.7Gbps on the 5GHz band, additionally, as mentioned, this solution does feature MU-MIMO technology. Diving deeper the TP-LINK Archer C2600 shares an identical platform with the Linksys EA8500, this starts with the Qualcomm IPQ8064 operating at 1.4GHz next to 512MB of memory. The 2.4 and 5GHz radios are powered by the QCA9980 MU-MIMO radio using Skyworks power amps, and the entire platform utilizes 32MB of flash.

Hardware features of the C2600 include four gigabit LAN ports paired with a single gigabit WAN, adding to this is two USB 3.0 ports along with four detachable antennas. On the wireless side of things, this wireless router supports dual-band connectivity via 802.11b/g/n on 2.4GHz and 802.11ac/n/a on the 5GHz with each supporting 64/128-bit WEP and WPA security. MSRP of the TP-LINK Archer C2600 sits at $249.99 with a two-year warranty.