Design
The design of the AX50 is identical to the cheaper AX10, except for the Intel logo that it has on it because it has an Intel Dual-core chip inside it. The surface is again a fingerprint magnet, which you can’t avoid when you have glossy plastic, but the mixture of different patterns and finishes on this router with its bow-tie like design does make it look good.
You have 4 nonremovable antennas on it that you can position at different angles to get the best coverage and the green LEDs on the router look kind of cheap for its price point, but I don’t think that most people care about that.
At back we have a Gigabit WAN port, along with 4 Gigabit LAN ports, and two of these LAN ports support Link Aggregation which wasn’t possible on the cheaper AX10.
We also have a USB 3.0 port on this, and along with the Wi-Fi and WPS button, we also have a dedicated button to toggle the LEDs, which you can also schedule to turn off automatically.
One thing that really makes shopping for these routers confusing is the fact that TP-Link has 6 different routers that look identical to each other.
The AX50 looks EXTREMELY close to another router named TP-Link Archer AX3000, and the AX50 actually also has AX3000 in its name, but these are NOT the same routers, and AX50 is better, and the only way to differentiate between these two models is checking out their back, where the AX50 has a blue USB 3.0 port, but the AX3000 has a grey USB 2.0 port.
So just make sure you buy the right model and don’t get confused between these two routers, because some of them are almost impossible to differentiate between.
Setting Up Router
But at least the setting up of the router is simple, and you can do it with your PC, or with your smartphone directly using Wi-Fi. We have the familiar TP-Link interface to control the features of the router, which is quite simple and easy to work with and you can also access these using the TP-Link tether app.
Other Features
You have many useful features here, we have the guest mode, Time Machine support via USB device for Mac users, parental controls that block different categories of content based on the age you select, and also allow you to schedule internet access.
Quality of service is available based on the device or the type of workload, the router supports Open VPN and PPTP VPN, and then we also have an antivirus on this router which wasn’t present on the AX10, and this is one of its highlight features which could save you from getting infected,
but personally, I never use it as Windows Defender will probably do a better job of protecting you, and Android devices don’t really need an antivirus unless you click on one of the links that would make you date hot singles in your area.
The Archer AX50 also support 2 x 2 MU-MIMO, and beamforming, but the most important feature is of course the upgrade to Wi-Fi 6, and I’ve talked about it before, but Wi-Fi 6 offers features like OFDMA and client scheduling,
so if you have a lot of devices connected to your router, you are going to get a better experience, and in places where you have lots of other networks, Wi-Fi 6 is also going to help a lot.
Online Gaming
For online gaming, you’re also going to get a smoother experience, and the overall jump may not be that noticeable if you just have a few devices connected, but if you have a LOT of devices connected, then Wi-Fi 6 should offer big improvements in the quality of the connection.
You’re of course going to need Wi-Fi 6 compatible devices to get the benefits of all the features, but it is backward compatible with Wi-Fi 5AND older devices, and we’re slowly seeing new Wi-Fi 6 devices like this ROG Strix B550Motherboard that I’ll be soon building my first mini-ITX PC in,
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