Where was this device when I was traveling all those years and needed to connect multiple devices to the Internet in a hotel room, airport or other public location? This is a new product from TP-Link just being introduced and I am very happy they have developed it. This is a small, lightweight router/hotspot that works very well. Don’t Let the small size fool you, this is an AX1500 dual-band WiFi 6 travel router. It delivers 1.2 Gigabit speeds on the 5Ghz band and up to 300 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band. It even supports connectivity to your provided 3G/4G USB modem. The VPN encryption supports multiple modes. Read the manual to see the other nice features of this great little device. I received it just days before we lost power for more than a day and lost internet access for more than two days. Then a week later nature repeated itself and we had the same problem for about 8 hours. I was able to set up this router with the hotspot on my iPhone so that we only had to log one device into my hotspot (this router) and let it do all the work. My hotspot speeds were not great because of some cell tower issues but this router managed the (granted small amount of) traffic to optimize communications. I powered this router off of a UPS until the power returned, then off house power while the internet was still out. Yes, for my small demand I could have not used this router and just connected the few devices to my iPhone hotspot. But doing it this way it actually put less strain on my iPhone battery. The documentation and user interface software are both excellent. My main home router is a TP-Link mesh system and I love that interface, just like this, for it’s ease of setup, managing the router, setting up guest accounts and managing users. The big difference here is that this router travels with you and you can quickly and easily connect it to a network (WiFi, Ethernet, Cell Hotspot, etc.) and let it do all the work. Many hotels now offer some form of low-speed internet via WiFi for free but, if you want higher speeds, they want an up-charge for each device connected to their network. With this router, it is the one device you pay for and your other devices (laptops, tablets, TV boxes like Roku/Apple) for all your family members are hidden behind this router and share the bandwidth without the expensive up-charges. A few tips if you hadn’t thought about it already. Set it up at home as if you were somewhere else so you know how to do things easily. Each time you want to connect to and extend a new wireless network when you’re traveling, just run the Quick Setup menu after logging into the router. It will keep your other defaults but allow you to select the new network it has discovered. Remember to copy or take the instructions with you so you know how to deal with the variety of interface type or maybe you just forgot how to do something. You can also use this as repeater/extender for WiFi coverage in your home or on your property if you’re not getting the best coverage or have some WiFi dead zones at home. I highly recommend this router for anyone who travels even occasionally.

Prominently claims it’s a VPN router but it doesn’t have VPN support. Returned this junk immediately.

Size is nice but that's about it. Tether app doesn't allow you to control vpn features. VPN on server mode using wireguard very slow speeds. Under 30 mb

As an alternative to gl-inet personal router. It is lacking a few crucial ingredients. It has VPN, but does not have "block traffic until VPN is established" feature. Looks like they have duplicated gl-inet's devices but missed on crucial details.

I've been using the TP-Link travel routers frequently for the past 7 years. I travel a lot for leisure and work, and have found them indispensable for ease of connecting everything I bring with me. When I discovered they finally released a wifi 6 travel router, I immediately jumped on it. Opening the package was a mild disappointment realizing how much larger it was than the WR902AC as shown in my pictures. Other than that, the power requirements are a bit odd, as it needs a power supply that can do 12V 1.5A, meaning any USB C connection needs to be connected to a supply that supports PD or QC, so it needs to be relatively recent. The interface is much easier to navigate than the WR902AC, however it doesn't provide descriptions on every option like the older ones. Personally, I don't like that, however they're mostly on features I rarely, if ever, used. The WR1502X was easy to configure and bring up as a hotspot, and if you want to use VPN you have to configure using the web interface, not the app. The body of the router is much more sturdy than the previous generations, and the switch for the modes is no longer flimsy. I would definitely buy this again if it broke as it fits the perfect price and perfect functionality for travel, unlike a lot of other brands that are charging the cost of a home router for a travel router.

ONE THING MISSING. ADD GARD HAS WIRE GARD A GOOD THING.

The TL-WR1502X is a compact travel router, but I couldn’t get it to work as a router with my iPhone 13 Pro hotspot. A companion app is available for setup in hotspot or router modes, but I found the process to be slow and tedious. I found that setting up this router in AP, range extender, or client mode was easiest when configured via ethernet connected to a computer. For example, I tried setting it up in range extender mode via the app and it would switch to AP mode instead. I think the app is fine, but it needs better integration with this router. I do have a few reservations about this travel router. For example, it comes with a short USB-C to USB-A cable for use with an included power adapter. Also, the router can be very slow to reboot if reset or when switched to a different mode. In addition, there isn’t any mention of how to use it with a VPN even though it is supported. Also, it uses an outdated USB 2.0 port on the back for use with a hard drive or mobile hotspot. Overall, when used in client mode this router works great, but the other modes I’m not sure about. I couldn’t get it to work as a router with my iPhone hotspot and setup via the app can be time consuming.

