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amazon TP-Link AC1900 Touch Screen Wi-Fi Gigabit Router Touch P5 reviews
Most routers these days offer a user-friendly management console that makes it easy to change settings and configure things like parental controls and wireless security. With the TP-Link AC1900 Touch Screen Wi-Fi Gigabit Router Touch P5, configuring your network is easier than ever, thanks to its bright touchscreen display featuring a graphical user interface colorful. The Touch P5 was a snap to install and offered relatively good transfer speeds in our testing, but its overall performance fell a bit short of our editor for mid-range routers, the Linksys EA7500 Max-Stream AC1900 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router.
Design and features
The Touch P5 is a sleek-looking dual-band router. It uses a curved, black cabinet with a textured design and measures 2.1 x 11.2 x 6.2 inches (HWD). Still, the real draw is the 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen, full color, embedded in the cabinet’s center and surrounded by a glossy black border. The router is designed to sit on your desktop, but it can also be wall-mounted using the two mounting holes on the bottom of the cabinet.
The Touch P5 uses a 1GHz dual-core CPU and has three detachable adjustable antennas. It’s an AC1900 router, which means it can reach speeds (theoretically) up to 600Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and up to 1,300Mbps on the 5GHz band. At the rear of the cabinet are four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one WAN (Internet) port, one USB 2.0 port, and the Power and Restart buttons. The USB 3.0 port is conveniently located on the front of the router.
A blue illuminated LED strip below the bottom display bezel lets you know that the router is powered on. To activate the touch screen, press the Home button located below the control panel. That will launch the Welcome screen with the time, date, mode (Router, Access Point, or Repeater), and the active Wi-Fi band. Swiping the screen to the right brings up your guest network settings, and an additional swipe to the right takes you to the first router settings screen, bearing a striking resemblance to the iOS desktop. Here you will find icons for Quick Settings, Mode Selection, Wireless, WPS, Guest Network, Parental Controls, Device Controls, Print Server, DDNS, and LAN settings. Another swipe to the right brings you more DHCP Server, QoS, Clock, Screen Settings, Restart & Reset, and Admin Password icons. Pressing the Home button returns you to the Guest Network screen. To get more advanced features, such as NAT forwarding, denial of service, and SPI Firewall settings, you will have to use the Web Control Panel, which you can access by typing tplinkwifi.net in the bar your Web browser address.
Settings and Performance
When you power on the router, the touch screen prompts you to enter the new administrator password, select the region and time zone, select the Internet connection type (Dynamic, Static, PPoE, or L2TP) and generate the Wi-Password Fi. That can be easily done using the virtual keyboard and takes less than a minute to complete, or you can use the Web mentioned above Control Panel.
The Touch P5 achieved very respectable scores in our 5GHz transfer rate tests. Its score of 535 Mbps in our proximity test (in the same room) is the fastest we’ve seen from an AC1900 router, beating the Linksys EA7500 (495 Mbps), Synology Router RT1900ac (479 Mbps), and Asus RT-AC68U AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router (290.5Mbps). Its score of 238Mbps on the 30-foot test is also good, but not as good as the Linksys EA7500 (298Mbps) or the Asus RT-AC68U (305Mbps). It beat the Synology RT1900ac (231Mbps), but not by much.
The Touch P5’s 92.6 Mbps score on our 2.4GHz proximity test beats the Asus RT-AC68U (90 Mbps) but falls short of the Synology RT1900ac (95.9 Mbps) and Linksys EA7500 (97, 3 Mbps). Its score of 44Mbps on the 30-foot test falls behind the Linksys EA7500 (52.1Mbps), Asus RT-AC68U (81.9Mbps), and Synology RT1900ac (45.6Mbps).
We test the file transfer performance using a USB drive and a 1.5 GB folder containing a mix of photo, music, video, and document files. In our reading test, the Touch P5 delivered an average transfer rate of 25.6MBps. The Tenda AC1900 AC15 Wireless Dual Band Router (42.3MBps) manages 40.4MBps, and the Linksys EA7500 delivers 66.7MBps. Our leader, the Linksys AC 1900 Smart Wi-Fi Router (WRT1900AC), achieved a score of 80 MBps on this test. Similar results in our written tests; Touch P5’s 23.2MBps speed is far behind Tenda AC1900 AC15 (42.3MBps), Linksys EA7500 (27.8MBps), and Linksys WRT190AC (66MBps).
Conclude
If ease of use is an important factor when deciding which dual-band router to buy, put the TP-Link AC1900 Touchscreen Gigabit Touch Wi-Fi Router P5 on your shortlist. Its 4.3-inch color touchscreen makes setting up and configuring your network easy, and you don’t need to log in with a desktop or laptop to do so. The Touch P5 performed quite well in both our 5GHz transfer rate tests and our 2.4GHz proximity test, but its 2.4GHz band performance was just average in the test, as well as its file transfer performance.