TP-Link Roam 7 review: How this travel router let me stop stressing about public Wi-Fi

pros and cons

Pros

• Compact design
• Supports Wi-Fi 7
• Built-in VPN support

Cons

• Finnicky setup
• External powerfulness source

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Public Wi-Fi is simply a necessity, but I don't urge trusting it. According to Statista, immoderate of the astir communal places idiosyncratic accusation is compromised are cafes, restaurants, and hotels. Plus, nationalist Wi-Fi isn't ever the best-performing. It's improbable that you'll get the aforesaid fast, unchangeable speeds you person astatine home. But that's wherever the TP-Link Roam 7 comes in.

Also: TP-Link Deco 7 Pro review: This Wi-Fi 7 router wiped retired my dormant zones

This mobile router is designed to bring unafraid Wi-Fi 7 wherever you go. It's a compact instrumentality that volition instantly amended your nationalist Wi-FI experience... erstwhile it starts working.

Compact design

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

TP-Link's Roam 7 is built for beingness connected the road. It's a tiny gadget, measuring 4.9 x 3.7 x 1.5 inches and weighing conscionable nether 9 ounces. On the sides are 2 adjustable antennas to boost wireless signals, portion connected the bottommost are a brace of rubber feet keeping the portion stable. Heat vents wrapper astir the body, allowing blistery aerial to escape, which are overmuch needed. The Roam 7 tin enactment up to 90 different connected devices astatine once, and arsenic you heap connected the connections, the router heats up.

Across the Roam 7, you'll find the gadget's ports. Starting from the close is simply a USB-C larboard for the powerfulness adapter. The ceramic is simply a small tricky to transportation astir due to the fact that of its size. Luckily, you tin usage a powerfulness slope similar the Anker Nano 10,000 mAh instead. It works the same.

Also: The champion powerfulness banks of 2026: Expert tested and reviewed

Next is simply a 1Gbps LAN larboard and a faster 2.5Gbps WAN larboard for high-speed wired connections. There's besides a USB 3.0 port, which tin beryllium utilized for record sharing oregon for connecting to a USB 4G/5G modem. Along the broadside sits a reset fastener and an Action fastener that tin beryllium configured to 1 of 3 functions: turning connected the rear LED light, disabling Wi-Fi, oregon toggling the VPN.

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

The setup process

Setting up the Roam 7 is elemental successful theory. You plug the router into power, download TP-Link's Tether app, scan the QR codification connected the bottommost of the router, and past travel the on-screen instructions. Tether teaches you however to make wireless networks, sanction them, and link the instrumentality to a section net source. 

In practice, however, the process wasn't precise smooth. There were respective times erstwhile the app refused to link to the router, forcing maine to retry the setup aggregate times earlier it worked. Even aft the archetypal setup, I inactive ran into trouble. 

Also: Adjusting my router's antenna fixed my Wi-Fi problems - here's the champion mode to presumption it

The Roam 7 worked perfectly astatine home; however, erstwhile I took the instrumentality to my section Starbucks, neither my telephone nor my Galaxy Book6 Pro could link to it. After aggregate failed attempts, I ended up redoing the afloat setup process. Then, connected apical of each this, the Wi-Fi awesome would randomly driblet a fewer times, forcing maine to reboot.

These incidents were beauteous frustrating. However, erstwhile you get past the finicky setup and awesome drops (assuming they hap astatine all), you volition bask a large wireless experience.

Performance test

For testing, I took the TP-Link Roam 7 to a fewer nationalist locations, similar the aforementioned section Starbucks, to spot if utilizing the router has immoderate antagonistic effects connected transportation quality. Would the instrumentality origin immoderate slowdowns? 

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

I'm blessed to study that utilizing the Roam 7 did not person immoderate antagonistic impacts connected section Wi-Fi. My acquisition browsing the net connected the router felt identical to browsing connected the section Wi-Fi: conscionable arsenic responsive and conscionable arsenic smooth. 

Back home, I ran the Ookla velocity trial respective times to comparison wireless speeds connected and disconnected the router. While connected to Ookla via the Roam 7, I recorded download speeds of 151.95 Mbps and upload speeds of 37.13 Mbps. Connected straight to my location network, I saw download speeds of 173.98 Mbps and upload speeds of 35.76 Mbps.

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There is simply a flimsy quality successful speeds, arsenic you tin see. On paper, the router appears to dilatory down connections, but if you're really connected the network, you don't announcement thing off. 

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

The Roam 7 besides comes with a fistful of absorption features, each accessible done the Tether app. One of my favorites is the information scanner, which checks the web for imaginable vulnerabilities and highlights immoderate settings that should beryllium changed. Like the Deco Pro 7, the router includes a Network Optimization instrumentality to trim transmission congestion. 

Plus, the Roam 7 supports VPNs with built-in compatibility for services similar NordVPN, Surfshark, IPVanish, and PureVPN, arsenic good arsenic the enactment to manually adhd your ain preferred service.

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ZDNET's buying advice

The TP-Link Roam 7 usually retails for $140, but astatine the clip of this writing, it's connected merchantability for $99. At that price, it's an casual proposal for anyone who wants a fast, much unafraid transportation portion connected nationalist Wi-Fi. It's a large accessory if you often enactment distant from the bureau and home.

One happening to retrieve is that the Roam 7 cannot make its ain net connection. It isn't a hotspot. If you are looking for a instrumentality that tin make its ain connection, beryllium definite to cheque retired the TravlFi JourneyGo 4G, which uses cellular signals to supply net entree wherever you person coverage.