Introduction
The Devolo WiFi 6 Repeater 5400 aims to give you faster, wider-reaching Wi-Fi. It does this by transmitting a high-speed network of its own, which connects back to your existing router. To ensure top performance, Devolo has equipped this extender with 4×4 MIMO on the 5GHz radio band. That means it can send and receive data at a massive 4,800Mbits/sec – the maximum possible within the Wi-Fi 6 standard. It also works with devices that use the older 2.4GHz band, at speeds up to 574Mbits/sec. A pair of Ethernet sockets at the back let you connect wired devices as well.
Design and Features
Can be conveniently located wherever you want itLoaded with configuration options and technical detail
Most wireless repeaters plug directly into a mains socket, but this limits where they can be located and often obstructs adjoining sockets. That’s not a problem with the Devolo WiFi 6 Repeater 5400. It comes with a metre-long mains cable, so you can stand it conveniently on a desk or shelf to avoid obstructions and get the best signal strength. You can also easily access the twin Gigabit Ethernet ports on the rear and see the light-up signal strength indicator on the front. The Repeater 5400 can be deployed by simply pressing the WPS button on your router, then hitting the ADD button on the extender. This tells the repeater to capture your existing network settings and start retransmitting them, so your devices can automatically connect to the stronger signal. Alternatively, the web-based management interface lets you choose your own names and security settings for the extended 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks and explore plenty of technical settings. If you have multiple Devolo extenders, you can activate mesh mode to have them all synchronise their settings – although I found that one Repeater 5400 unit provided ample coverage for a three-bedroom maisonette.
Performance
Eradicates “not-spots” and areas of unreliable coverageBig speed gains can transform your online experience
I’ve mentioned that the Devolo WiFi 6 Repeater 5400 supports the maximum 4,800Mbits/sec connection speed. Your connected devices won’t get the full benefit of all this bandwidth, as some of it will be eaten up by the downstream connection to your router. Even so, the extender can have a big effect on the overall performance of your network. For example, in my living room, I measured an average download speed of 122Mbits/sec from my D-Link R15 Eagle Pro AI router. After I’d installed the Repeater 5400, that increased by more than 50%, to 186bits/sec. I saw even better results in other rooms. In the kitchen, this extender boosted my download speeds from 44Mbits/sec to 202Mbits/sec. In the bedroom, a measly 41Mbits/sec was transformed to a superfast 279Mbits/sec – an improvement of 680%. In the utility room at the back of the house, I had been getting just 12Mbits/sec directly from the router. With the Repeater 5400 in place, I measured 94Mbits/sec. That’s enough bandwidth for video calls and movie streaming, which would previously have been distinctly touch-and-go.
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Sustainability
TrustedReviews holds the fact that global warming is not a myth as a core value and will continuously endeavour to help protect our planet from harm in its business practices. However, neither the Mercusys nor the TP-Link extender can match the versatile feature set of the Repeater 5400 or its convenient self-contained design with twin Ethernet ports. Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy. As part of this mission, whenever we review a product, we send the company a series of questions to help us gauge and make transparent the impact the device has on the environment. We currently haven’t received answers to the questions on this product, but we will update this page the moment we do. You can see a detailed breakdown of the questions we ask and why in our sustainability info page.
