How much wireless router cost

For less than bucks, the dual-band Asus RRT-AX is a solid and high-value midrange "enthusiast" router for gamers and other heavy users.

Boasting six antennae, 4, Mbps of bandwidth across three bands, and MU-MIMO technology, the Archer A20 is a top-tier router for gaming, streaming, and large local networks. It also works with Amazon Alexa devices, making it a fine choice for the smart home crowd. Buy at Walmart. A stable internet connection is a must for any hardcore gamer, and with the Netgear Nighthawk RAX50 router, that's exactly what you'll get, capable of delivering a combined Mbps throughput.

If a single router isn't cutting it but you don't want to invest in a complete mesh system, extend your wireless network into those hard to reach places with this inexpensive AC range extender. The Asus AiMesh AX tri-band mesh router bundle is an incredibly powerful router duo that can pump out up to megabits a second for nonstop high-speed connectivity.

A mesh router can clear out Wi-Fi deadspots in your home, and this eero router is a great way to get started. It can cover up to 1, square feet and can be easily expanded with additional nodes. With three bands instead of the usual two, the Linksys Max-Stream AC router is a great performer and great value for networks where multiple people are regularly browsing, streaming, and gaming.

For a well-rounded internet connection, the Netgear AC dual-band router can provide speeds of up to 2, Mbps for non-stop gaming and streaming anywhere in the house. Blanket your whole home with Wi-Fi with this intelligent mesh network system, replacing the traditional router, extender, and internet booster to provide fast and reliable connectivity.

Finally eliminate WiFi dead zones in your home, blanketing up to 6, square feet with blazing fast gigabit speeds. Featuring easy set up, this wireless mesh system works with all internet providers. We strive to help our readers find the best deals on quality products and services, and we choose what we cover carefully and independently. The prices, details, and availability of the products and deals in this post may be subject to change at anytime.

Be sure to check that they are still in effect before making a purchase. But the addition of Google Assistant really puts it over the top, providing an elegant way to add voice control throughout your home, and easy integration with a huge number of the best smart home devices and all of the best Google Home compatible devices.

Read our full Nest WiFi review. The first gaming router we've tested that features Wi-Fi 6 , the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX is a gamer's delight, with speed that improves over longer range, low latency and all the features that gamers expect. Add it all up and most other gaming routers are now second best. The GT-AX is large, with a gargantuan base, eight swiveling antennas, and massive This wireless router has connectivity in droves, thanks to its tri-band design and four downstream Gigabit LAN ports, a single 2.

Built in customization and gaming-oriented optimizations provide plenty of control, and you can even pair it with other Asus routers for mesh networking to cover a larger home. The TP-Link Archer C has a deceptively mild-mannered design, but don't be fooled — it's one of the most powerful wireless routers you can buy, and offers the best range of any single router on this list.

It's the reigning performance champ, pumping out nearly a gigabit per second of data in our standard performance tests, and blasting through walls and ceilings with ease. Not only is the Archer C the fastest router we've seen, but it's also small, unobtrusive and full of high-end features.

The Archer C comes with built-in optimization tools, like antivirus, QoS and parental controls that are normally found on more expensive competitors.

By adding in router-based security, the Archer AX stands alone as one of the best routers you can get, at a price that's hard to beat. With an AXE rating, the tri-band device more than lives up to the hype by delivering nearly 2. Add this to the slick design and highly customizable configuration options, and the Netgear Nighthawk RAXE becomes one of the best wireless routers we've ever reviewed.

It's the sort of performance that earned it the Tom's Guide Award for best Wi-Fi router , even if it's not a great fit for everyone.

It might be priced like a high-performance or gaming router, but the Netgear Nighthawk AC RS delivers in a different and perhaps more important area: Cybersecurity. The RS may deliver solid performance and enough range to cover most homes, but the real value is protection, with a fistful of security features from Netgear and Bitdefender, including three years of protection from Bitdefender Total Security software.

The RS is built to safeguard your entire connected home, from your laptops and phones to a whole range of smart devices, from TVs to ovens, thermostats and doorbell cameras. With so many devices on today's home network, you have to be more vigilant, as a single poorly secured gadget can open you up to hackers and malware.

