Is the Tenda AC23 AC2100 router your next purchase for your household? This might be the best router for you while being stuck in quarantine. Find out what makes this router a bang for the buck purchase with my review of this product after using it for myself.
Design
Its design is something really “techy” with it’s black color, it looks like its cool looking, and it also has 7 antennas! making it look like it can reach fast speeds just by its looks which is I think their goal when they designed this router, but if you’re looking for a router that will fit well with most interiors of a household with light interiors the Tenda AC23 wouldn’t look appealing and fit the theme. The Tenda AC23 wouldn’t look that good together with most furniture either. I would likely set this up near the computer or maybe if the household is occupied by mostly males then this router would look good everywhere.
Main Features
- The Tenda AC23 AC2100 is a dual-band gigabit wireless router meaning it can accommodate both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. It has 802.11 ac wave2 technology and can provide speeds up to 2033 Mbps (300 Mbps for 2.4GHz and 1733 Mbps for 5GHz).
- One of the best features in my opinion is the 4×4 MU-MIMO for the 5 GHz band. If you don’t know what MU-MIMO is, it means Multiple User – Multiple Input, Multiple Output. Which basically means it can handle more devices simultaneously without feeling any delay or having your ping spiking while you’re gaming.
- The 7 antennas also provides a whole lot of WiFi coverage well beyond what my ISP’s router can offer. Even outside our house it still has 4 to 3 bars and at the front of our neighbor’s house in front of us still has 2 to 1 bar. We have a two-floor house and the router is placed on the second floor.
- It is equipped with gigabit ports that support up to 1000 Mbps bandwidth access. Which means it won’t bottleneck your connection if you have more than 100 Mbps connection.
- It has Beamforming+ for a better and more reliable connection. What Beamforming+ does is basically instead of the router broadcasting the signal of your WiFi in all directions the router determines where your device is for a stronger signal towards that direction.
- It has Parental Control which can add time restrictions to any device connected to the router and can block specific websites for each device. This is perfect for parents controlling the internet access of their children’s devices.
Performance
I’ve been using this for a while now and all I can say is it has multiple features that a router at this price point usually doesn’t have. And I haven’t even used all the features yet that this router has since I don’t really now what most they do. It caters to our household that has about at most 15 devices connected at the same time. I can simultaneously play online games with stable ping while our 2 TVs is streaming Netflix or YouTube. I never once had it force restart itself. The most important software feature this has for me is the bandwidth control which means I can set the maximum up/down stream for each of the devices connected so I can give higher bandwidth to the devices that actually need it. Now lets get to the drawback and which is my version of the AC23 is the Chinese version instead of the global one which means it’s interface is in Chinese! But don’t let that bring you down there’s an easy fix. Once you’re in the Tenda interface just right click and click translate to English in your chrome web browser, another solution would be is to download their Tenda app to your phone which is automatically in English and set it up there with no hiccups.
Full Specs
Link : https://www.tendacn.com/ph/product/specification/AC23.html
Price
I got the Tenda AC23 AC2100 from Shopee priced at Php 1,877.00. There are non-Chinese versions but that would range from Php 2,8000.00 and above, and their only difference that I can see is the language which can easily be translated using a chrome web browser or by just downloading the Tenda app to your phone and configuring it there.
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