TP-Link’s latest routers are rated to deliver incredible speeds at premium prices

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TP-Link is keeping its foot on the gas pedal with a pair of new high-end routers, the Archer AX6000 and Archer AX11000. These are the company's first router models to support the new 802.11ax wireless standard, or Wi-Fi 6 if going by Wi-Fi Alliance's new naming scheme.

As router makers like to do, the model numbers represent a combined a total of the available speed across all available bands. For example, the Archer AX6000 is a dual-band router that offers Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1,148Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 4,804Mbps on the 5GHz band. Those add up to 5,952Mbps, which is close enough for TP-Link to essentially dub it as AX6000.

Likewise, the Archer AX11000 is a tri-band model with an additional 5GHz band thrown into the mix. That additional band adds another 4,804Mbps to the tally, for a grand total of 10,756Mbps—close enough apparently to label is an AX11000 model.

One thing to note about all this: you can't actually combine multiple bands into a single, higher-speed connection. Model designations are basically marketing fluff, though all the router makers do it, so at least there's consistency across the board.

Those types of speeds are more than most people need or can realistically utilize. There are exceptions—households with multiple members streaming 4K content, downloading content, and playing games at the same, for example.

Both models look like evolved headcrabs, as a growing number of high-end routers do. The Archer AX11000 is a little more aggressive in its appearance, likely because TP-Link is specifically targeting gamers.

"It comes loaded with a 1.8GHz quad-core CPU with three WiFi co-processors, 1GB RAM, and 512MB flash, making it one of the most powerful gaming routers on the market today. Gaming enthusiasts can further optimize their network for game play through the TP-Link Game Center to optimize bandwidth allocation, see real-time gaming data, and create a VPN tunnel for the best gaming performance," TP-Link explains.

Both routers also boast copious wired ports—each one has a 2.5Gps WAN port for ultra-fast internet connections, plus eight gigabit LAN ports, a USB 3.0 Type-A port, and a USB 3.0 Type-C port.

The AX6000 is available to preorder on Amazon for $349.99 and will release on December 21, while the AX11000 will be available next month for $449.99.

Ugh, these routers are starting to get totally out-of-control. $349 and $449? I would say to anyone remotely considering one of these: just don't. Save your money, it doesn't even come with multiple USB type-C 3.1 ports or even a thunderbolt port at that price for files/media sharing across the network.

Heck, you pick up a lightly used Intel NUC or even a newer single board computer like a Raspberry Pi or something a tad more powerful, modify it with a beefier power supply (and you can even modify it with a nice ethernet card and boost the wifi chip), rig it to effectively control a standard gigabit hub switch for your wired ethernet (can easily be done using linux) and you can easily configure the mini computer-cum-router with some super-powered specialized far-range directional dual-band WiFi antennae...even better quality than what you'd get on either of these overpriced monstrosities.

Of course, all of this is overkill and can be mitigated with a nice Ubiquiti wireless mesh setup (the "Unifi" or whatever it's called) or Netgear's similar product, Arlo, which I've seen used in a friend's house to spread a gigabit fiber connection from the inbound cable modem to the wifi router and a single, tiny wireless network range extender/repeater, and able to cover his massively huge house (7500+ square feet, with a lot of weird shapes that used to be dead zones over 3 floors). Even at the edge perimeter of where you could still pick up 4/5 signal on an iPhone X using WiFi on the 5ghz spectrum (took a bit of customizing the channel due to local wireless spectrum congestion at the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bandwidths) and it was pulling down a solid 900-plus mbps downstream using the speedtest on dslreports. Costly sure, but far less expensive than these.