The answer, somewhat surprisingly, was no. However, the Deco app lets you change that setting, making it so the system shares that backhaul band with any 6E devices on your network. By default, that band is used as the dedicated wireless backhaul connection between the router and its extender - so even if you're using a Wi-Fi 6E device, you'll be connecting to the Deco's mesh over the standard 2.4 and 5GHz bands. The last thing I tested at the Smart Home was the Deco XE75's 6GHz band. Bottom line: With an internet plan like the 150Mbps connection we have at the CNET Smart Home, you shouldn't expect any router upgrade to deliver game-changing performance, and you shouldn't expect Wi-Fi 6E to offer any sort of meaningful speed boost. Older mesh routers that don't support Wi-Fi 6E at all were able to deliver speeds just as strong as the Deco XE75 and the Orbi AXE11000, the other Wi-Fi 6E mesh router in the mix. There isn't even much difference in average speeds to my Wi-Fi 6E test device. In fact, it's difficult to see much of a speed difference between any of them - and that includes previous-gen systems like the Deco W7200 and that ultra-fancy, $1,500 Netgear Orbi AXE11000 setup. That's a solid result in a 5,800 square foot home, but all of the mesh routers I've tested at the Smart Home have been able to deliver download performance like that. Upstairs, closer to the main router, my Wi-Fi 6 test laptop averaged download speeds of 132Mbps in the basement, nearer the extender, those average download speeds only fell to 124Mbps. Sure enough, with the main router situated on the main floor and the extender plugged in on the basement level down below, the Deco XE75 did an excellent job of spreading fast speeds throughout the entire house. In each location, I ran multiple rounds of tests in multiple rooms across multiple days, and I did so on two different client devices, a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop that supports Wi-Fi 6, and a Samsung Galaxy S21 smartphone that supports Wi-Fi 6E. I also ran tests at the much larger, multistory CNET Smart Home to get a good sense of the system's range. I've spent the past few weeks testing the Deco XE75 at my home, a single-story house of about 1,300 square feet in Louisville, Kentucky. Most will be fine without it, but it's a nice option for power users, and TP-Link isn't too pushy about trying to get you to sign up. For $6 per month or $55 per year, you can subscribe to HomeShield Pro, which offers deeper control over those features, as well as detailed network usage reports and device-specific security scans. Apart from the setup assistance, the Deco app offers a quick overview of all the devices connected to your network, along with access to your network settings and other features, including parental controls and a quality of service engine for prioritizing traffic to specific devices.
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