TP-Link says it’s already planning to launch its very first Wi-Fi 8 router, the Archer 8, in October of this year. Apparently, it’ll be the first of several new Wi-Fi 8 products from the company, with a Deco 8 mesh system, a Roam 8 travel router, and Wi-Fi 8 range extenders and adapters to follow in 2027.
That seems early, right? It is. Wi-Fi 8, or 802.11bn, isn’t finalized and isn’t expected to be until early 2028. That hasn’t stopped TP-Link and other router manufacturers from pushing routers out the door that use future protocols in the past, though. As for what to expect from the Archer 8, TP-Link says it will feature “a minimalist architectural form” that “balances refined aesthetics with performance-focused engineering. Naturally, it’ll feature an “AI-assisted network intelligence,” too, although that could just mean it’s using the same machine learning models we’ve lived with since well before the generative AI age. A Wi-Fi 8 primer TP-Link doesn’t share any specs specific to the Archer 8 at all, so we don’t yet know details about port count and throughput, size, or general feature set. But the company notes that early Wi-Fi 8 testing “has shown measurable protocol-level improvements [versus Wi-Fi 7] at comparable distances and signal conditions.” That includes “up to 33% higher throughput” over longer distances, “up to 24% higher throughput” using modulation tech aimed at more consistency across varying signal quality, and better signal sensitivity on the 5GHz and 6GHz bands.
