TP-Link Deco Outdoor Mesh WiFi (Deco X50-Outdoor), AX3000 Dual Band WiFi 6 Mesh, 2 Gigabit PoE Ports, 802.3at PoE+,Weatherproof, Works with All Deco Mesh WiFi, 1-Pack

UPDATED REVIEW: I have used and tested three different TP-Link outdoor units, the EAP 225 outdoor, EAP 650 Outdoor, and finally this unit the X50 Outdoor. I mounted it approximately 8 feet off the ground. The mount for the 650 will work with the X50 but not the other way around. The first two are made for business use and take a little more steps to setup and do not work seamlessly with existing mesh like the XE70 Pro's I am using. First and foremost, clear line of sight is very important. Don't expect any of these to go through a metal shed wall or a thick cover of trees. No wifi will. However, with a medium tree area that you can still see the hotspot from it will work pretty good! I used the 225 for over a year and it would achieve around 150-200 mbps download out to around 100-150 yards. The 650 was another story and I used it for about 6 months now and it will give you around 200-300mbps out 250 yards and even got 50 mbps downloads out at 400 yards. These are plenty for say a wifi camera like Reolink or yes even a battery powered Ring that I tested for several months at 250 yards while only getting around 40 mbps downloads due to shrubs and limbs partially in the way. I decided to pull the trigger on the X50 outdoor as I heard it was about the same strength as the 650 outdoor according to Tplink. There isn't much info out there comparing the two. I understand the 650 has 4 antennas and the X50 only two which made me hesitate but I really wanted a seamless mesh system inside and out so I bought an X50...lets just say I was shocked. I can easily get 300 mbps out at 300 yards and even got a mere 10 mbps at 600 yards which was through a thicket of trees but I could see the hotspot barely. Once again, line of sight is important so don't mount a camera or stand inline with a bunch of trees/tree trunks and expect to get great signal. I did get 100-150 out at 400 yards through some light tree branches though. If mounting a camera, I found the camera better have a good antenna on it because while the S24 Ultra can get great signal at say 400 yards, the new battery power Wyze V3 cannot. I haven't tested the other cameras at that distance but I'm willing to bet the old Reolink Go Plus with external antenna probably will be fine.So if considering any of the three outdoor units above...don't hesitate on the X50 outdoor! Great price at $119, now $99. I do have all my units hardwired and is the only way to go in my opinion. I tried using the 225 and 650 to send wifi signals to the other where one was wired and the other about 100 yards away and the drop in download speeds were very poor. I was hoping to boost the signal even farther across property but the signal loss to the hotspot 100 yards away was so bad it was useless to use and I acheived much better speeds from the wired one. You can assign devices to each unit or allow them to roam. If its a static device like a camera/TV/laptop that is not wired then I will assign it to the unit it's closest too or gets the best signal from. Most of the time the TPlink software does a pretty good job itself though.UPDATED INFO:Since my original review I now have 4 X50 outdoor units that are all in AP mode and a 5th that is 100 yards from another connected via wifi mesh. The 5th one has a clear line of sight with no obstructions and at same height as hard wired one. You loose a lot of bandwidth linking two X50 through wifi. Instead of seeing 1 gbps plus from the hardwired I only see around 100-150 mbps standing near the remote one. I wanted this one so I could send a signal down a long driveway to the gate entering the property. The driveway has thick tree cover on both sides so no line of sight from house to gate. The gate is around 150 -175 yards away and standing at it I can get around 40-70 mbps downloads. You may say that is unacceptable but for a remote camera or remote gate via wifi it is plenty. I can now open and close the gate remotely within a few seconds of activating it via the app for it. I placed a battery powered ring camera down at the gate and while it may have a slight lag I can open it and view it live so it works. The point is, don't expect these units to put out extremely fast speeds if connected wirelessly to each other.TECH SUPPORT and INSTALL: I found out like others, the instructions for setting up a mesh system with the DECO units aren't very clear and it took a lot of searching to get the answer I needed. I did chat with tech support who told me what I needed to know, which was different than most forum post. In summary, pick a DECO inside the home and set it as the 'main deco' and then set all you other decos to be in AP or Access Point mode. My home is prewired for networking and I have a central closet that houses patch panels and a 48-port TPLINK