TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000 tri-band mesh router. Full speed ahead (update review)

The TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22,000 tri-band mesh router is very fast and, with additional satellites, could support over 200 devices and the largest Aussie homes.

We have previously reviewed this in early 2024, and we wanted to see how it performed after two years of firmware updates, the new 500/50MBps NBN, and the availability of true Wi-Fi 7 2 x 2 MLO clients like the incredible OPPO FindX9 Pro, capable of the maximum 5188 Mbps on 6 GHz and 2594Mbps on 5 GHz. Yes – incredible speed, and TP-Link has fully implemented MLO to combine these.

Why is Wi-Fi 7 so much faster?

Wi-Fi 7 routers/mesh are backwards compatible with previous Wi-Fi versions, so if you buy a new router, look seriously at Wi-Fi 7. Of course, Wi-Fi 7 benefits only come to fully Wi-Fi 7 compatible tri-band routers (at least BE11000) and devices. You don’t get the go-fast 4K QAM or MLO, the extra bandwidth, higher transmit power, reliability, speeds, lower lag, and the latest tech with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E routers. In short, Wi-Fi 7, properly implemented, can significantly improve existing home networks.

Wi-Fi 7 devices like the Google Pixel 10 Pro, Samsung Galaxy 25 Ultra or the fabulous OPPO FindX9 Pro are here, and more and more laptops are available. By the end of 2025, most premium smartphones (Qualcomm SD8 Gen 3/Elite or later) and computers (with an Intel BE200/202 adapter or Qualcomm Copilot PC) will support it.

Consumer Advice: Don’t buy grey market – it likely won’t work here

Because Australia only has 500 MHz of the 1200 MHz 6 GHz Wi-Fi 7 band (42% and one 320 MHz band instead of three), routers sold here have different firmware and transmission strengths differ. You can quickly tell if the router/satellites have an R-NZ C-Tick on the external box and the sticker under it.

TP-Link will be updating the Australian firmware to accommodate the new ACMA to free up more 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi – 2 x 6 GHz x 320 MHz bands

Why Mesh over a router?

Simply put, a router is like a single car engine – 2.4/5/6 GHz transmits about a 20/10/6-metre radius circle around it. Perfect for small homes, although gamers love them too, as game resources can be prioritised.

Mesh is like placing an engine on all four wheels – distributed power. Each mesh node can bathe 300m2 or so per satellite in Wi-Fi. Mesh works best with an Ethernet cable between each node (wired backhaul) or can backhaul over Wi-Fi (not as much bandwidth).

The BE85 is a little different from most meshes. First, each ‘engine’ is as strong as the primary router, and second, if you use cabled backhaul, you get the total Wi-Fi bandwidth (many mesh don’t free up the Wi-Fi backhaul when not used).

Australian Review: TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000 tri-band mesh router as at 23/11/25

Note: This is on a 2-year-old router, and hardware revisions have occurred since.

Website	AU Website Product User Guide
RRP	1-Pack $1199 2-Pack $2099 3-Pack $2999 (seen for as low as $2499)
From	Harvey Norman, Joyce Mayne, Bing Lee, Officeworks, Good Guys, and specialist computer stores, including MWave, Scorptec, and Umart. Also, via store TP-Link Amazon store.
Warranty	3-year ACL if purchased from authorised resellers.
Made in	Now Vietnam
Company	It is a top player in the Australian and the US home router/mesh market, with an estimated 65-70% market share. TP-Link Systems Inc. has its headquarters in the US and is a standalone entity in shareholdings. Operational aspects, such as workforce, critical research and development, production, marketing, customer service and support, are shared with the US and other regional countries for capacity planning and quality control.
More	CyberShack TP-Link news and reviews

Ratings

We use the following ratings for many of the items below. CyberShack regards a score between 70 and 80/100 as a fit-for-purpose pass mark. You can click on most images to enlarge them.

