If you need (or like) to tweak your network settings for specific cases such as gaming or content streaming, or because you need to give critical devices priority over others, the CT8 offers lots of switches and sliders to change those settings in its administration console. Here are the top wireless routers you must consider when shopping around for one this 2020. Mesh node or satellite: These are the devices that connect back to your router (or another node) to extend that network and provide a more reliable Wi-Fi connection over a greater area. The Archer AX50, like the Archer AX20, uses TP-Link’s updated design. One reason a router like the AX50 performs better than other routers making similar claims relates to the processor and memory inside. TP Link’s Archer A7 router is a relatively inexpensive, slightly older router that can still provide a good network for small homes or one- or two-bedroom apartments without many devices. Raw speed in the form of throughput, in megabits per second (Mbps), isn’t the only thing that matters, and our latency test showed how routers handled the added stress of multiple devices accessing the network at the same time. Changing the network name will alleviate this problem, and you’ll still be able to enjoy the expanded mesh network coverage, though you will lose the ability to roam from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz automatically on your laptops and phones. D-Link COVR-2202-US We ran all these tests at the same time for a full five minutes to simulate a realistic extra-busy time on a home network. The D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, and Ubiquiti routers have one-year warranties. Dual-band kits like the Netgear Nighthawk MK62 took fairly significant hits to performance, as the 5 GHz radios in those kits have to split time between connecting local clients like the laptops and communication with the base units. The laptop in the bedroom in question (WC3 in our graphs) was challenging because it was close enough to connect to a slower 2.4 GHz signal through multiple walls and appliances between it and the base unit—but WC3 could grab a faster 5 GHz signal if it chose to connect through a satellite or mesh node. Parental controls, security, and performance are relatively easy to configure in the Tether smartphone app. You might be experiencing symptoms such as dropped connections outside your home, the need to turn off your media streaming box when you want to play an online game, or worse yet, slow surfing even while you’re sitting just a few rooms away from your router. UAP-AC-Lite units currently cost about $80 apiece, but you can use the router you already have on hand. Each color bar represents a task waiting for something to happen after you’ve clicked a link, and longer bars mean you’ll spend more time staring at a spinning circle or pinwheel. In the graphs above, we show the topmost and lowest performance groups individually, as measured by the average time to load web pages to the three browsing laptops during our multi-client testing. You can expand the MR7350 using Linksys’s Velop mesh nodes, and Netgear’s RAX40 was one of the first affordable 802.11ax routers. © 2020 Wirecutter, Inc., A New York Times Company, The best Wi-Fi mesh kit: Asus ZenWiFi AC (CT8), Upgrade mesh Wi-Fi pick: Asus ZenWiFi AX (XT8), How mesh-networking kits work (plus a glossary), performance testing of standalone routers, can also make it hard to troubleshoot problems, features that most people would never touch, the latest version of our guide to standalone routers, how we set up the network and what tests we ran, 802.eleventy what? You’ll have to check the administration screen or mobile app for that notice from time to time. Both offer basic settings for configuring the network, but the AX50’s advanced settings pale in comparison with those of the Synology RT2600ac and the Asus RT-AX88U. If you’re having problems with range, speed, or reliability, though, and your router is more than a couple of years old, it might be time for an upgrade. This is usually a valid assumption for wired networking, but it doesn’t work well for Wi-Fi. Even the far less expensive TP-Link Archer AX50, our top pick, performed better than the UDM in some situations. The latter is an ongoing problem with most mesh networks, particularly the Eero line of mesh kits, which locks out most settings in the name of simplicity. The Synology RT2600ac was our runner-up in the previous guide, and it also proved itself competitive this time. The best router 2020 has to offer boast the best range and speeds necessary for everything we do online. The BeaconHD improved the Wi-Fi signal to the rest of the house, but as our tests show below, other mesh kits performed a bit better. We compared WiFi routers from TP-Link, Linksys, Netgear, Synology, Asus, and D-Link to find The Best Wi-Fi Routers 2021 for the best performance for a fair price. TP-Link Deco M4, Deco M9 Plus, and Netgear Orbi RBK13 It also means that you can connect the second CT8 to the first with an Ethernet cable for quicker speeds between mesh nodes (aka “wired backhaul”), if your home is wired for that. Better, faster Wi-Fi routers are here -- and yep, they're fast. It can serve a strong, responsive Wi-Fi 6 signal to all corners of an average home, and it has more ports for wired devices such as a desktop PC, a media streaming box, a gaming console, and NAS devices. MU-MIMO: This term stands for Multiple User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output. Whether you … If you don’t give