[section_title title=Packaging]
Packaging
It’s strange to see TP-Link going for a plain white box with the RE200 range extender. Normal green and the newer blue has been completely put aside for the RE200s packaging. Albeit a very nice textures white and grey pattern which is very fine print on the box. I’m not even sure you can see it in the photos.
The front and back of the box is printed with promotional material where it shows off the fact that the RE200 support both 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi bands. However, the colour choices for the WiFi bands are misleading as the LEDs on the RE200 are all green. More on that shortly.
The sides of the RE200s box are where the information we’re after are printed. The right side contains package contents, system requirements and multi-lingual information and the left side contains information about how to use the RE200 itself.
It calls the built-in Ethernet port the ‘Entertainment Adapter’ where it allows things like a blu-ray player, game console, smart tv and PC to connect wirelessly to the network should it not have a wireless adapter. It also carries on the theme with the ‘Easy Two Touch Setup’, where you simply use WPS (WiFi protected setup) which involves pressing both the WPS buttons on your router and WiFi range extender to automatically configure them. Finally, it calls its last feature ‘Intelligent Signal Indicator’ which is basically a set of LEDs inside the RE200 to let you know if and when what features are active.
The RE200 itself inside the box can be seen here. TP-Link chose to use the similar apple-ish packaging to display the RE200. Inside is a sleeve which when opened contains all the informational documentation, an ethernet cable, and a resource CD.
I bought the TP-Link RE200 AC750 today and honestly it was such a disappointment! I use the powerline adapters and there amazing but this is such a let down. It can’t pick up the wifi anywhere in the house unless it’s in the same room. Makes it kinda useless!
Hey Mick, thanks for letting us know what’s going on with your Wi-Fi extender. I didn’t review the product so I can’t speak for our editor’s experience, but having used a very cheap extender / repeater I can see that what you’re reporting is certainly not what anyone would expect when they buy such a device.
There are a couple of things you can do which may improve the situation…
1) Download a wi-fi sniffer app onto your smartphone to get a visual representation of not only your network but also all other local networks which might be causing interference. If your neighbour has a powerful router running on the same channel as your network it can cause interference and greatly reduce the effectiveness of your wifi setup. There are plenty of free apps that will do the job for both Android and iPhone, the one I use on Android is made by Netgear and called Wifi Analytics. It’ll give you an easy to read graph showing all bandwidth use and armed with that info you can take the guesswork out of finding a clear channel for your network. I’m not saying the Netgear app is the best choice, it’s simply the one I use and because it does everything I needed it wasn’t necessary for me to look further into the alternatives.
2) Try to find out if there’s a firmware update that will improve the effectiveness of the TP-Link RE200 AC750 – It’s important to know that there may be regional variations in the hardware and so you need to download the correct firmware for your region. If you’re in the UK you can find all the support info here https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/download/re200/ otherwise you can use that link as a gateway to then change to your own region.
3) If none of the above options help, ie. there’s no interference and the device is up to date, it might simply be that you have a faulty unit. It’s never a nice experience to receive a defective product, but I would suggest that you report your problems directly to TP-Link so that they can assist you either by resolving issues that I’ve not considered or helping to arrange a replacement device if it’s necessary.
I hope this reply is helpful for you. Please let us know how you get on if you choose to persevere with the extender… our reviews are only as good as our own experience with any product so feedback from the community (even if it’s ‘bad news’) helps other shoppers when it comes to choosing their next purchase.
My son bought me one to improve lap-top, tablet & mobile internet reception on the ground floor of our 1929 brick built house. The Virgin router is located upstairs. The RE 200 doubled the DL speed from about 20 to 40 Mbps. This made a noticeable improvement particularly to Facetime chats with family & friends.