switch. I simply placed the 4 different XE70 pro Decos in different rooms across the house and plugged them into the network port on the wall and I get full downloads coming from each as advertised by my ISP. The outdoor units are all plugged into an 8 port POE switch, TP-Link TL-SG1210P instead of using the standalone POE power supply that comes with each X50 outdoor unit.COVERAGE OBSERVATIONS: I have a large home and yes I used to have one Netgear wifi router upstairs that gave me decent coverage throughout house and even into the yard say 100 yards from house. Certain areas weren't as good as others and yes the farther away you got the slower the speeds got. The purpose of the mesh system was to get strong speeds throughout the house and it works...but at the expense of buying more units. What I've realized is walls, concrete, furniture, ect. all affect the signals. Stick a wifi security camera up and you will find out if your coverage is great or you have a dead spot. I've played with all the app settings and found some work better being turned off. Also you will find some appliances or other items that have wifi controls simply have terrible onboard wifi built into them and that is not TPLINK's fault but that manufacturer.STABILITY: For the most part I haven't had any issues with disconnects on a regular basis. I have had on a few occasions where I had a red light on a Deco unit but was still getting wifi signal from it. Resarted it and it went back green. The other issue I have seen is if the main deco goes down or is restarted then the other Decos go red and stay red even after the main deco is back up. After choosing 'resart the network' option they all returned green. Not sure what causes it to go red but it does on occasion but still seems to be working. A few times since I have owned the units in the last 6 months did I actually loose wifi on one or two of them but a restart fixed it. The app also has an auto restart option for setting a schedule to restart them whenever you choose so maybe its to clear out the cache or like most computers, just helps to restart them on occasion.APP AND SETTINGS:With the amount of coverage I have around the house, and yes running the 'network optimization' option in the app I was having terrible access to some of my wifi cameras that were in clear line of sight of one of the outdoor units to the point I couldn't even view them live at all. I found that turning 'Beamforming' OFF, fixed the issue for almost all cameras but one. This was an immediate fix after I restarted the network for good measure after the setting change. I have the Smart DHCP setting off. Since my Xfinity Modem is still my main router (wifi turned off in it of which may require Xfinity support to update some modems to not keep turning it back on each day by itself) I allow it to assign the IP address for each item connected to the network. When it was enabled in the app I was noticing some items that would have two different IP addresses, one in the app for that item and one in the Deco app. Turning this off fixed that issue. I still have 'fast roaming' turned on and have n issues with my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra switching over to the stronger Deco. 'Smart antennas' option is set to Auto. I haven't played around with the vertical only or horizontal only options as Auto seems to be working fine. This leads me to the app.APP THOUGHTS UPDATES: The app is basic but will work for most people. I haven't had any experience with it regarding if my main deco was also my router so I can't comment on that aspect. I will say reading a bunch of reviews and articles...I'm not sure why TPLINK doesn't have one of their main routers such that it can be part of the DECO mesh system. In other words if you go buy a top of the line $500 TPLINK wifi router to replace your XFINITY modem/router it will not mesh with the DECO system and you will have two different Wifi Networks. My understanding is the DECO router option is lacking in a lot of options a good router can do or even what the XFINITY router can do once you log into it. As far as the DECO app with a total of 9 deco units in my system, it works for a majority of people and even a lot of those users won't use it's full potential. I use it fully and wish it had a little more options. The big plus I like is being able to assign different items to a certain deco unit and not allowing it to roam to another. In other words if I have a camera in direct line of sight of one deco and much closer than any other deco then I assign it to that deco and no more issues with it switching between that one and another that may provide a weaker signal. Appliances or other fixed in place items, I do the same thing with. You can name each item in the app so it is obvous what is is since the manufacturer of that item may give it some wierd name that makes you scratch your head trying to figure out what is connected to your