TP-Link Omada EAP660 HD review: Top-performing Wi-Fi at a fair price

Wi-Fi is 6 gaining speed in business networksand if you’re ready to upgrade, then TP-Link’s Omada EAP660 HD access point (AP) is an elegant way to do it. This is a dual-band AP that can be fully cloud managed and promises excellent speeds of up to 2.402Mbits / sec on its 5GHz radio and 1.148Mbits / sec on the 2.4GHz band. Its 2.5GbE LAN port supports PoE or PoE +, but for those who do not have a power supply available, there is an external PSU in the box.

If you’re deploying the EAP660 HD in stand-alone mode, the web console covers you: the Quick Launch Wizard guides you through setting up administrator access and configuring your first two SSIDs, out of a maximum of eight on the radio.

For cloud management, TP-Link uses a similar approach from Ubiquiti Networks, focusing on software defined networks. Each site to be managed requires an Omada cloud controller: TP-Link provides the controller software as a free download for Windows and Linux, or you can purchase a pre-configured hardware device running the Linux version.

For testing, we used the OC300, which costs about £ 107. We were also provided with a TP-Link JetStream TL-SG2428P Gigabit PoE + switch, which was spotted by the controller and added to its list of managed devices. Honestly, however, if you are building a network, we would not recommend this particular switch, as it does not support the full 2.5GbE bandwidth of the AP – the TL-SG3210XHP-M2 would be a better choice.

The available controllers can be viewed from the cloud portal and selecting one transports you to the appropriate management console, from which you can set the SSID of your site. All APs on a site represent all SSIDs, so customers can connect to the nearest one and walk between them as they move.

Each SSID can support both WPA2 and stronger WPA3 encryption, with optional upload and download speed limits. If you specify a specific SSID as a guest network, customers only access the Internet, and retention portals can be activated with personalized photos, logos, and policy statements. Authentication can be applied with a simple password, local user, voucher, radius or Facebook. The only thing you won’t find are specific Wi-Fi 6 settings to play with – this side of things is running in the background,

Adding the EAP660 HD to our site was almost effortless. After we plugged the AP into the switch, it immediately appeared in the controller console as “pending”. From here it was a matter of a few clicks to accept it, after which it deactivated its local web interface and took all the wireless settings from the controller.

In addition to the wireless configuration, the web interface provides a custom dashboard that displays useful information such as wireless summaries, customer distribution, most active customers, and wireless traffic. There are also options for monitoring Internet capacity and usage, but they require a SafeStream VPN gateway aimed at your site’s network.

As usual for the AP in this price range, the EAP660 HD does not support ultra-wide 160MHz channels, but still garnered very reliable performance in our Wi-Fi tests. Large copies of files between a Windows 10 Pro desktop equipped with a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 802.11ac USB adapter and a LAN server average 105MB / sec at close range and 96MB / sec at 10m. This largest number is not far from the maximum bandwidth of the provided gigabit switch and makes it one of the best performing business AP points we have seen.

The Omada EAP660 HD is a great choice for SMEs who want the most efficient wireless networks at a fair price. It’s fast, easy to deploy, offers plenty of business features, and can be easily managed in the cloud with the hardware or software controller of your choice.

TP-Link Omada EAP660 HD specifications