Tenda AC10 — 1200Mbps 11AC Dual-band Gigabit Wireless Router

Buying it, and when not to

The AC10 is the workhorse of this range: a 1200Mbps 11AC dual-band router with four antennas and gigabit ports. The gigabit ports are the reason to buy it. Once a customer is on real fibre, on a GPON ONT in bridge mode, or on Starlink, a router with 100Mbps LAN ports becomes the bottleneck and you get blamed for a line that is actually fine.

This is the default choice for a flat, a duplex ground floor, a small office, or as the routing and WiFi box behind a bridged ONT. It is also what to quote when a customer asks for 'a good router' without a budget in mind - it is dual-band, it is gigabit, and it does not need a controller, an app subscription or a site survey to work properly.

It will not cover a whole three-storey house on its own; nothing in a single chassis will. If the brief is coverage across floors, quote a Nova or ME mesh pack, or run cable and hang i-series ceiling access points. If the customer has a Wi-Fi 6 phone fleet and wants the newer standard, the TX2L Pro or AX12 Pro is the step up. And if this is for a hotspot where you need to bill users, the AC10 is the wrong tool - look at the G0 series or W30E.