your networks different names (SSIDs), in practice all your devices end up piling onto one 5 GHz band, and you experience slower speeds, delays, and even dropped connections when several of them are online and busy at the same time. AX6000 WiFi Mesh System. What We Liked: One of the best things about this mesh router is its customizability. Netgear Nighthawk MK62 Our four laptops ran the following tests: We ran all these tests at the same time for a full five minutes to simulate a realistic extra-busy time on a home network. Joel became attracted to service journalism after answering many “What’s good?” questions while working as an IT manager and technician. The best mesh WiFi routers offer a solid, unified WiFi network no matter where you are. The company also produces modem/router combos directly for consumers, and the MG7550 is one of the better alternatives in the AC1900 range. The XT8 came the closest to providing this though, achieving a throughput of over 600 Mbps at close range—almost 30% faster than our main pick, the Asus Wi-Fi AC (CT8). So we tested throughput in three spots in our test space, with increasing degrees of difficulty: A spot in the living room, with a clear 15 foot run to the mesh base unit, in the attic, where the test laptop would be best situated to connect to the satellite node there, and a spot in one of the home’s bedrooms, where the laptop could choose to connect to a satellite or through several walls to the main router. Band steering—specifically load-balancing band steering—lets you use a single network name for all your Wi-Fi bands and allows the router to decide which devices go on 2.4 GHz and which ones go on 5 GHz based on where they are in your house and how much bandwidth they’re using. Photo: Michael Hession. This effect shows up best when you’re comparing a strong tri-band kit like the Asus ZenWiFi AC (CT8) set or D-Link COVR-2202 with a kit such as the TP-Link Deco X20: The tri-band CT8 was rock steady in the green throughout our test suite, while the dual-band Deco X20 started to falter after the 80th percentile. Overall, the RAX80 is a perfect choice for those who want a high-end WiFi 6 router despite a rather higher price tag. The best Wi-Fi 6 routers for 2020 By Tyler Lacoma December 4, 2020 The standard for Wi-Fi routers has been “ac” for years, indicating the latest … We drew our eight criteria below from research, as well as extensive testing. At long range, the AX50 performed better than all of the competition except for TP-Link’s top-of-the-line Archer AX6000. Most of the mesh kits are capable of using a wired connection to any or all of their satellites, but they’re all considerably more expensive than Ubiquiti access points. But “middle of the pack” is still impressive for an older router at a low price: In our tests, the Archer A7 was able to continue serving websites while the D-Link DIR-X1560 and the Archer AX10 virtually screeched to a halt under the same conditions. We could surmise that installing one of Ubiquiti’s access points or its UniFi AP BeaconHD mesh node near the garage could improve its signal and therefore its performance; we’ll test that arrangement for our upcoming update to our mesh-networking guide. Compared with our top pick, the Asus RT-AX88U has far more RAM (1 GB versus 256 MB) and a faster, quad-core processor, so we’d wager it would be faster than the AX50 if we were to add more devices to the network. —SPEEDY PLUG … For the tests in our 2017 house, the UAP-AC-Lite access points were in the same sites as our multi-hop configured mesh kits—one in the network closet, one atop the living room TV island, and one downstairs in the den. AX6000 WiFi Cable Modem Router. And make no mistake, the Asus RT-AX88U is pricey, about double the cost of the TP-Link Archer AX50. However, like the Eero Pro 6, the MX12600 is pricey—currently $50-170 more expensive than the Asus kits. The AX6000 is notable among our test group for having the sole 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, for those who own a compatible modem, but on the whole the Asus RT-AX88U is a better pick. Although the AX20 didn’t perform as quickly as the AX50, it didn’t lag too far behind: It was almost as fast in our speed test as the AX50 was at close range (7% behind) and a little behind at long distance (about 20%). For most people, the AX50’s better performance at long range, its better handling of the busiest networks, and its additional advanced features are worth the little bit extra. If you place the mesh node in your den or home office, you can connect your laptop or desktop PC to it for better speeds. We still recommend the RT2600ac for folks who love to fiddle with their network settings or those who suspect that they will need to expand their network with a mesh node in the future. Every time we update our router or mesh-networking guides, readers ask us about enterprise-level networking options like Ubuquiti’s UniFi networking line. Now that working from home is just as important as gaming and streaming, defeating Wi-Fi dead zones is more important than ever. Our tests found that a single router works as well as an expensive mesh kit in some cases, even in a 2,300-square-foot home. 10 Best Parental Control Routers - December 2020 Results are Based on. In these tests, raw speed in the form of throughput, in megabits per second (Mbps), isn’t the only thing that matters. We dismissed them because they seemed to be overkill and were expensive compared to the tri-band and dual-band competitors above. Bands and channels: A dual-band mesh