network. Friends or family come over...name the device that connected for future reference. You can block devices all together so this is where the naming comes in handy, especially if you live in a big neighborhood with lots of close neighbors.WIFI BANDS: I turned off my 6ghz band in the app as I found that unless you are very close to a deco and your phone connects to it, I see no benefit from it. Even in the same room, my phone is over 1 gbps on 5 ghz. So, I turned if off to eliminate any extra uneccessary wifi signals. None of my Decos are wifi 7 so no comments on that.NETWORK OPTIMIZATION: I do question how well the network optimaization works and at what point is a DECO unit too close to another. I can run this and it tell me everything is perfect or may find one channel that needed optimizing so not sure about this too much. I ran an app called 'WIFI Analyzer' that shows the different channels and overlapping bands...as well as hidden SSID's that do not show up in the deco app. Looking at this tool, it makes me question how well the Decos are working together. Wifi speeds and coverage are really good, especially once the outdoor units were added. The hidden SSID's make me question them for security reasons and wish TPLINK's app had a little more refining. This starts getting out of my area of knowledge but figured I would mention it for someone reading this that may have knowledge in analyzing networks with better tools and knowledge...kmowing that the app may limit their ability to refine the network fully.OVERALL THOUGHTS: TPLINK mesh is working great. Do I wonder how a Netgear Nighthawk mesh would work if they were able to be put into AP mode...could I use less of them for same coverage? Yes, but at at least 5x the cost, I'm not going to find out unless someone wants to donate them to me. I did read an article the week of 5/27/25 that stated TPLINK is under investigation for their cheap prices in an attempt to push out the competition which may explain the cheaper prices but honestly, everything is so overpriced, like the Netgear nighthawk units, that I think they are just making it more competitive as it should be. Yes they are also under investigation security wise since they are not US based so keep that in mind. There are numerous articles over the years about their units as well as vulnerabilities they faced before updates were done. One reviewer mentioned the EULA you are agreeing to when you install these. All in all, I'm happy at the moment.Hope this helps as there wasn't much info on comparisons between these units.

Thanks to Prime Day it was time for me to finally upgrade my home network. I was looking for a reasonably priced WiFi-6 mesh system with 3 stations (1 main + 2 satellites), at least AX3000 speeds, and a price tag of up to $300. It came down to two choices: the Eero 6+ and what I chose instead, the TP-Link Deco X55. Both systems had similar specs, but I liked how the TP-Link Deco had 3x Gigabit ethernet ports per satellite (the Eeeros have just 2). That meant I could wire each satellite in a daisy-chain configuration for a wired backhaul AND connect the 3rd ethernet plug to the gigabit switches I had at each satellite location. This meant that all of my hard-wired devices could stay hardwired, while adding mesh WiFi at full speeds (no bandwidth reserved for transmission thanks to the backhaul).Installation was quick and easy - I simply turned off my cable modem, disconnected my previous router, installed one of the Deco X55's in its place (in my bedroom), and turned everything back on. After downloading the TP-Link Deco app I had an internet connection set up and good to go in less than 5 minutes! Once that was working, I added the other two Deco's into the mix - one in the living room and one in the family room - with all three forming an almost perfect triangle for whole-home coverage. In less than 15 minutes after opening the box, I had a fast, Wifi-6 mesh system in my home.I had been using an older AC1900 router for almost 10 years now and back then it was just fine - but with more and more smart home devices being added to my home, it no longer was enough. I have a medium-sized amount of smart home devices (around 50 devices including hubs) and on occasion, I'd experience signal dropouts on some of the farther cameras, and other devices would sporadically go offline/online at random. With the X55 mesh installed, all of my issues disappeared! My smart cameras used to show a signal strength of between 80% (indoor cameras) down to around 55% (outdoor cameras). With the TP-Link Deco mesh in place, the signal strength changed to 100% indoor and 95% outdoor - a major improvement for sure. Pulling up live and recorded footage from the outdoor camera is so much quicker now. All of the other indoor smart devices I have all show 98-100% signal strength. Needless to say, this was a definite upgrade!As for my rating, I give it a solid 4-stars. There are a few