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LTE on all bands: TP-Link Archer MR200 review

Still holding out for fibre in your area before upgrading your broadband at home?

While the high-speed internet revolution continues apace in our suburbs it might be an idea to ponder this: a new report in the US shows that households are actually starting to abandon ADSL and fibre in favour of a technology we know well here in South Africa.

Around a fifth of homes in the capital of consumer choice now rely exclusively on mobile internet connections for their online content, including their YouTube and Netflix fix.

It’s worth flagging up the point that here in our super secret htxt.africa editorial bunker, we use a single LTE connection for our entire staff.

Lights are few and not too bright.
Lights are few and not too bright.

So LTE is good, available, and if you’re lucky enough to live in the right place, it’s also cheap. Which is why I was personally keen to try out TP-Link’s new Archer MR200. It’s a four-port ethernet router with dual-band WiFi, 802.11ac compatibility and a built-in LTE modem. Just add a SIM card and it promises 150Mbps downloads in seconds.

So does it live up to that promise?

TP-Link Archer MR200 reviewed: Obscure frequencies are us

The most appealing thing of the MR200 isn’t that it’s relatively well designed for a router. I mean, it is well designed for a router: the slim shiny black frame is featureless enough that it fades into the background of any room it occupies, and yet doesn’t offend the eye if it is spotted. But that’s not it. No.

What really intrigues me personally is that it’s one of the first third-party routers I’ve seen that supports Telkom’s 2300MHz band broadband – a non-standard bandwidth which up until recently hasn’t been supported by phones or routers. Telkom supplies Huawei routers to its customers, but something you can buy off the shelf and use with any SIM – like the Archer MR200 – is rare.

The gloss black finish is very reflective in photos, but non-offensive in real life. Does attract fingerprints and scratches, mind.
The gloss black finish is very reflective in photos, but non-offensive in real life. Does attract fingerprints and scratches, mind.

The rest of the feature list for the Archer MR200 is comprehensive, although a little lacking in some areas. It starts well, with three internal antennae for capturing LTE signals and two optional “bunny ears” to screw into the back if they don’t suffice.

The trade-off for supporting Telkom’s LTE, however, is that all these only support LTE CAT-4 which has a theoretical capacity of 150Mbps. Telkom, Vodacom and now Cell C have all launched the faster LTE CAT-6 (also known as LTE-Advanced) which can use two channels for 300Mbps maximum throughput. It’s not hugely critical though – our experience is that even in an LTE-A neighbourhood speeds of more than 70Mbps are not common.

Around the back, it’s a bit disappointing to find that the four ethernet ports are merely 10/100Mbps and not capable of gigabit ethernet speeds around your local network. On the other hand, the dual wireless networks are top spec: the 5GHz network is 802.11ac standard, and proved it by benchmarking much faster than its 2.4GHz 802.11n sibling.

TP-Link Archer MR200 reviewed: Good performance

Which brings us nicely onto to the crux of the matter: is the Archer MR200 worth the R2 500 that it commonly retails for?

Certainly the router is a relative joy to use, if you find your joy when configuring networking equipment of any kind. The full-size SIM port is unlocked and just worked with any card we threw at it (it comes with adaptors for micro- and nanoSIMs, by the way), and the set-up interface is clean, responsive and well laid out.

There’s no shortage of settings either – streaming video aficionados will enjoy the out-of-the box VPN support, corporates will like the fact you can set up multiple WiFi networks including a restricted one for guests.

Around the back the ethernet ports are disappointing.
Around the back the ethernet ports are disappointing.

It’s not quite perfect, mind. For starters the connectivity diagnostic, for checking your LTE reception, is limited to a single signal strength percentage. There’s no drill-down into SNRs and RSSI and so forth to help troubleshoot antenna placements.

I also ran into an odd issue when using Miracast to beam an Android tablet’s screen to a TV when connected to the Archer MR200. The TV and tablet had been paired previously without any issues, but when connected to the TP-Link router the connection was too choppy to be usable. I didn’t get to the bottom of this, but I’m fairly sure that it was a specific TV/Phone/Router conflict that you probably won’t run in to.

So back to the price. Two and a half thousand is a lot of money for a router that doesn’t have gigabit ethernet ports or the latest LTE compatibility. By comparison, cheap and nasty 3G/4G routers start at around R500, if you shop around.

Is it worth it? Yes, in a word. The Archer MR200 is a premium with features that reflect the price tag, although I’d really like to have seen faster ethernet ports for the money. If you already have an LTE SIM – from a USB dongle, for example – and want to extend its range to the whole house, this is a wise choice.

If you’re thinking of upgrading an existing router that was supplied as part of an LTE contract, however, don’t bother. We tested it against a Huawei B593 router supplied by Telkom as part of its unlimited LTE package, and both achieved download speeds that weren’t significantly different from one another. The same goes for upload and latency, using Speedtest.net. Likewise, WiFi performance in terms of range and transfer speed were within a hair’s breadth of each other.

For improving your home network, then, stick with the LTE modem you have and look at a dedicated router like the ASUS EA-AC87 instead. But if you don’t need an unlimited contract, you could  pair this with a capped download SIM and end up with a reasonable monthly payment for a very good broadband connection. A fifth of Americans can’t be wrong, can they?

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