kit communicates with devices on two sets of radio frequencies (aka bands), 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, while a tri-band kit has an extra 5 GHz band that can help with communication between the router and satellites. This reduces latency—the time you’re sitting waiting for the website, game server, or streaming service to respond and send data back. The RT-AX88U was about 15% faster than our top pick, the TP-Link Archer AX50, on our overall throughput and latency tests. Technically, bad actors could monitor your data via this login, though Amazon and Eero assure us that they safeguard your data and online activities. © 2020 Wirecutter, Inc., A New York Times Company, Understanding the technology (and jargon) of wireless routers, features that most people would never touch, Change Your Router’s Wi-Fi Channel for Better Streaming, 10 simple tips for making your home wifi network faster, 802.eleventy what? Our top picks will easily outperform most routers more than a few years old and are likely to save you money if you’re currently renting a basic router from your internet service provider. These tests simultaneously evaluated range, throughput, and the router’s ability to multitask. It has a lifetime subscription to Plume, and has a built-in SmartThings hub, but it finished close to the bottom of the pack in 2019. If your laptop is having problems connecting to your router, make sure that you have the latest drivers for your laptop’s Wi-Fi card. The TP-Link Deco M4 and Deco M9 Plus are compatible with other Deco kits, and the Deco M9 Plus has a smart hub built in for Zigbee and Bluetooth devices, but most folks don’t need a smart hub. We also evaluated and passed on expensive routers like the Asus RT-AX89X and GT-AX11000, the Linksys MR9600, and the Netgear RAX80, RAX120, and RAX200. It has a 750 MHz single-core Qualcomm processor and 128 MB of RAM, components that fall pretty far short of the dual-core processor and 256 MB of RAM in the Archer AX50, but its performance in our tests certainly showed that it’s still a capable router. For example, if you’re paying for only a 50 Mbps service plan, 50 Mbps is the best you can expect when you’re downloading from the internet. Buying the best cable modem/router combo is a great way to get all of the features of a cable modem and a wireless router in one simple and affordable package, and if you’re still renting your cable modem from your ISP it can save you even more money.. With many cable providers easily charging up to $168/year to provide you with a cable modem, it’s easy to see how buying your own can … Netgear’s Orbi RBK13 is a dual-band, three-piece mesh-networking kit featuring a router and satellites that are the same size as the Netgear Nighthawk MK62. (Here's our comprehensive guide to wireless extenders.). However, the Trendnet’s admin interface was unpolished, and it placed dead last on our latency tests. HomeCare is included, so there’s no subscription to pay for, as with some mesh-networking kits. He did that so he could connect to the internet from his desk, his couch, and his bed seamlessly (a rarity for the time). The CT8 mesh units aren’t the largest in our roundup, but they’re close. In addition to testing for raw throughput and the quality of web browsing, we made sure roaming worked well on our picks by checking each router’s interface (if present) to confirm that all the laptops weren’t bunched on a single node, router, or satellite. For example, if you find that some devices or laptops in your home keep trying to connect to weaker (but ostensibly “speedy”) signals that provide an unreliable connection, you can set the Asus mesh network to reject weak connections and shunt the devices to the slower but more reliable bands. The TP-Link Archer A20 was our top pick in the last iteration of this guide. Wirecutter is reader-supported. In addition to being one of the most expensive mesh kits here, the Orbi RBK752 failed one of our 4K streaming tests while the network was crowded. This makes the budget-priced Eero 6 less of a bargain. For example, the Asus ZenWiFi AX is capable of throughput over 600 megabits per second at close range with no obstructions, but you still can’t get more than about 100 megabits per second from the internet if you have a 100-megabit plan from your ISP. We encountered this issue once during our previous testing: One of our laptops, an Acer, would connect to a router’s wireless-ac network but drop the speeds to almost nothing. Consistently having to wait a few seconds for something to happen is the definition of slow internet. However, in previous testing, the three-piece Eero kit failed one of our two 4K streaming tests, while its other performance was middling. We tested throughput using a real HTTP download, the same protocol you use to view websites and download files, to better expose differences in CPU speed and general routing performance. Because the truth is there isn’t really a “best” anything out there — it’s just easier to rely on these reviews than choose for yourself. This is usually true for wired networking, but it doesn’t work well for Wi-Fi. Like most of the routers we tested, the AX50 has five Ethernet ports: a WAN internet port for connecting your cable modem or fiber terminal, as well as four network ports for wired devices. TP-Link could add WPA3 as a feature in a future firmware update. If you have a larger space, a mesh-networking kit may be the solution. It only took 10 to 15 minutes from taking the CT8 routers out of the box to connecting laptops to the