Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So far not so good. A quick background for me. I worked previously as a Network Engineer for over 10 years, with multiple degrees and certifications in the field. 4 years ago I left networking behind and moved into a different field. So I'm not new to this stuff at all. I purchased the XE75 (AXE5400) about a week ago. Setup was quick and easy. I initially set it up using the 6GHz backhaul, in AP mode. (I have a firewall upstream managing all the routing, DHCP, etc.) It worked for about 48 hours then everything went sideways. I couldn't get the "satellite" unit to connect to the "main" unit. I tried rebooting, moving the units closer together, checked the firmware, etc. and nothing worked, so I connected them both via Ethernet. I bought this particular model so I can use the 6 GHz band for the dedicated backhaul. At any rate, the Ethernet backhaul worked, and seems to be working well still. That being said, the 6 Ghz backhaul SHOULD work and it doesn't. That's very disappointing. With a work around for the backhaul problem in place...a couple days later I started just randomly losing my connection to the network. The SSID would disappear on my phone (and other devices) and it would automatically switch over to my LTE connection. I thought perhaps it had to do with a roaming issue so I checked that fast roaming was enabled, and it was not, so I enabled it but the problem persisted. I disabled fast roaming then I disabled beamforming, and the problem persisted. I prefer to mess with a single variable at a time so I know what fixes the problem. Neither of these settings solved my problem. I reached out to support about this, and they suggested the above steps, as well as disabling the security on my Guest Wireless network. I'm testing that as I write this. I will report back on my findings with that. When it works, which is intermittent at this point, it's been great. I've seen some pretty good reviews from some people that seem to be pretty qualified on the topic and have had a great experience so far. All I can say about that is I believe them, so there must be a production quality issue here and possibly some faulty hardware. Support is supposed to be calling me soon to talk to me. We'll see if that actually happens, and like I said previously, I will try to report back on that conversation. As of this moment, if that call doesn't put me on a solid path to resolution I will likely be returning these. P.S. - Something I observed, in AP mode you loose a lot of the security features outlined in the product description. That makes sense to me since they are routing functions, but keep that in mind. I use a Firewalla Purple upstream for all my routing, and content filtering needs. No monthly subscription! It's affordable, and works very very well. So all those extra features provided by TP-Link I don't need, and never intended to use. I literally just need my wireless devices to connect to the network, and it doesn't seem to be handling that well at the moment. *Update* So support did call me and they remotely connected to my Deco units. We did some troubleshooting for about 2 hours. We tested various things and they collected logs and other info to analyze further. After a few more emails back and forth afterwards we came to the conclusion that the 160Mhz band was causing problems. A setting I overlooked during my own troubleshooting, but when you click on your SSID password it brings up a few more options and at the bottom of the page you can select 160 or 80. After setting it to 80 things stabilized, in fact I don't have any problems at all except on the outside edges of my home and in my garage (my home is about 5,000 sq. ft. not counting the garage) I might just need another deco as I'm likely experiencing signal strength issues in those places. I did not realize my 2 year old iPhone doesn't play well with the 160Mhz band, and a lot of other devices for that matter. Even though the 160Mhz option is marked as recommended I wouldn't use it unless you know your devices support it. At any rate the problem seems to be resolved and support was very persistent. I actually got to the point where I was tired of troubleshooting it and told them so and wanted to just return these units but they really wanted to figure the problem out, and I think they did. So because of both of these reasons I increased my rating to 4 stars. One more thing, during our troubleshooting I noticed new firmware was released. The release notes mentioned wireless backhaul stability and general wireless stability improvements. I did NOT update during troubleshooting (again because I didn't want too many variables in play here). Once things were stable for a few days I did roll the update. It's been 24 hours and I have not noticed any problems. I want to disconnect my wired backhaul and see if that problem is now resolved with the update. I'll report back when I have a chance to test. If it does work that will be huge! I'm hoping this review helps others avoid some time troubleshooting. At this point I'd say my opinion of these has changed and I would now recommend them. Even though I can't take advantage of some of the features yet (i.e. Wifi 6e, 160 Mhz band) I got this unit to future proof my home network and because for the price and feature ratio you can't beat it with the other brands. Based on my experience with support they're determined to make sure they work. Another Update: I've been running the primary unit connected via Ethernet, and the the satellite unit is backhauled via the 6Ghz band to the primary unit for about 2 weeks now and it's working flawlessly. I suspect the firmware update fixed my stability issues. I'm going to leave my review at 4 stars because of the initial issues I had, but I'd definitely recommend these. Also, I never updated on disabling security on Guest Wifi during initial troubleshooting. It didn't work, as expected, but wanted to make sure others know incase they run into similar issues. Just make sure your firmware is up to date and disable the 160Mhz (use 80 instead) unless you absolutely know for sure your devices utilize 160. Those that don't use 160 will likely run into problems though. Test it yourself and see which works best for your devices and home. Good luck!!