I have used several travel routers since they first came on the market. About 10 years ago, I purchased two of TP-Link's early travel routers for portability, one to use on a cruise ship to share a login. I have purchased and/or reviewed many TP-Link products over the last 20 years, including the routers mentioned, PCIe cards and, more recently, their 24-port and 16-port switches, the latter being the central switch in my home network. Basically, I am a fan of TP-Link because they make good products at value prices.I was thrilled to see that they made a full-featured travel router, offered at a value price. For the last 5 years, I have been using a MediaLink router when traveling, mainly for convenience to family members at hotels (making it so everyone doesn't have to login using the captive portal) and also to be able to use all of Roku's features, which are somewhat stifled by captive portal connections. I included a picture of the TL-WR3002X next to the MediaLink, which is the size of a typical router except thinner than most. The thin factor, the price and its ability to tether then share captive-portal Wi-Fi networks were the reasons I stuck with the MediaLink and I was happy to keep using it until it died. That was until I saw that TP-Link was offering all of that + a 2.5Gbps port + USB Phone Tethering + Wi-Fi 6, all in a compact design with no external antennas.Our family primarily travels in North America and, for the most part, have decent Wi-Fi access to the internet at most locations. Occasionally, we will end up somewhere that does not have good Internet access, and in those cases, I have used a secondary iPhone as a hot spot then tether it to the router, mainly for local Roku devices to work. With that you can see my interest in phone tethering via USB, cutting out a layer of Wi-Fi which hurts the overall network performance.I travelled extensively for work up until 10 years ago, which was before the days where phone hotspots were consistently good and/or continued working when phone calls were made from that phone. Because of this, I used to have a dedicated 3G/LTE router connected to a power brick which I carried around in a padded bag that I lovingly called the "Squishy Brick". I realized with this TL-WR3002X, I could implement Squishy Brick 2.0 with some items I already had - See attached picture. I attached the router, a 20,000mah power bank and my utility iPhone to a Grid-It board which can now be easily put into a bag, backpack or any spot in a room for best coverage. Bonus: All of that takes up a little less space than the old router in my bag.In my testing, I found that the "passthrough" bandwidth when the router was tethered to a Wi-Fi network is reasonably good and certainly better than the previous router. Captive-portal worked about the same as previous routers, other than the selection on this router shows 2.4G or 5G Wi-Fi and lets you connect to either. Once tethered, you will need to enter the captive portal info on the first device that is connected to the router's shared Wi-Fi (e.g. the one where you set the network name + password). Specifically, when you look at the Wi-Fi connection in the settings on your phone or laptop, it will show "Connect to network" and once you click that, it opens a custom window where you enter the captive portal info. After that, other users that connect to the router will be able to get to the Internet without having to enter the captive portal info. One item of note regarding some hotel captive portal connections: They sometimes set the lease time to be as little as 1 day, so someone may have to go re-authenticate to the captive portal daily. Not a big deal but thought I should mention it.The last thing I wanted to cover is the excellent Tether app TP-Link offers to manage this router. Once connected to the router's Wi-Fi (again, the one where you set the network name + password), Tether allows you to access it locally to be able to change settings e.g. To tether the hotel/ship Wi-Fi to the router. Once the router is tethered to a connection with Internet access, you can also access the router via a cloud connection. Frankly, I just love that configuring the router is app-based. My previous router required connection to its Wi-Fi then using a browser to enter its settings and make the changes. Because it was IP-based and because I liked to use the typical internal IP address for both my home router and this router, the browser would sometimes struggle to load the page, even after clearing the browser cache. There is no issue like that with the Tether app. Brilliant!To sum up, this is a full-featured travel router that costs less than the comparable GL.iNet travel router also available here on Amazon, making it a great value. Add to that my personal history with TP-Link and their excellent Tether app, it was a no-brainer to order one as soon as I saw it. I anticipate it will serve our family for many years to come.

This is a brand new travel router that is an upgrade with significant advantages over the slightly older model that looks very similar. Not only did they increase the speed, they also simplified the USB power requirements, which is now just 5V (instead of 12V) and is thus compatible with more power banks. The included adapter is nice and compact and is PD compatible. It supports 5V (15W), 9V (18W), or 12V (18W) as requested by the attached device.The router draws about 3W at idle as measured at the 110V outlet, but that goes up to about 6W when downloading at 500Mbps. This adaptive power use means there is good power management. These powers require a good adapter, because if your computer only has an USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, the max of 4.5W would be insufficient. Chances are that most newer computers also have an USB C output and that should work with a USB C to USB C cable, but I have not tried.The switch on the side allows selection between 3 modes (eco, balance, boost) and this seem to mostly affect signal power and thus the range. In eco mode I lost signal in the room across the hall (2 walls in-between), but is a good setting for e.g. in a hotel room.The router supports a rich set of modes to cover all scenarios and I tested most of them. using their "Tether" app.Setup in the app was easy with one minor hiccup. To pair the device we can scan a QR code and the one at the bottom of the device works fine. Unfortunately, I first tried the QR code on the included separate sticker (" Wi-Fi Info Card" ) that contains the correct default parameters (names, password) listed and next to the QR code it even says "Scan to join the default WIFI network", but If I try, all I get is an "Invalid QR code" popup. Tried a few times, then scanned the code at the bottom of the device instead and that worked immediately. It seems the card has a misprint.I wasn't sure if we can combine the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands under one AP name but it seem we can just name both bands the same and things fall into place. (For travel, I will change it to the same name as my home network so nobody needs to reconfigure any devices!).After resetting the router, I also tried client mode with my laptop, where it connects to the laptop via ethernet cable and joins the home network.In summary, this is a very capable router with a range of operating modes for any scenario and it is easy to setup. The app has many features. During travel or on any public hotspot, it is significantly easier and more secure to connect this router to the network and all our devices will then automatically connect to the already known private network of this device. (Having to configure all devices for the public WIFI is significantly more work!). Even if only a cell signal is available, I can turn my phone into a hotspot and connect this router to it for all our other devices.It only uses less than half the power of a typical home system, takes up very little space, and would be a perfectly capable main router for a small apartment or vacation condo. The low power use is also an advantage in an off-grid setup running on solar/batteries.Overall, a fantastic feat of hardware and software engineering to get all these features into such a small and powerful while only consuming very little power. Absolutely love it!