• Exceed (surpasses expectations or is the class leader).
• Fail (below expectations), and we will let you know if this affects its use.
• Pass(able) rating that is not as good as it should be.
• Pass (meets expectations).
• Pass ‘+’ rating to show it is good, but does not quite make it to Exceed

First Impression – Pass+

First, I am re-reviewing a two-year-old product. As the Netgear Orbi 970 RBR973S Wi-Fi 7 Quad-band BE27000 mesh router, RRP $3999, was the first on my test bed, I used that for my home (Thanks Netgear). After all, Netgear is a well-known US brand, but its gear is still made in China.

I won’t impugn Netgear, but I had the worst experience with reliability, speed variances, and freezing. Admittedly, we were on FTTN at the time, and the Wi-Fi Alliance had not yet been certified as the standard, so it and NBN can take part of the blame.

A little later, I reviewed the TP-Link Deco BE85. Let me just say that reliability increased, dropouts decreased, and since we moved to FTTP, I have not had to reboot it.

To be fair to Netgear, we have set up a similar test and will report the results later.

The TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 is a white, cylinder design 128mm (round) x 236mm (H) with the stylised 7 highlights. It is attractive and will fit into most décor. It is designed to sit on a benchtop or bookshelf. The router and satellites are all the same – the first one you set up becomes the router. The others are equally powerful. They have a single indicator LED under the front cylinder lip that can be disabled during set times (sleep).

TP-Link has not skimped on this

It has

• Qualcomm Dragonwing NPro 7 Platform includes Qualcomm Multi-User Traffic Management with advanced algorithmic scheduling of bi-directional data using MU-MIMO and OFDMA on all 16 streams and up to 2000 client devices.
• A quad-core 2.2GHz processor.
• 1GB of RAM and 512MB of flash storage for its firmware and settings.
• Two fans
• Eight amplified antennas inside
• 12 independent data streams
• 10Gbps RJ45 WAN/LAN, 2 x 2.5 Gbps and 1 x 10 Gbps LAN
• AI to continually optimise and streamline the data path from the router to the satellite and vice versa.
• If using Ethernet backhaul, the Wi-Fi backhaul is available to Wi-Fi clients.

While this review is about the BE85, there are lower-cost tri-band routers, including BE65 (BE11,000) and a BE65-5G (BE9300 and perfect for 5G and failover), BE68 (BE14,000) and BE77 (BE17,000). I have not reviewed the latter two.

And if your budget does not extend that far, TP-Link has Wi-Fi 7 dual band (no 6 GHz) BE22 (BE3600) and BE25 (BE500) that use many of the Wi-Fi 7 go-fast smarts. We have reviewed TP-Link Deco BE25 Wi-Fi 7 BE5000 mesh on a budget and recommend that all dual-band use wired Ethernet backhaul.

Setup – The App makes it easy – Pass+

Download the Deco app for iOS and Android. It does require an account, and that has the usual Privacy implications. From our reading, they are relatively benign and user data is stored in a local cloud.

We won’t go through setup as the app guides you; it is straightforward. Plug the router into power and connect it to the Internet gateway. Once set up, plug in power to the satellites, and they will join the Mesh. You can also use Ethernet backhaul. You can name them to make it easy to see.

Hint: If you are replacing a router/mesh, use the same SSID name and password as the old modem/router (turn the old router off first), and everything will reconnect – at worst, you may need to power-cycle the clients.

How to configure Wi-Fi

It has three bands

• 2.4GHz, 1376Mbps, 20/40MHz – effective transmission distance is up to 30m or a 700m2 circle (up to 100m line-of-sight). Mainly used for IoT devices and between 150-600Mbps connection speed.

• 5GHz, 8640Mbps, 20/40/160/240MHz – effective transmission distance is about 10m or a 300m2 circle. Mainly used by Wi-Fi 5 and 6 devices like computers, TVs, etc., that connect at 866/1730Mbps. The 240MHz aggregation is not available in Australia.
• 6GHz, 11520Mbps, 20/40/160/320MHz – effective transmission distance is 6m or a 150m2 circle. It can connect at up to 5188 Mbps.

