By Ki Grinsing

Following its success with Tplink TL-WR1043ND, TP-Link introduces TL-WR2543ND.

What this product does

Design of this router is different than TP-link router previous generation that are generally white color combined with black on its sides, this router appears more elegant with the grooves nicely with three external antenna looks sturdy.

Main features:

• Selectable dual band 450Mbps with three advanced spatial streams
• Gigabit LAN and WAN interfaces
• USB port for share storage or printer
• Built-in Media server and FTP server

TP-Link which is well known with its affordable products compared with other manufacturers products such as Linksys and Netgear in all lines of wireless router and adapter products, is proud of introducing its first dual band router TL-WR2543ND. It’s been a while I am waiting for TP-Link to introduce its dual band wireless router since it’s success with Tplink TL-WR1043ND N300 router.

Selectable dual band

Now this is it, the TL-WR2543ND wireless dual band router. Probably you are disappointed with this product knowing that it is not simultaneous dual band router, but selectable. I was expecting the dual band N600 or N750 router, but TP-Link offers the single band 450Mbps for sure. Because you can only run the band either in 2.4 or 5GHz in a time.

Precisely TP-link recently released TL-TL-WDR3500 and WDR3600 routers with N600 technology, and another one that is marked with ‘hot’ is the TL-WDR4300 with N750 technology. What is difference between the three and TL-WR2543ND? Surely you’re able to guess, that is mainly related to speed.

3x Spatial data stream

And TP-Link comes with this TL-WR2543ND 450Mbps dual band router – it’s what we call N450 router. Powered by full 3×3 MIMO antenna technology; three spatial data streams each band, the router provides solid high speed wireless connectivity to wireless clients with the same N450 technology such as Trendnet TEW-684UB wireless 450Mbps USB adapter or Netgear WNDA4100 fast USB wireless adapter with N900 technology.

The router includes gigabit speed on its LAN (4x) and WAN (1x) interfaces, solid wired connection to other computers with NIC adapter. Connect to gigabit NIC computers for optimum data rate throughput.

USB Port

Unlike Tplink TL-WR1043nd which the USB port can only share the storage, the other valuable feature with thisTL-WR2543nd n900 router is that it includes one USB port with built-in UPnP media server. USB port with built-in media server, you can attach an external USB storage for sharing across the network and allows you stream HD media files to the home theater devices seamlessly. Unlike Linksys 4200 or Netgear WNDR4000 which their USB port cannot be used to host a printer, TL-WR2543ND can host a printer for sharing too. This is great feature to support your “work and play” environment.

WR2543 Vs W1025

Will TP-Link TL-WR2543ND be as successful product as Tplink Tl-Wr1043Nd? Tplink TL-WR1043ND is very popular among other Tplink routers, but it is not a dual band router. Have a look at the main features of this Tplink TL-WR1043ND:

• Engineered with 802.11n technology and is equipped with three external antenna with SST technology delivers the speed up to 300Mbps
• Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) to avoid channel conflict
• Gigabit Ethernet ports: 4xLAN and 1xWAN
• USB port for share storage – not for hosting printer

Comparison table

How do you compare this new TP-Link TL-WR2543ND router with other high performance routers? Let me put the main features into the following table for TL-WR2543ND Vs Netgear Wndr4500 Vs Linksys E4200 N750 router.

A year later since it was released, not many users provide good ratings with this product. Even some people are complaining with its bad performance in certain features.