Wireless Reviews

Storage Performance

To see if any throughput enhancements came along with the newer firmware, I ran Windows filecopy tests using the C7 V2's USB 2.0 port to our standard USB drive (Startech USB 3.0 eSATA to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station (SATDOCKU3SEF) containing a WD Velociraptor WD3000HLFS 300 GB drive) formatted in FAT32 and NTFS.

The results in Table 4 include the C7 V1's results and show no significant change in storage performance.

Wireless Performance

The Archer C7 V2 is Wi-Fi Certified; a change from a year ago. But everything else seems the same. Both radios come up with unique SSIDs and auto channel selection. The 2.4 GHz radio still allows channel bandwidth control and the 5 GHz radio still does not, as shown in the screenshot below.

TP-LINK Archer C7 V2 wireless settings

Advanced wireless settings are unchanged and the same for both bands.

TP-LINK Archer C7 V2 advanced wireless settings

As is now my practice, I didn't run WPS, 20/40 Coexistence or Fat Channel intolerance tests.

For throughput testing, the router was first reset to factory defaults and Channel 6 was set for 2.4 GHz and Channel 153 for 5 GHz. 20 MHz B/W mode was set for 2.4 GHz and, as noted earlier, I could not set the 5 GHz bandwidth mode. However, when I linked the client for testing, I saw a full 1.3 Gbps link rate.

The V2 was tested with our V8 wireless test process. Given the front-of-router position of the 2.4 GHz antennas and rear position of the 5 GHz external antennas, I centered the router body on the octoBox chamber turntable. The front of the router was set as the 0° test position.

The Benchmark Summary below shows the average of throughput measurements made in all test locations.

Benchmark Summary

To put these average values in perspective, I gathered togethe the average up and downlink throughput results for both bands for the C7 V2 and a handful of retested AC1750 class routers I had on hand. The only benchmark that the C7 V2 excels in is 2.4 GHz uplink.

Benchmark Summary

I didn't include the C7 V1 results in this comparison because it was tested with a different test process and results are not directly comparable.