TP-Link Deco M9 Plus Mesh Wi-Fi System Review

Wi-Fi is common as a microwave in home these days. When there is Wi-Fi at a home, having more than once device connected to it is common. One downside to the Wi-Fi experience that many people experience is poor coverage in their home. You might even notice it now with your current Wi-Fi setup. Where an area of the house has Wi-Fi signal that is borderline, and your device disconnects or experiences slow access. That is where the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus Mesh Wi-Fi products comes in.

We have looked at previous Wi-Fi Mesh Networking solutions out on today’s market including the the TP-Link Deco M5 and the ASUS Lyra. Both solutions can cover a great deal of square footage. We’re curious to see if TP-Link’s newest offering, the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus performs.

First Impressions & What’s In The Box?

The TP-Link Deco M9 Plus is a tri-band 802.11ac solution that offers a 2.4GHz network as well as two 5GHz networks. One of those 5GHz networks acts as a back-haul that allows the Deco units to talk to one another. This is all done transparently to the user for a simple and hassle free setup. Another feature of the back-haul network is that you can use it to bridge portions of a network together. So, what does the “Plus” mean in Deco M9 Plus? It means that TP-Link has added support for Zigbee and other Internet of Things devices. Allowing you to make the Deco M9 Plus the central point for other Smart Home devices in your home that make use of the Zigbee and other protocols.

The packaging of the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus is quite familiar as it matches that of the previous Deco M5. With the Deco M9 Plus there are only two units as opposed to the three that came with the TP-Link Deco M5.

Behind the two Deco M9 Plus units were the power adapters, an Ethernet cable and some small documentation leaflets.

The TP-Link Deco M9 Plus look almost exactly like the Deco M5 except for two things. One, the AC adapter is not USB-C like the Deco M5. There is now a USB port and the units themselves are physically larger. Not significantly larger, but if you have the Deco M5, the Deco M9 Plus are noticeably bigger. The Deco M9 Plus units still have two Ethernet ports, one for the connection to your modem and the other that can be used to connect directly to a computer or to a network switch.

Specs and Feature Highlights

Each Deco M9 Plus unit has the following features:

• 2x WAN/LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports
• 1x USB2.0 Port
• 1x Power Port
• 6 Wi-Fi Antenna, 1 Zigbee Antenna, 1 Bluetooth Antenna
• 802.11 ac/n/a
• 802.11 ac/b/n
• Bluetooth 4.2
• Zigbee HA1.2
• Up to 867 Mbps (5 GHz)
• Up to 400 Mbps (2.4 GHz)
• WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK Security
• SPI Firewall
• IPv4 and IPv6 support
• 3-Year Built-in Antivirus via TrendMicro
• Parental Controls
• QoS (Quality of Service)
• Alexa and IFTTT (If This Than That) support

We’ll be exploring some of these features in the next few pages.