I recently wondered what the specific difference is between TP-Link Archer NX200 v1 and v2 routers.

I have a v1 and everything works fine.

My friend has a v2, and he and his girlfriend regularly have 5G drops out when connecting a Macbook.

At first glance, they are absolutely the same - the same Wi-Fi 6, 5G, interface, speed, etc. But a deeper search revealed that:

• v1 uses chipsets from MediaTek, the largest chipset maker in the world, based in Taiwan. They have stable support and regular firmware updates. The latest build on the v1 so far is from June 2025.
• In v2, TP-Link switched to Unisoc chipsets from China - they are the fourth largest chip maker in the world, but are more focused on cheaper solutions and mass market. And judging by the situation, their hardware support so far leaves a lot to be desired: there have been no new stable builds for v2 since November 2024, only some betas.

So it looks like TP-Link just cheapened production by replacing Taiwanese MediaTek with Chinese Unisoc, completely rebuilding the board, but trying to keep the same functionality. In fact - the hardware is different, drivers are different, firmware is different, and stability is still not up to par.

If someone has encountered similar bugs on v2 - write, I wonder how massive it is.