Connecting to free airport or hotel Wi-Fi can often be a time-consuming and frustrating task that doesn’t seem worth the effort for a bag full of wireless devices. TP-Link has announced its first Wi-Fi 7 travel router, providing up to a total of 3.6 Gbps of bandwidth while also making it easier to get multiple devices online from anywhere.
The TP-Link Wi-Fi 7 BE3600 Travel Router (TL-WR3602BE) is available now for $139.99 but Amazon has it for $109.99 with a $30 discount that’s available until the end of August.
We all travel with multiple devices needing Wi-Fi connectivity, and when you add kids and family into the mix, connecting them all to hotel or airport Wi-Fi can be an arduous job. Having all those devices pre-connected to a single travel router streamlines the process since you’re then only connecting one device to public Wi-Fi. You can use TP-Link’s mobile Tether app or the router’s web interface to navigate those annoying captive portals and login pages just once.
Other reasons to use a travel router include an extra layer of privacy. The TL-WR3602BE includes support for the OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols, so you can connect to over 35 different VPN providers, including NordVPN and Surfshark, while using a public Wi-Fi network you don’t entirely trust. And while your smartphone can serve as a hotspot for a handful of devices, TP-Link’s new travel router can connect to up to 90 at once.
There’s no built-in battery, but the travel router needs just 5V and can be powered using an included AC adapter, an external power bank, or even a USB-C connection to a laptop. It includes a pair of external antennas you can raise to extend its range, a USB-A 3.0 port for sharing files from connected drives, a 2.5 Gbps WAN and 1 Gbps LAN port, and a customizable button that can be configured to turn the VPN on and off, or quickly activate other functions.