Product arrived quickly, was easy to set up and worked great.

So this makes a good temporary "permanent" router You need power supply to make this work, either a power bank or usb cable and wall plug. So if you are setting this up in your hotel room or a booth, that is fine. But as a true travel router, its fairly large and too difficult to just set up for a moment. So if you are expecting to use this easily on the go, like at a coffee shop or on a plane, you might want to look into a self powered one. And while yes, this is not something that was promised, i.e. it does not tell you that you get a battery, and I knew that going in, but positioning this as a travel router and not being able to handle that task well is definitely something I think merits a couple of stars removed. This is more "your home router, on the go" where you plan on setting up for hours at a time. Hotel room, convention booth, trans continental train ride maybe. But as a true travel router, I don't think this fits the bill. On functionality - it has some quirks and cool features that are a nice touch and will make me consider keeping it. You can tether using your iPhone via cable - i.e. plug in your phone via the usb port on the router and the router will use the data over usb to make its own network. While you can do this with your iPhone directly, its usually a pain because if your computer goes to sleep for a few seconds, your hotspot tends to turn off. This should hopefully allow you to stay connected for a long time as long as your phone is plugged into the router and give you better throughput as well. You could do the same thing and use your router as a WIFI access point to provide internet to the router, and it should also maintain the connection more reliably, but that will reduce speeds since you will be connecting wirelessly twice. A quirk I noticed is that each mode has to be configured individually. You cannot just set one default SSD for all of the modes. You have to do it for each one. Also, if you tether your phone via cable, since you are not technically connected to it anymore via WIFI, you can no longer see or manage any settings in the app even though you are physically connected to it and providing data through the usb c cable. They should allow you to check to use your universal profile or use a custom profile for that setting. That way with one change, you can easily change the SSD and password for all modes of the router at once or maintain them separately if you so choose. Maybe some of these things will be addressed with firmware updates, but I would really like to see a version of this that has a built in battery that gives you at least 2-3 hours of usage, maybe in an eco power mode, so you could use it on the go without having to have a USB Cable and power bank to run it for a short period.

I have the two previous (but still available) iterations of the TP-Link Travel routers and this is a huge jump in featureset and performance. They really have made a competitive option at an attractive pricepoint. I won’t go through all of the features here since they’re marketing page materials cover those well. Out of the box, it was a tad clunky getting things going. I performed the setup through the TP-Link tether app on an iPhone. I hardwired it to my router just to get started so, admittedly, I did set it up with a double-NAT and iOS kept wanting to switch back to my home network because it couldn’t find the internet on the TP-Link. It took a little persistence toggling back and forth between iOS settings and the Tether app to keep it connected while working through the setup. However, I did get through it and there was a firmware update available so, hopefully, that makes the initial setup experience better for users. That being said, it was totally worth the effort. Once I had made it through the setup, the amount of functionality they packed into this device is excellent. As a router, it has decent range and handled multiple devices with great stability. In Hotspot mode, I had no problem connecting to a couple different networks that both had a captive portal active. The Tether app walks you through every step of the process. The captive portal appeared on my phone to interact with and, once completed, I was able to connect to the router with internet fed by the public WiFi network. It offered to clone my MAC in case it was needed to be able to successfully authenticate which was a nice touch. It even has QOS with traffic shaping. I tested this with some reasonable settings on a public hotspot and it worked exactly as expected - speed was limited across multiple devices and I could set certain devices as high priority. Tethering from my phone via USB worked great too. The switch on the side to switch modes is a nice touch - it seems to keep a profile for each selection which helps when you’re switching between modes and don’t want to keep reconfiguring for your situation (e.g. it seems you could have a home mode where it acts as a router and then switch to Hotspot mode while traveling). Previous entries from TP-Link have offered this too and I was happy to see they kept that here. In terms of power, the router itself is powered via USB-C which was a great choice by TP-Link because it’s highly likely I’ll have something with me that can power this when traveling without bringing their adapter along. My only quibble here is the included power adapter - it’s a tad bulky and uses the USB-A standard yet it has power requirements higher than a standard USB-A port. As I mentioned before, the port on the device is USB-C so I would just plan to power this via USB-C. Overall, this is an amazing travel router at this price point and would definitely be my top pick.