The advent of ‘spider-legs’ antennas on routers seems to be upon us, following ASUS’ reveal of its eight-legged AC5300 router. Not one to be left behind in terms of design innovation, TP-Link released the AC3200 Wireless Tri-Band Gigabit Router, albeit with two antennas less. It is by no means a slouch when it comes to performance as it boasts of impressive speed and coverage. It also promises less network congestion, a problem that many small office, home office (SOHO) businesses face. 

Unconventional Yet Functional

The design of the AC3200 reminds you of a flattened black box when its antennas are neatly tucked in their respective gutters. Extend the six antennas outwards and what you’ll see is a device that was perhaps perceived as futuristic by TP-Link. Its square-shaped nature may be a far cry from conventional routers in the market; this makes it all the more memorable in our books. Setting up was fairly easy, if – yes, there is a huge if here – you read the setup guide properly. For beginners, it may be a little bit of an adventure, but you’ll get there…eventually.

Short Distance Only

The AC3200 is a perfect networking solution for SOHO has its 2.4GHz band performs well in smaller environments. Its throughput on this particular band remained steady at 29Mb/s if you’re no more than five meters away from the router. However, it does falter when you’re further away, which makes us think it won’t be suitable for an office of 16 people (with your boss sitting all the way in front). 

Congestion Eased

On the 5Ghz option, the throughput doesn’t vary much from the 2.4GHz in terms of speed. However, it does ease network congestion quite a bit, with it connected to two network printers and a WD MyBook Server shared between more than a dozen colleagues. As you can imagine, on average, each colleague will connect at least two devices on the router.

Specs

Price: RM1,699

Dimensions: 200 X 200 X 39mm

Weight: 1,402g

Hardware Interface: 4 10/100/1000Mbps LAN Ports, 1 10/100/1000Mbps WAN Port, 1 USB 3.0 Port + 1 USB 2.0 Port

Wireless Standards: IEEE 802.11ac/n/a 5GHz, IEEE 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz

Frequency: 2.4GHz and 5GHz Band1/Band4

CPU Processor: 1GHz Dual-Core CPU and 3 co-processors

Rating

V – 8

P – 8

F – 9

D – 9

U – 8

Total score – 8.4

Verdict:  A great option for SOHOs with lots of device in one place.