The RS keeps your whole home safe, and is easy to set up and manage, too, making it our favorite cybersecurity router. The Archer A7 has great performance for the price — pushing through more data than most of the comparably priced routers we've tested — and features four Gigabit LAN ports and a USB 2.

In addition to solid performance and features, the Archer A7 also has a very easy setup process and useful parental controls, with an app that lets you monitor and control network use from anywhere.

It may not be loaded with customization tools, but it offers parental control and Quality of Service QoS software that ensures better than average performance. It's the best value Wi-Fi router we've tested. The TP-Link Archer CX is the gaming router to beat, with some of the best performance you'll see in any single home networking device. It offers best-in-class tri-band performance, delivering 1Gbps over its 2. It also has impressive coverage, with more than feet of superb coverage that will blanket most homes in strong, clear Wi-Fi signal.

The spider-like 8-antenna design and red-on-black color scheme are sure to turn heads, but the real selling point is the collection of optimization and security features that will satisfy any power user. With excellent bandwidth-allocation controls to let you use the massive throughput as you wish, this router puts incredible performance into the user's hands, for gaming or anything else. For a truly customizable router, we recommend the Linksys EA Max-Stream, which is not only a great tri-band router, it's also loaded with tools to tweak and customize your router for optimal performance.

The small black EA Max-Stream can move lots of data, though it will do best in smaller homes. Whether you're allocating bandwidth to prioritize gaming or media streaming, or just setting up parental controls, you can automate many features, make manual adjustments on the fly, and monitor it — all from your desktop or smartphone.

Maybe you're finding your current Wi-Fi coverage to feel slower than it used to, have been dogged with spotty reception, or maybe you just need something that can better handle the demands of an increasingly wide range of smart devices in the average home. If you've got any of the above irritations, a new router should fix these common problems. It's also worth upgrading if you're using older hardware. If you still have an old Wireless-N or Wireless-AC retroactively renamed Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5, respectively router in your home, you should definitely think about getting something current.

Not only will these newer standards offer faster connectivity, you'll see other benefits, too. Your smartphone battery will last longer thanks to more efficient device management, and your connected home gadgets will all feel faster and snappier with the more capable standards. The other big reason to upgrade your router is if you've been paying a monthly rental fee for a gateway device from your ISP. Just don't forget to pair it with one of the best cable modems to free yourself entirely from the extra costs that often come with broadband internet packages.

When it comes to choosing the best wireless router, it's easy to get lost in the complexity of networking jargon and obscure technology standards. But all you really need to know is how to answer two key questions: What speed do you need for your internet connection?

And what sort of coverage do you need in your home? Speeds and standards: The internet speed you need for your router will generally be determined by the speed you get from your internet service provider and what speed is supported by your modem.

For most people, a standard With average broadband speeds sitting right around Mbps, most wireless AC routers will be able to handle the job with ease. The latest technology for routers is called Wi-Fi 6, which is a newer, faster standard that's better suited to the many devices found in homes today. Newer Wi-Fi 6 routers are available, but Wi-Fi 6-enabled devices, like laptops and phones, are still few and far between.

Unless you're using a dozen devices at once, you likely won't see much benefit from Wi-Fi 6 at this time. See our article Wi-Fi 6: What it is and why it's better to learn more. The E and E notably were at the bottom of our performance charts.

Neither router supports smart connect aka band steering , and each has a short 1-year warranty. The DIR-X experienced errors during testing, which caused clients to drop off the network, while the DIR-X was in the mid-to-bottom tier on our performance tests. Like Linksys routers, the D-Link routers have a shorter 1-year warranty. Likewise, the Netgear RAX50 had middling results, but was more expensive than other routers we tested.

The TP-Link Archer AX21 finished at or near the bottom of our charts, and was notably one of the slowest in our long distance testing 5. These routers promised more performance from added radios, antennas, extra ports, or a combination of those. We suggest skipping the Synology MRac as a standalone router, but it performed well when we combined it with the RTac in our testing for our mesh-networking guide.

We passed all of them over for one reason or another. The test procedure was actually downloading a 1 MB file over and over as fast as it could. This test measured throughput and speed, and—more important—put a constant load on the router that the other devices on the network had to work around.

For example, recent vulnerabilities include the FragAttacks exploit. Router manufacturers including Asus and TP-Link have posted or are in the process of posting updated firmware on their support pages to take care of these issues.

