Today, routers have become a basic need for smart homes and provide the flexibility to use the fast internet across the premises. The router market has seen a boom as people are deploying routers at their homes and offices to access fast internet and be connected with the digital world. Technology advancement & innovations in the router segment have led this market to grow at a great pace. TP-Link, a market leader in networking solutions has recently introduced its compact and feature-rich 4G Router, TL-MR100. We saw increasing demand for SIM-based router in recent months which is great support for consumers who are not able to a broadband connection or any other challenge in acquiring a stable wi-fi connection. DT reviewed this router to help you know its features and capabilities for a strong Wi-Fi connection.
In-box Items
The TL-MR100 4G router comes along with two detachable LTE antennas, a power adapter, a LAN cable and a Nano SIM to Micro SIM adapter.
Design and Connectivity Options
Built with plastic, TP-Link TL-MR100 router is a very compact and lightweight router. The router comes in black color with a trendy design. Generally you forget this device somewhere in a corner after the set-up but thanks to its design, the routers appears very modern and premium so it drives your attention every time. The router has two detachable LTE antennas that you can simply connect with the router through given ports at the back of the router. You can adjust according to the placement of the router. We see that router gets heat-up a lot but the TL-MR100 router will not heat-up as it has been designed in a manner for air flow.
Also, there are two mounting holes underneath the router so you can simply wall-mount the router in case you don’t want to place this on any platform. We must say that TP-Link has gone extra miles if we talk about the design of this router.
There are enough connectivity options in this router, there is one LAN port with which you can connect your PC or any other device with this router to have an internet connection. Moreover, there is one more port which can be used for both LAN and WAN. Also, this router has a micro SD card slot where you can insert your SIM card for 4G internet.
Simple Setup
The TL-MR100 router is a plug-and-play device and you do not need to put extra efforts to set up this router. There are two options available in this router for accessing Wi-Fi. Either you can put in the internet cable provided by your service provider or you can insert your SIM card into the micro-SIM card slot of this router given at the back. Thereafter you can access the information about its setting on your PC. You can change the default Wi-Fi name and password on the web interface. There are no extra settings required to set up the Wi-Fi connection. The web interface of this router is so simple and well organized.
You can achieve up to 150 MBPS download speed and up to 50 MBPS of upload speed with a SIM card, it is quite good speed for a router under this budget. TL-MR100 is a single band 802.11b/g/n router and operates at 2.4 GHz. The router provides up to 300 MBPS of maximum Wi-Fi speed on 2.4 GHz.
Advance Features
For security concerns, TP-Link TL-MR100 router comes equipped with a Parental Control feature that blocks the harmful websites and allows you to restrict the internet activities of your children. Also, you can set the time limits to access the internet for your children. On the other hand, you also get the Guest Network feature in this router and it also operates at 2.4GHz. This feature will help you to set a separate network for outsiders and protect your core Wi-Fi. The router comes with IPv4 SPI Firewall for the safety of your network from any kind of cyber threat.
Performance
When you use the internet through SIM card, the speed can vary because of your telecom service provider. During our speed test, we achieved quite a nice internet speed and we could easily finish off our tasks on a few smartphones and laptops. The router is definitely one of the best SIM based routers and provides the best Wi-Fi connection. We connected several devices with Wi-Fi and all the devices worked perfectly and we were getting a stable Wi-Fi speed. You can share the internet with up to 32 devices simultaneously and enjoy stable internet and it is a very nice thing as in many cases we see that if you connect several devices, the internet doesn’t work seamlessly and you face network issues. But with this router, you can have a stable internet speed.
For the wired connection, we connected a laptop with router to test the speed. We tried uploading a 2GB files to google drive and we got a quite good uploading speed with stable network. We also played some 4K videos on YouTube to measure the speed. The videos didn’t stopped in between and we watched the whole video without any glitch. So the router is definitely a good device for consumer who want wish to buy best SIM router.
Price:
This is one of the most affordable 4G routers current in the Indian market from a leading brand like TP-Link. You can buy this router for Rs. 3999 from offline and online stores.
DT Review
We had a great usage experience with TP-Link TL-MR100 4G router as it provides stable internet speed. We used this router for about a week and it performed really well throughout our testing. The router doesn’t heat-up and work flawlessly. The security features on this router are also praiseworthy as they help you to stay safe digitally.
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