TP-Link Deco X90

You can pay less for a Wi-Fi 6 mesh, but the X90’s superb coverage and astonishing speeds justify the price

- DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH

PRICE £374 (£449 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk

Some mesh systems focus on high-end performance, others prioritise affordability. The Deco X90 finds its own balance: it’s hardly a budget system, but it’s competitively priced considering it promises to deliver Wi-Fi 6 for up to 200 devices, throughout a home of up to six bedrooms.

Despite those ambitious claims, the kit contains only two stations. They’re not much to look at, but they’re tasteful, with a single status LED near the base of each one. If you need to extend the system’s footprint, an additional unit costs £245. The X90 doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6E, but it works so well over regular Wi-Fi 6 that may not matter.

It’s a regular tri-band design, with each unit containing a legacy 2.4GHz radio plus two independent 5GHz transmitters, ensuring that the client network doesn’t get bogged down with backhaul traffic. The backhaul connection is rated at a comparatively slow 1.2Gbits/sec, while the main network runs at up to 4.8Gbits/sec. However, the backhaul can borrow bandwidth from the primary network when needed, allowing the system to dynamically adapt to demand.

Both stations are also equipped with a 2.5Gbits/sec Ethernet socket, as well as an ordinary gigabit connector. It’s great to have this ultra-high-speed option, although a few more sockets would be welcome, especially since one of the ports on the primary unit is needed for your internet connection. Still, if you want to hook up several wired devices, a five-port 2.5GbE switch costs less than £100.