Joseph Stromberg, 10 simple tips for making your home wifi network faster , Vox, July 28, Jim Salter, Glenn Fleishman, Wi-Fi gets quicker with Steven J. Joel Santo Domingo is a senior staff writer covering networking and storage at Wirecutter. Previously he tested and reviewed more than a thousand PCs and tech devices for PCMag and other sites over 17 years.

How we picked Up-to-date tech. A great router minimizes the wait even if the network is busy serving other devices.

Our pick. TP-Link Archer AX20 If our main pick is unavailable The Archer AX20 offers fewer features than our pick for a slightly lower price, but in most cases it can keep up in throughput, responsiveness, and ease of setup.

Upgrade pick. Budget pick. TP-Link Archer A7 For smaller spaces or fewer devices The TP-Link Archer A7 is an older router, but it still receives valuable firmware updates and performs better at close range than some newer, more expensive models. Everything we recommend. How we tested, plus the results Router setup and network maintenance What to look forward to Understanding the technology and jargon of wireless routers The competition Previous testing and earlier Footnotes Sources. Why you should trust us.

Who this is for. How we picked. Any phone or laptop you buy today or may have bought in the past few years uses the new standards, and having more than one band makes it easier for your router to manage traffic around any slower, Wi-Fi 4 devices on your network.

Good range test results: You should be able to connect to a well-placed router from anywhere in an apartment or a small house. We tested each router from up close and from far away to confirm whether it will allow you, for example, to stream high-quality videos on the far side of your living space.

Low latency test results: Slow internet sucks, and latency—or lag—is the time you have to spend waiting for the next thing to happen. A great router minimizes that wait even if the network is busy serving other devices.

We looked for routers with at least four ports, an arrangement that also lets you connect to any Ethernet or powerline extenders you have in your home. A fast processor and RAM: A router with a speedy multi-core processor and extra RAM can handle more connected devices and offer improved performance.

No matter how good the radios that broadcast the Wi-Fi are, the slow single-core processors found in most cheap routers can still drag things down. Not all manufacturers publish these details, but we do consider the standout hardware when deciding what to test. Nice-to-have extras: Fast, reliable Wi-Fi is what matters the most, but more expensive routers add features that bring other benefits, too.

The things we like to see that justify spending more for a router include link aggregation, built-in security utilities, extra Ethernet and USB ports, VPN connections, and parental filtering. Spending twice as much buys small improvements for few people, and spending only half as much would mean, for most people, giving up a lot. Flaws but not dealbreakers. Photo: Michael Hession. Other great Wi-Fi routers.

What about Ubiquiti? How we tested, plus the results. Our four laptops ran the following tests:. One sat in the downstairs master bedroom and simulated a 4K video streaming session. It tried to download data at up to 30 Mbps, but we were satisfied if it could average 25 Mbps or better, which is what Netflix recommends for 4K.

The second sat in the garage and simulated a web-browsing session. Once every 20 seconds or so, it downloaded 16 files of KB each simultaneously to simulate loading a modern web page; ideally pages should load in less than milliseconds. The third laptop sat in the living room across the house, simulating a second browsing session. It also downloaded 16 KB files simultaneously, and on this laptop we looked for the same quick load times.

The last laptop sat in a spare bedroom downstairs at close range and downloaded a very large file. Multitasking latency or lag. Router setup and network maintenance. As soon as you set up your router, change its administrator password. WPA3 is a newer security standard that purports to be more secure, but very few WPA3-compatible devices are available so far.

When we evaluated our test group, if a router had WPA3, we added points for that future-proofing. Immediately check for any available firmware updates for your router and then recheck every few months. Updating will help you ensure that you get the best performance, security, and reliability. Some routers prompt you to use their cloud login service, which usually requires online sign-up; once you do sign up, you can set the router to automatically update its firmware as new versions become available.

Try to place your router in a central location in your home. Note that tri-band routers have two 5 GHz radios, so you can connect critical devices such as a streaming set-top box or a gaming PC to its own 5 GHz radio manually.

See whether competing wireless networks are present on channels 1, 6, and 11 on the 2. Active Wi-Fi use is what causes congestion: One neighboring network with kids home and playing all day, for example, might give you more trouble than three neighboring networks with little or no activity.