These distances are nominal and depend on the environment. For example, the signal strength is effectively halved each time the signals penetrate walls, floors, cupboards, or windows. In any case, a 3-pack will effectively cover approximately. an area 30 x 30m = 900m2

The Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000 has a slightly different band setup

By default, it binds the 2.4Ghz and 5GHz (160 GHz) WPA2 security networks into one SSID. I had no issues with the 36+ IoT devices connecting when I renamed it the same as the Orbi 960 2.4GHz SSID. If you have issues, select 2.4GHz or 5 GHz only or create a 2.4 GHz IOT network (effectively another Guest network).

It has a separate 6GHz WPA3 network for the exclusive use of Wi-Fi 6E and 7 devices. I named this XXXX_6GHz as it is only seen by those devices.

Finally, the MLO (multi-link operation) network – 2.4+5+6 GHz WPA3, which I renamed XXXX_5G (same as my Orbi 960), because any device can see and use it. You can also set this for 5 and 6GHz (no 2.4Ghz), which may be useful if you enable the IoT network. Older 2.4 and 5GHz devices can connect to the MLO if they support WPA3.

In the test with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Google Pixel 10 Pro, both joined MLO at 2594 Mbps (2 x 2 x 160MHz) on the 6GHz network. The OPPO Find X9 Pro connects to the 6GHz network at up to 5188 Mbps (2 x 2 x 320 MHz).

It also supports a 2.5/5GHz and 6GHz Guest network isolated from the main network. You can also limit this bandwidth.

The Deco App

The App, unusually, has far greater functionality than the web interface.

AI automatically adjusts bands, so you don’t need to think about it.

The web interface is extremely limited.

Double NAT (network address translation): Router or Access Point?

If you have HFC or FTTP, you plug this directly into the UNI-D1 RJ45 socket. The primary Deco is the router, and you don’t need a modem/router gateway unless you have a landline. If you do plug the old modem/router into the BE85 LAN socket.

FTTP/HFC UNI-D1 > Ethernet cable > BE 85 WAN port

Do not plug the BE85 into the old gateway LAN, as few have the CPU power and RAM to handle the 500/50 Mbps, let alone route to and from the internet.

You may have read that you should set the primary Deco up as an Access Point to avoid Double NAT – don’t. Deco loses its NAT, DHCP server, Parental Controls, QoS, Device Isolation, and Connection Alerts if you do.

A Double NAT is fine as long as the Gateway router and the Deco have different LAN IP addresses, and preferably disable the gateway Wi-Fi to stop interference.

Ports – Exceed

• A 10 Gbps SFP (fibre optic) to RJ45 transceiver is required. This can accept an SPF Fibre 10Gbps cable used for 2-10Gbps NBN. This is not generally available to consumers.
• 2 x 10Gbps Cat 6e RJ-45 LAN or WAN (only one available if using the SPF adapter)
• 2 x 2.5Gbps Cat 6e RJ-45 LAN or WAN
• USB-A 3.0 for storage and file access (up to 3 online for three nodes). While this is a 5Gbps full-duplex port, the maximum speeds will depend on the attached flash drive or external SSD. You can expect approximately 100/100MBps sequential read/write.

Practically, 10Gb and 2.5Gb speeds will depend on the Ethernet cable-rated speed and any switches you use to connect the router, satellite/s, Ethernet-connected TV/set-top boxes/Blu-ray and speakers.

If you have a 2.5Gbps switch (we use a terrific D-Link 2.5Gbps gaming and media 6-port unmanaged switch), you may run a 2.5GB NBN cable to the router and 2.5Gb cable to the switch, then 2.5Gb cables to the satellites. Our tests with a 2.5Gb switch showed 1.3Gbps full-duplex.

Or if you have Cat 5e cabling or an older Gigabit 1000Mbps switch, the maximum speed you will get is 500Mbps full-duplex between the switch, router and satellites.

Backhaul – Exceed

Backhaul is how the router and satellites communicate. The faster the backhaul, the more data it can move and the more devices it can handle.

The Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000 can use:

• Ethernet backhaul up to 10Gb
• Wi-Fi 6Ghz backhaul to 4.8Gb (Australian limit). Don’t forget that this has a much shorter range.
• Ethernet and Wi-Fi 6GHz. There is confusion that this aggregation uses 2.4/5/6Ghz MLO, but if the MLO channel is enabled for general use (and it should be), only 6GHz is used. Ditto to clients.

