The TP-Link GE650 is a reasonably priced Wi-Fi 7 router designed with gamers in mind. It sports a cool look, delivers speedy throughput performance, and is packed with high-speed networking ports.
Gaming routers are typically more expensive than general-purpose Wi-Fi routers and mesh systems, but in return, you get premium performance and features. With the TP-Link Archer GE650 BE11000 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Gaming Router, you get outstanding Wi-Fi 7 performance and a robust feature set without having to spend a bundle. The GE650 offers several gamer-centric features, including optimized acceleration settings, a dedicated game control panel, and an edgy design. It also offers six multi-gig networking ports. At $279.99, it’s an excellent value and worthy of our Editors’ Choice award for midrange gaming routers.Design and Features: Inspired by a Volcano
The GE650 doesn’t look like a typical router. Instead, it has an upside-down V shape that, according to TP-Link, is inspired by a volcano. The gunmetal-gray router stands 7.9 inches tall and is 5.3 inches wide and 9.2 inches deep.
LED backlighting starts at the base and continues halfway up the front of the enclosure in the form of two thin strips. When the router is up and running properly, the lighting will follow whatever lighting scheme you’ve selected in the mobile app (more on this later). Otherwise, a blinking red LED indicates no internet connection, blinking orange tells you that Wi-Fi is turned off, blinking yellow means no Wi-Fi and no internet connection, and blinking blue lets you know a firmware update is in progress.
All of the router’s ports and buttons are located on the back panel. They include a 5GbE WAN port, a 5GbE Gaming LAN port that gives bandwidth priority to connected gaming devices, three 2.5GbE LAN ports, a USB 3.0 port, and a power port. You’ll also find buttons for turning the router on and off, enabling or disabling the LED lights, enabling or disabling Wi-Fi, and resetting the router.
The router features a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 256MB of flash memory, along with four internal antennas. The tri-band BE11000 Wi-Fi can hit transmission speeds of up to 688Mbps on the 2.4GHz band, up to 4,323Mbps on the 5GHz band, and up to 5,764Mbps on the 6GHz band, for a total bandwidth of approximately 11,000Mbps (hence the BE11000 rating).
The GE650 also supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 technologies, including 320MHz channel bandwidth, 4K QAM, direct-to-client beamforming, MU-MIMO data streaming, Multi-Link Operation (MLO), and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) transmissions. As with the Archer GE800 BE19000, the GE650 is EasyMesh compatible and can be deployed as a main router or node in a mesh network along with other TP-Link EasyMesh devices.Software: Easy Management
You can manage the GE650 from a desktop or laptop PC using a web console, or with your phone using the TP-Link Tether mobile app.
