Pros: I bought this to cover a dead spot in my home network. Once I got it set up, the extender worked very well -- markedly increased signal strength throughout that side of the house.

Cons: A little tricky to set up with non-standard configurations. I have a separate router plus wireless access point, and the setup routine assumes that your router and wireless access points have the same IP address. Took me a couple of hours to figure out how to work around that, but once I did, setup went very well.

Other Thoughts: If you have a "vanilla" home network -- one router plus computers -- this will work great and is easy to set up.

Pros: Quick and straightforward setup, even without WPS. Fairly powerful signal. Low profile. Ethernet port could come in handy. Built-in management tool is decent, and helpfully reports approximate signal quality to base station. Both dual- and single-band extension modes. Retains settings when power lost, which is especially useful when figuring out the best placement.

Cons: Default username and password for management tool appears to be the same on all units. Sparse documentation. Icons on unit are very small. Conveys some information with red/green lights that colorblind people (like myself) may find impossible to distinguish.

Other Thoughts: This unit is used to extend the disappointingly weak wifi signal from a combined cable modem and 802.11n wifi router (Arris TG862G-CT). In a house with basement, ground, and upper floor, the existing router (on the upper floor) gave good signal to about 1/4 the house, mediocre but stable signal to 1/4, poor and unstable signal to 1/4, and no signal to the rest.

The major goal was to make the 50/5 Mbps internet connection available in a few rooms the existing router simply couldn't reach. Since the devices which typically connect to the network all support 5 GHz 802.11ac, I set the extender to dedicate the 2.4 GHz band to communicating with the base router, and the 5 GHz band (which typically penetrates walls better anyway) to communicate with the devices.

Placing the extender on the ground floor in one of the few rooms with an excellent connection to the base router (which is on the upper floor) now gives at least 50 Mbps to around 75% of the house, and about 40 Mbps almost everywhere else. In truth the unit and the base router are close enough that this arrangement is more like adding a good 5 GHz signal than extending the router's poor 2.4 GHz one, but at lower cost than a new router. The optimal case will vary case-by-case, but while setting up the network it's worth keeping in mind that the final speed is determined by the weakest link. Fortunately, testing new locations for the extender is very quick since the settings are retained when unplugged and it only requires 30-45 seconds to reactivate once plugged in.

In short, the extender works pretty well. If you want to extend a blindingly fast wireless network for use with NAS, for example, I'd look elsewhere. For more modest purposes, however, it has more than met my expectations for its price.

Pros: Setup is a no-brainer: plug it in, connect (disconnect from current wi-fi), configure 2GHz & 5GHz. Enjoy extended coverage without using 2 routers. The end.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: If you have problems connecting this to your existing wi-fi, you probably shouldn't even own a computer.

Pros: Works as advertised. Very simple setup, or more detailed if you like but not necessary. I used the web page sign-in method and it was stupid easy and then you can unplug it and place it to best advantage.

In my case, my home office is buried in a corner of the house behind multiple walls. I found the best location for the repeater was in a nearby bathroom. Now the signal strength is mostly equal throughout the house. 5Ghz appears to be extended equally as well as 2.4Ghz.

Reception range into the repeater is excellent. That bathroom was always a problem for my mobile phone, but the TP-Link takes it all in stride and re-transmits perfectly. 5 bar service now in my office with minimal if any additional lag from my subjective standpoint (certainly so much better than the "1 bar" of service I had before).

Cons: The re-transmit range does not appear to be as wide as my main router the Asus RT-N66U, probably caused by the fact that the repeater has smaller antennae. I also cannot speak to how effective more than one in series over a larger area will be.

Other Thoughts: This is best used to fill holes, as opposed to doubling your wi-fi range.

If finding the "center" of your house for your main router compromises the reception at an outlying corner, as in my case, this fits the bill perfectly.

Pros: Received this a few months back and have been using it ever since I received it. Has been great to me so far and here is what I have to say about it.

Right out of the box the extender was very well packaged and all the documents provided clear information about the device and how to set the unit up. I have this set up near my xbox one and playstation 4 down the hall in a open area that I turned into my gaming "area". I have it paired with my Linksys DB router and had no issues getting the two to communicate.

After a few hours of gaming on the consoles and my desktop the extender does hold up rather well. My pings were similar in all games vs. my direct Ethernet connection to my pc. For the most part I didn't notice any lag or hiccups while in a match of BF4 or League of Legends.

