I've got a TP-Link router that's about 2 years old, and lately my laptop keeps dropping the connection for like 30 seconds at a time, then reconnects. It happens multiple times a day, especially in the afternoon. My phone doesn't seem to have the same problem on the same network. Already tried moving the router closer and resetting it, but nothing's worked so far.
Since your phone's fine but the laptop keeps dropping, it's likely a driver issue on that specific device rather than the router itself - try updating your Wi-Fi adapter drivers and checking if the laptop's power settings are aggressively putting the adapter to sleep. If that doesn't fix it, the afternoon pattern suggests interference from something nearby (microwaves, cordless phones, neighboring networks), so you could try switching your router to a less crowded Wi-Fi channel using the TP-Link admin panel.
The driver angle makes sense, but before diving into that, check if your laptop is set to a specific Wi-Fi band (like 5GHz only) while your phone switches between bands - sometimes older adapters struggle with band switching or get stuck on a weaker frequency during peak hours. If that's not it, interference from microwaves or cordless phones hitting that afternoon window could be pushing your laptop past its tolerance threshold even though your phone handles it fine.
Power management settings on your laptop could be the culprit here - Windows (or whatever OS you're running) sometimes puts the Wi-Fi adapter to sleep to save battery, and waking it back up causes those brief disconnects. Check your device manager, find your network adapter, go into its power management tab, and disable the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option. That timing pattern you mentioned - worse in afternoons - actually fits this pretty well since it often gets triggered after a period of lighter activity, and it's worth testing before going down the driver rabbit hole.
The good news is that since your phone stays connected fine, you're probably not looking at a router failure. But I'd actually check one thing before going down the driver rabbit hole - pull up your laptop's Wi-Fi adapter settings and see what frequency band it's locked to. If it's stuck on 5GHz and your router's signal is spotty at that frequency in your space, you'll get exactly this behavior. Your phone might just be smarter about dropping back to 2.4GHz when needed. Try forcing it to auto-select bands and see if the problem clears up over a day or two 📶
If that doesn't help, the power management angle is worth exploring too. Windows can definitely throttle Wi-Fi adapters aggressively, but there's a specific setting that's more likely culprit than general sleep modes - check your adapter's advanced properties and look for anything about "roaming aggressiveness" or "transmit power". Some laptops also have a BIOS setting for Wi-Fi power saving that's separate from Windows. A 2-year-old TP-Link shouldn't be dropping clients randomly, so this is almost always a device-side thing.
One more thing worth trying: in Device Manager, find your network adapter and disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in the Power Management tab. That's the specific setting that causes reconnect delays like you're describing. Restart after changing it and monitor for a few days. If none of this works then yeah, driver update becomes the next logical step, but I'd rule out these settings first since they're quicker to test 🔧
Log into answer.