new network. Again, the Asus RT-AX88U was able to speedily serve each client simultaneously, with a minimal wait between each request. Some other mesh kits use proprietary nodes, with different components inside (Google Nest Wifi and Netgear Orbi’s simpler nodes come to mind), which means that expanding the network is often cheaper than with the CT8. Since we’ve started following Plume, they’ve expanded their purview to providing devices and services to ISPs like Comcast and Bell Canada. We also made sure to enable each router’s load-balancing band-steering feature, when applicable, to make sure that the routers would properly distribute our client laptops across all available bands to improve performance. Joel Santo Domingo is a senior staff writer covering networking and storage at Wirecutter. Both the Linksys and Netgear routers have short, one-year warranties. It’s still a good choice if you have lots of devices, as they can take advantage of its tri-band radio. The web browsing test is both the most realistic representation of your experience in using your Wi-Fi and the test that almost always fails before any other test does. Most people, however, don’t need mesh Wi-Fi and can do just fine in smallish homes and apartments with a regular router. We repeated each test set six times and averaged the results to smooth out spikes. Although the top picks in this guide outperformed the Archer A7 overall in throughput, range, and responsiveness, the Archer A7 held its own and surpassed a few other routers costing double the price or more. While all that drives its price up … In the middle of the chart, you’ll notice that the Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine has a long bar for Browsing 1 but short bars for the other test clients. Although its rack-mounted models are decidedly overkill for most homes, we were intrigued by the recent introduction of the UniFi Dream Machine (UDM), which seems tailor-made for homes and small businesses. This router’s plastic body is a little shiny and kind of cheap feeling next to that of the Archer A20 or Asus’s routers, but you’re probably not going to be handling your router after you install it. That translates into extra connections for wired devices like streaming boxes, TVs, and game consoles. Since the router and node are the same, they both have three rear-mounted Ethernet ports and one WAN port (to connect the main unit to your modem). We've spent hundreds of hours testing dozens of routers, mesh kits, and extenders to find the best gear to get strong Wi-Fi throughout your home. When we subjected all our routers to a busy network to test delays and lag, the Archer A7 landed solidly in the middle of the pack. It performed better on our tests than our previous pick, the Wi-Fi 5 TP-Link Archer A20, even though it lacks the A20’s third Wi-Fi band. Both had tri-core CPUs, but both seemed not to utilize them well, as both finished behind the single-core Archer A7 in our tests. Some improvements will help with overall speed, but we’re most interested in improvements like MU-MIMO and OFDMA; Clunky acronyms that ultimately should make Wi-Fi better at managing busy home networks full of computers, phones, streaming boxes, smart devices, and the like. Google Nest Wifi A good standalone Wi-Fi router can handle multiple devices, as long as those devices all have good connections. Aside from Wi-Fi 6, WPA3 compatibility, and the speedy 2.5 gigabit port, the XT8 is functionally identical to the CT8. The Synology mesh routers are still a good combination, if you’re into tuning your network for problem devices. You have to spend a lot more on a router—or a mesh kit if you have a very large home—to get anything even a little better. A busy evening in a typical home could have one person downloading game updates in a bedroom, a second listening to music from a smart speaker, a third watching TV in the living room, and a fourth browsing the web while sitting on the couch—and all of that traffic demands a router that can provide fast performance for lots of devices at once. A mesh network extends Wi-Fi to all corners of your home by using multiple plug-in boxes generically called mesh nodes. However, its poor browsing performance in our tests derailed any appreciation we had for its aesthetics. Faster: Not only the transmission distance, but also the penetration ability, the speed of the wireless router is also the main reason we choose it. In its quest for simplicity, it removes even basic niceties (it has only one extra Ethernet port on the base unit, and none on the satellites). With just a few exceptions, testing for most Wi-Fi router reviews consists mostly of connecting a single device to Wi-Fi at various distances, trying to get the biggest throughput number possible and declaring the router with the biggest number and the best range the winner, at least in terms of raw performance. The Zyxel Multy U is a tri-band three-piece mesh-networking kit designed to look good. The UniFi software on the UDM (or a controlling PC with the app) lets you administer the UAP access points. But its long-distance throughput, at our garage testing site 50 feet away, was quite a bit slower than that of our pick and runner-up, which is why we recommend the A7 only for smaller living spaces. If you ever move things around and try to use the satellite as a router, an error light will alert you to the problem. The CT8 and the XT8 have the ability to rename the 2.4 GHz network separately from the 5 GHz network. FAQs. 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