Tenda WiFi

I’ve had this Tenda Mesh WiFi router for a few years now. And when it works, it’s great. But don’t touch it, or even look at it sideways or it will stop working and cost you days of your life getting it up and running again. The last time it just needed a firmware update. It never prompted this, it wait to need it until we had a power outage. So we spent half a day resetting the unit and troubleshooting shooting and finally figured it out. This time I literally unplugged it for about 5 minutes while moving the modem to a different spot. Didn’t even move the router at all. And now we haven’t had internet for going on 12 hours. Spend 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast, last night and another 30 mins today. Sounds like it’s a router issue… big surprise. So I try to call Tenda, and they don’t open until 1:30pm my time. So I have to wait 5 hours until I can talk to them… I don’t recommend this brand whatsoever. If I had the money, I would buy something entirely. But if you are a smart consumer and checking out the app reviews before a purchase. Just don’t. This app is trash, it isn’t helpful for troubleshooting at all.

You’re better off without it. First thing the app makes you do is rename your network and give it a new password, but when you got to connect it always tells you the password is incorrect. There’s also no way to bypass this. A hard reset later and I was up and running (kinda). (Side note: I bought a 3 node pack but only 2 will work. The 3rd keeps trying to connect, to no avail. When you call their 24/7 tech support it’s anything but. I got a message telling me to call back during normal business hours or leave a message, which I didn’t. The next night I received 2 calls from a number I didn’t know. I had to listen to both of the 10 second voicemails multiple times before I was able to hear/understand a word... “Tenda”. They may not be 24/7 but someone knows how to use a caller ID.)

I love my mesh system. I have 2 nodes, and the setup was awesome. Now a few months in I still can’t get my nose to update to the latest firmware. It always fails to update. Also the app can be buggy at times and not update when a node is powered off and powered back on again after a restart and you have to restart the app. Overall I get that this is a budget mesh system and they aren’t a big company, and that’s fine, I loved the price I paid for this mesh system and it’s a huge upgrade from a traditional one router setup for a big space. But I know you guys can get better, make the app more stable and snappy, more frequent updates to everything too. Just my bit of constructive criticism