And that brings up the main issue of mesh.

The primary router transmits a signal – both front haul to and backhaul to the satellite. The satellite happily retransmits what it receives – it cannot amplify it. So, while you may get terrific device-to-satellite ‘speeds’, the actual throughput to the router is a fraction of that.

Speed and coverage tests – Exceed

There are many ways to measure router/satellite speeds.

• The ‘apparent’ speed between the Wi-Fi device and the router or satellite. That is a rubbish measurement, as you know that each transmits the same speeds and has the same band distances.
• Internet access download/upload/ping speeds. FTTP and HFC users now have 500/50, so you will get whatever the router/gateway is connected to.
• Speeds are affected by loads. Our test includes 2 x 4K streams from Netflix or Prime Video (no impact), whole of home Sonos (10 speakers), all belting out at decent volumes (no impact). Download and upload a 20GB file to Dropbox (no impact). The BE85 has a great routing engine.
• Coverage – how much area can the three (or two or one) pack cover? The antenna design radiates in a 360° circle at about a 90° angle, covering a typical home’s floor-to-ceiling. Don’t use too many satellites, as the overlap can interfere with auto-roaming. Eachs router/satellite covers 6GHz/150m2 (12 x 12m), 5Hz/ 300m2 (17 x 17m) to 2.4GHz/ 700m2 (26 x 26m).
• Auto-roaming – exceed. Handoff was fast and has improved since first tested.

Heat/Noise – Pass

At worst, the unit reached 50dB at 50cm away. External heat was generally below 30°.

Power – Pass

15-18W with occasional peaks when multiple 4K streaming per unit. It will cost approx. 20 cents per day per node.

Parental control and KidShield – not tested

Parents can set app blocking, web filtering, YouTube restrictions, SafeSearch, and online time limits to keep kids safe while having fun online.

KidShield protects children away from home, even if they are not connected to your home Wi-Fi.

Some advanced features require a subscription.

Network protection – not tested

HomeShield 3.0 examines your network by scanning and identifying potential risks, stopping them before they harm your network. Some features require a subscription.

CyberShack’s view – TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000 tri-band mesh router for distributed speed

Most mesh systems have a dedicated router and different satellites with reduced functionality, like fewer Ethernet ports, less bandwidth, etc. Not so with the BE85 – all three are routers with full functionality acting as one very powerful mesh.

The new firmware gives the OPPO FindX9 Pro room to shine – it connects at maximum speeds not seen on the latest Google or Samsung Ultra.

Then you have those extra Ethernet ports on each – perfect for connecting a TV, set-top box, Blu-ray, network-attached storage or a PC/Mac.

But what impressed me most was that it handled 500/50Mbps very well. Load times on streaming services were seconds quicker; digital TV channels came up as fast as Free-to-Air, and lag was gone.

I was also impressed that I could place an Eufy E340 Spotlight Dual Cam over 40 metres away at the end of a long driveway from a Wi-Fi-connected satellite in the garage and behind a metal roller door.

But the ‘impressed’ does not stop there. While the BE85 for two years, it’s even more flawless and remains the premium Wi-Fi router. TP-Link make a BE95 for US use that we wont see here due to ACMA spectrum rules.

Ratings 90/100

It is the best mesh both in performance and value currently available. Its only real competitor is the Netgear Orbi 970, which costs over a grand more.

• Features: 90. Pretty much idiot-proof setup using the App.
• Value: 90. It is expensive at $2999 for a 3-pack, but remember, these are all fully-featured routers in their own right. The cheaper mesh will have lesser-featured satellites.
• Performance: 90. It is the fastest we have reviewed and has the largest overall coverage and best satellite performance.
• Ease of Use: 90. Straightforward app and very easy install.
• Design: 90 – Attractive design.

Would I buy the TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 BE22000?

I did. But I am a speed freak. We offer Free NBN Router advice is back by incredibly popular demand, and for the most part, the average home is fine with the BE65 (BE11000) and the BE25 (BE5000 if using Ethernet back haul).