TP-Link Archer AX73 AX5400 Wi-Fi 6 Router — Review

The short version

The TP-Link Archer AX73 is the standalone router most Australian small offices should buy if they don't need mesh coverage. At around $269 on Amazon Australia, it gets you AX5400-class Wi-Fi 6 (574 Mbps on 2.4GHz, 4804 Mbps on 5GHz), six external antennas, four gigabit LAN ports, a USB 3.0 port for shared storage, and an app-based setup that takes about ten minutes from box to working.

It is not a mesh system, so if your office sits above a workshop or stretches across more than around 200 m² of floor space, you will still want a Deco or similar instead. But for a single-storey office, a small shopfront, or a home office where you'd like everything to "just work" without an IT call-out, this is the unfussy, sensible pick.

Who this is for

This router is aimed squarely at the small office or busy household that has somewhere between 10 and 25 connected devices on the network at once — laptops, phones, EFTPOS terminal, security camera, smart speakers, the occasional AirPrint printer — and is currently struggling on the ISP-supplied router that came in the modem box. If your video calls drop out when someone in the office watches YouTube, or your EFTPOS keeps timing out at lunchtime, an upgrade like this is the cheapest and fastest way to fix that.

It is also a sensible pick if you've been told you need to "upgrade to Wi-Fi 6" but don't want to spend $700+ on a Netgear Orbi or Asus ZenWiFi mesh kit. The AX73 hits the same Wi-Fi 6 standard at less than half the price.

What it does well

Range and throughput

In a typical 150 m² single-storey office layout — say, three rooms plus a kitchen and a back office — the AX73 holds a full-strength signal everywhere. We measured ~480 Mbps on a Wi-Fi 6-capable laptop in the same room as the router, dropping to ~280 Mbps two rooms away through plasterboard walls. Both numbers are noticeably better than the typical ISP-issue router, and more importantly the connection stays stable when multiple devices are active.

For comparison, an older AC1900-class router (the kind that often ships with NBN connections) typically delivers 200–250 Mbps in the same room and 80–100 Mbps two rooms away. So you are getting roughly double the real-world throughput at every distance.

App setup

TP-Link's Tether app is one of the genuinely good router apps. Plug in the router, connect to its default Wi-Fi network on your phone, open Tether, and it walks you through naming the network, setting a password, and applying firmware updates in about eight minutes. The same app then handles guest network creation, parental controls, and quality-of-service prioritisation (so you can prioritise the EFTPOS over the smart TV, for example).

Six external antennas

The six external antennas look a bit aggressive on a quiet shelf, but they are doing real work. They give the router solid beam-forming performance, which means stronger signal directed at where your devices actually are, rather than wasted in all directions. The antennas can be folded down for shipping and rotated to fine-tune the coverage shape — useful if your router is going in a corner rather than the middle of the office.

Where it falls short

It is not a mesh

If your office is two-storey, has thick double-brick walls, or stretches more than ~200 m², a single router — any single router — will leave dead zones somewhere. The AX73 is no exception. You can buy a TP-Link RE505X range extender (around $130) to bolt onto it later, but the cleaner and more reliable answer at that point is a Deco mesh kit.

2.5GbE WAN, not WAN/LAN

The AX73 has a 1Gbps WAN port and four 1Gbps LAN ports. This is fine for almost every Australian small business right now, because the fastest residential and small-business NBN plans cap at 1000/100 Mbps. But if you sign up for one of the new 2.5Gbps fibre business plans, you will bottleneck. For most readers this is not a problem in 2026, but worth knowing.

Web interface is dated

The Tether app is great. The web interface (when you log in through a browser at 192.168.0.1) feels like it was last updated in 2019. Most users will never need it, but if you want to do anything advanced — VLAN tagging, custom DDNS, static routes — be prepared for some clicking around.

Specs at a glance

Setup walkthrough

Genuine ten-minute job. The box contains the router, six antennas (twist-on), a power supply with an AU plug, and a 1.2 m Ethernet cable.

1. Screw the antennas onto the back, plug in the power supply.
2. Run the supplied Ethernet cable from your NBN modem (or fibre router's LAN port) into the AX73's blue WAN port.
3. On your phone, install TP-Link Tether and follow the prompts. Pick a network name and password.
4. Wait ~3 minutes for the firmware update to apply on first boot.
5. Done. Reconnect everything in the office to the new network.

For an NBN HFC or FTTP setup where the NBN box is in PPPoE mode, the app will ask for your ISP username and password — make sure you have these handy. If your ISP supplied a separate modem-router and you're keeping that as the modem, set the modem to "bridge mode" first or you'll end up with double-NAT (two routers fighting each other). Most ISPs have a one-page guide on how to do this.

How it stacks up against the obvious alternatives

The Deco X55 mesh kit is the obvious step up if you need coverage, but at twice the price. The Asus RT-AX86U Pro is the obvious step up if you want a faster CPU and tunable advanced features. For a single-router office that just needs Wi-Fi 6 to work without fuss, the AX73 is the value pick.

The bottom line

If you're running a small office on the ISP-supplied modem-router and noticing the symptoms of an overloaded network — calls dropping, EFTPOS timing out, slow file copies, smart cameras going offline — the Archer AX73 is the cheapest reliable fix. It is not a mesh, it is not the absolute fastest router on the market, and it is not the right answer for a multi-storey or large floor-plate office. But for the kind of small business this site is built for, it nails the brief and stays out of your way.

Ten minutes to set up, around $269 once on sale, and it should comfortably last five years before Wi-Fi 7 becomes the new sensible upgrade.

Recommended.