Download/Upload speeds however, are totally opposite. I was averaging 10-15ms in ping, 18-25mbps write, and anywhere from 25-80mbps read. Those speeds AREN'T terribly bad, but I would much rather prefer good ol' ethernet connections. Product is not aimed towards gamers, especially FPS players. This works great as an extender and that's what it's intended to do. Great for business or folks with bigger houses. The ideal use for an extender is to extend your wi-fi's coverage outside of your house, business or wherever you plan to use it and again it does just that.

Extender does stay relatively cool which is good. I don't like heat and wall plug, those two don't go together.

Cons: LED light is bright and annoying if placed on a plug that is facing you. (maybe beside your tv next to your xbox)

Unit takes up both wall plug. If you plan to plug another peripheral under or above it, you're out of luck. This reminds me of computer cases that don't provide adequate space for usb ports in the front panel. Just for comparison..

Ethernet port on extender is 10/100m, I really don't know why tp-link decided on this. I say the only reason reason you'd need to use this is to connect it to another electronic that DOES NOT have a wi-fi card or wi-fi capability, instead it has a ethernet port. Regardless, it's nice that the port is an option on the extender.

I really wish they shrunk the extender a bit and kept the design at a minimal. I really don't know how to feel about the design of it and it's odd shape. I'm using a few other TP-Link networking devices and am very happy with them. All of the cons listed are rather minor and shouldn't effect most people on a day to day usage. I still recommend buying this product if you need that extra coverage outside the house.

Other Thoughts: Find an ideal spot for the extender and make sure that plug will always be free since this will take up both plugs. It'd be good to place it somewhere further away from the router but only so far so that the extender can still get a good grip to the router.

Also, I didn't include this in the cons because it really isn't one but now and days a good wi-fi card should be strong enough to pick signals from your neighbors house that is 4-5 houses down if you invested into a decent card. I've always loved antennas when it comes to wireless cards. It really does help receive and send more efficiently.

Other than that this extender did exactly what it's intended to do and I still use it today for when I feel that my connection to the router is not as strong.

Pros: None so far. Have not been able to get extender to connect to my TP-Link Archer C5 Router. Both were
bought in a bundle so I was sure they were compatible.

Cons: None of the methods for connecting the RE200 to my network were successful. Two attempts with TP-Link technical support were also unsuccessful. Last tech told me I have a faulty RE200 and I should send it back to the reseller.

Pros: Setup was fast and easy. I literally pressed the WPS button on my Router, walked across the house, plugged in the extender and pressed the button. It was up and connected in less than 10 seconds.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I recently moved into a house that has the modem setup in the exact diagonal opposite of the main bedroom. None of my devices could connect from that room. I installed the extender just outside the room (I wasn't sure it would even connect) and set it up, and now I have 5 bars on every device in the house.

I've been a fan of every TP=Link I've used, and this is no exception. It looks great, and works perfectly.

Pros: I wish I was able to write one of my usual grand adventures for this review. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be an adventure at all. On the contrary, but isn’t this one of those products that you want to have as little to do with as possible and let it do its thing? Most of my interactions with the RE200 is the configuration, so here it is.

I believe there are security issues with WPS, so I have it disabled on my router (RT-N66U); however, I decided to give it a try with the extender since the instructions simple. Sure enough, it worked seamlessly. It took longer than I expected, but that’s because I expected it to be instantaneous. After 45 seconds of staring at blinking lights, I was about to start the process over when the lights stopped blinking. Patience…. I turned the WPS off on router afterward.

Well, I don’t like magic. I wanted to see more configuration and luckily the device does have a web UI wizard to guide you through the configuration. I hit the reset button to remove the configuration from the WPS and followed the instructions to connect my laptop directly via WiFI to RE200. I followed the prompts which were very easy. I just needed to know the names of my 2.4 and 5Ghz SSIDs and their passwords. Tada! Extending again. I felt more comfortable with how I configured it this time.

My power went out for several hours one day and when it came back on I was half expecting there to be some issue. There wasn’t. All is well.

I have been able to switch back and forth from 2.4Ghz to 5Ghz on my devices with no problems. The signal strength when in range of the extender is similar to the characteristics of my router. I experience the sames speeds as if connected directly to my router.

tl;dr
- Setup is extremely easy!
- Signal strength is strong.
- Speeds are as I expect.

Cons: The only con I’ve found is there is no logout button for the administration web UI. I have to close my browser to free the session. Other than that, it does what I need it to do.

My Android tablet will drop the connection when it transitions which probably has nothing to do with the RE200 at all.