small details that keep me from giving it a full 5-stars: some missing features that I had with my old router. One of them is being able to bulk reserve IPs by entering them into the app beforehand; with the TP-Link Deco, the device has to be connected to the network FIRST (with whatever DHCP IP address the Deco gives it), then you have to go into the app to reserve it with a static IP. I would rather have the more common table where you just enter each Mac address, static IP, and device name and it's done. Another missing feature is being able to have at least 2 separate SSIDs (not including a guest SSID). With the Deco you can only have one main SSID and one isolated guest SSID.Finally, to see some speed numbers I ran speed tests using both fast.com and speedtest.com, and the day before installing the mesh system I had an average internet speed of around ~260Mbps. The day after I installed the TP-Link mesh system my speeds went up to well over 490Mbps! Downloading is a lot faster, and streaming is super snappy as well.So in the end, I am very happy with my purchase of the TP-Link Deco X55 Wifi6 mesh system. Aside from the small feature complaints above, everything is awesome! I no longer have devices going offline/online. My internet speed has almost doubled (my old router was the bottleneck!) and streaming seems quicker as well. If you are looking for a mesh system to upgrade your current home network to the current WiFi6 standards, I would say that this is definitely a good buy!------------EDIT 02.18.2024: TP-Link Improvements Are Awesome!TP-Link has been steadily pushing out Deco firmware and app updates, and my -1 star complaint no longer exists thanks to two added features that completely address my complaints:- CUSTOM IP RESERVATIONSFirst, I don't have to play the game of connecting a new device, letting the Deco assign a DHCP address to it, then having to go back into the app to manually change the reserved IP. Now I can go straight into the Deco app and under the "Address Reservation" tab I can now select "Custom"; this brings me to a page where I can manually type in a MAC address AND the local IP address that I want to assign to it - without having to connect the device first.- SEPARATE IoT NETWORKMy other complaint was that I only had the option to have two SSIDs - one main and one guest network. I wanted to be able to configure another SSID specifically so I could group all of my Smarthome devices, and after a couple of firmware updates later TP-Link not only gave me that option, but an even better one: they added a dedicated Iot (Internt of Things) network! Not only does this group my sparthome devices separate from my main network, but it also restricts communications between networks so that the IoT devices stay isolated. This is exactly the feature I wanted them to add during my initial review.- VPN COMPATIBILITYTP-Link has also added the option to use a VPN (server or client) directly through the router, as opposed to having to VPN each individual device manually. Furthermore, the VPN can be assigned to the network in two ways: either all devices (every device connected to the mesh will go through the VPN) or I can select specific MAC addresses that must pass through the VPN before reaching the Internet (tI chose option #2). With this I can make sure that certain devices that like to "call home" can only do so through the VPN, helping to protect my network and privacy.All in all, TP-Link has done a great job at supporting these devices, and their ability to add additional features over time have made me feel confident to revise my initial review now give this system a worthy 5 stars!

I needed to upgrade my wifi because my sprinkler control unit in my detached garage was not getting a strong enough signal. Initially, I set one of the satellites inside my home at a window sill just 10 yards away from the garage hoping to get an improved signal. Unfortunately, the signal to my garage was still too weak for my sprinkler unit (which apparently has a poor wifi receiver). I was close to returning this product, but I decided to try and place the satellite inside the garage instead....and that was the magic solution! Although the signal going through walls is disappointing, if the satellites can just barely reach each other, then you will be able to utilize the improved range if your connecting device is in close proximity of any of the satellites. If you are trying to to extend the range outside the main home or through multiple walls, I don't think this is the best solution, but if you are inside, I think you will be fine if you space the satellites correctly.The app was the main reason I ended up giving it 5 stars because it is very easy to use and gives you the flexibility to choose a frequency like 2.4 GHz for some smart devices that require it. I think it's a great product IF you end up getting the range you need, but be aware it may struggle penetrating walls.