To explain that more clearly, if I walk away from the router towards the extender my signal strength will drop. Once I am in range of the RE200, the tablet will drop the connection completely. I won’t have a connection for about 3 seconds until it attempts to establish the connection again.

I believe this to be an issue with either Android or the tablet itself. My Mac and iPhone do not experience any down time during the switchover.

tl;dr
- No logout for the admin UI.

Other Thoughts: Other reviewers have done a fantastic job of providing detailed performance measurements, so you should check them out. All networks have different characteristics based on hardware, distance, quality of cable (wired), obstacle density (wireless), etc. The performance experience should be a good baseline of what you may expect if your extender location is in a similar place as what they described.

The hardest part was finding a location to plug it into that fit my personal preference. My master bedroom has a weak signal due to the density of the obstructions to the room. I finally found the perfect spot which is under a vanity that is out of the way. I viewed the status page of my RE200 to make sure it was in a good functional location too. The status page showed that the 2.4Ghz signal strength from the router was 50% and the 5Ghz was 34%. So I believe I found a good spot.

Once you have the RE200 configured, you should connect to it and verify the configuration settings and, at the least, change the admin password. I connected to it by looking at the list of connected clients on my router. It showed the extender as “RE200”.

My RE200 firmware was up-to-date with the version that is available on their support site.

If you need an extender, this would be a great value.

Pros: Works great when it works

Cons: Paired with WDR-3600, works great for about a week, then starts dropping connections constantly on 5ghz band. I put it on it's own SSID to make sure, and after about a week it can't maintain a connection for more than a minute before dropping it, this obviously makes video streaming near impossible. Have to unplug it for a few days (i assume so routing/dhcp tables can clear out) then it works again for about a week. Router works great, this thing sucks.

Other Thoughts: Might be defective but threw away all packaging so don't think i can return it. Disappointing because this thing cost more than the router! I could have bought a second WDR-3600 and bridged it for cheaper, bought for the form factor and convenience of the wall plug but not worth it.

Pros: stylish design
Ethernet port included
Simultaneous dual band option
802.11ac standard
3 internal antenna

The Quick Wizard setup was definitely quick and easy. The web interface has the familiar TP-Link GUI and options. When plugged in several feet from the router, its signal strength was at 100%. At that signal strength, my device's connection speed was at 300Mbps. When plugged in one story down from the router, its signal strength was at 45%. At that signal strength, my device's connection speed fluctuated at around 60Mbps.

Cons: My router is a dual band router, but it only broadcasts one or the other, not simultaneously. The RE200 states that "Each band has one CPU. In Single Band Mode, both CPUs are used for the single band communication. Thus, High Speed Single Band Modes are twice as fast as Dual Band Mode". In order to set up the High Speed Single Band Mode, you connect the RE200 to the router or AP using one band, then connect your devices using the other band. Since my router can only broadcast one band at a time, I couldn't take advantage of this feature, which was very disappointing.

Since I can only select one band at a time, my router is set to the 2.4GHz band. The RE200 web interface displays the 5GHz band status as if it were connected (status, SSID, network, etc), even though on the same page in a different section, it says it's disconnected. There is also no way of disabling or hiding the band I'm not using. It will broadcast the SSID even if it's not connected to any network. I tried to connect to it just to see what would happen, using the same username and password as the 2.4GHz band, and sure enough, I was connected. I'm not sure if this was by design or a bug, but it's a bit misleading to have a band broadcast when that band is not being used.

I had to factory reset several times to run my tests, and no matter which browser I used (IE and FireFox), when trying to log onto the RE200, I didn't always get the login popup window which was incredibly frustrating. But my biggest issue was that the RE200 CHANGES the mac address for any device connected to it. This is a BIG problem because I use mac filtering. My intended purpose for the RE200 is to extend my wireless network (it has the same SSID as my router's wireless network), so that my devices seemlessly hops onto the RE200 network when it's about to hit a dead zone. Having this setup and mac filtering, I would literally have to add ALL the mac addresses that the RE200 creates, which means I would have 2 mac addresses for each device. Keep in mind when I did my testing, I also tried using a different SSID than my router. I even tried a completely different router. Results were the same. I emailed TP-Link about this. They responded by saying that this was by design.

Other Thoughts: I like TP-Link products, but this one fell short in a lot of ways. I have several models of their range extenders and this one is by far the worst one. Even the web interface has a lot less options to choose from. Hopefully, they will come out with a firmware update that will fix these issues.