Most powerful wifi router

And with a reasonable price, there's no surprise it's our Editor's Choice. The newer wireless standard offers the best throughput we've ever seen, and will easily handle a whole house full of connected devices. For larger homes, you need coverage that reaches farther and extends to multiple floors as needed, and that means a mesh router. It offers excellent performance that blankets a whole house in signal, and it features a built-in Google Home smart speaker for intuitive voice control.

With high-end performance and lifetime protection against intrusions and malware, it's also a great option for securing your entire home network, providing long term protection without a subscription fee, and carrying a two-year warranty. But the real draw of the Asus RT-AX86U is the performance, which approaches the the magical 1Gbps mark to provide speedy and effortless connectivity for all of your devices.

With excellent range and great performance — even through walls and between floors — the RT-AX86U is equal parts general-use router and elite gaming router, and the collection of features and ports it offers are a steal compared to some of the top-performing gaming gear. And with excellent performance through walls and floors, the Nighthawk AX8 will work just as well in the real world as in the lab. It may be expensive — most Wi-Fi 6 routers are — but the RAX80 offers easy setup and lets you configure the router exactly the way you want it.

It's also got a foot range, but delivers better performance at distances of 50 feet, making it better suited to medium-sized homes. There are several mesh Wi-Fi solutions on the market, and while they'll all cover your home in wireless signal, our favorite has to be the Nest WiFi. Made by Google, the Nest WiFi is small enough to hide out of sight and stylish enough that you won't need to.

But the real draw for the compact mesh units is more than just excellent performance. Each mesh extension of the Nest WiFi system has a Google Home smart speaker built in, giving you one of the best voice assistants throughout the house, along with powerful wireless signal.

The speedy Nest WiFi also delivers one of the easiest setup processes we've ever used, making it a snap to set up extensions around the house. Plus, it'll work with any older Google WiFi units you might own. 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. We already mentioned how important Wi-Fi 6 is for our current crop of routers and devices.

Other important features to watch for include:. Compared to many electronic devices, routers are a long-lived bunch. They can often last for five years or longer without developing any problems that would require a replacement. However, replacing a router every few years is a good way to ensure you are keeping up with the latest technology and security, not to mention Wi-Fi speeds.

More advanced routers, like home mesh systems, are also smarter than traditional routers. These systems benefit from regular software updates and security patches that are applied at night during downtime, which requires no action on your part. And if you choose, you can check for available software updates through the companion smartphone app.

Wi-Fi 7 is currently in development, and routers supporting this standard are not expected to hit the market until Routers have long had the ability to expand their signals via repeaters, or devices that take the router signal and replicate it in a different area, reaching more space and fixing problems like dead zones and dropped connections.

A mesh router is simply a more advanced, user-friendly version of this idea in one package, allowing homeowners to blanket their property with good Wi-Fi coverage and reduce dead zones. Routers like Eero 6 and Nest WiFi have a primary router to serve as a hub, and satellite routers that made to connect to it. These mesh systems are strong solutions for businesses, venues, and other large areas. Your internet speed is primarily decided by your provider and local infrastructure.

However, a better router can offer many features that remove roadblocks to potential higher speeds or make the speed you experience seem faster. If your current ISP internet service provider plan promises speeds that you never see on your Wi-Fi network, try a direct cable connection and run speed tests again. If your speed noticeably improves via a wired connection, that means a better router is more likely to increase your speeds, too.

Latency is also reduced, which is a benefit for responsive gaming and augmented reality and virtual reality applications. You can also connect more devices to your network, which will help owners expand their collection of smart home gadgets.

Gaming routers include software that can identify and prioritize gaming connections so they get the bandwidth they need to avoid lag or graphics issues.

Some also work to connect to closer servers so that server issues are less likely to occur. Our Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR pick is a great place to start, but there are other gaming routers at a variety of price levels.

This is the free app ISS astronauts use for Earth photos. Like the Orbi, Eero uses three frequency bands for Wi-Fi. Most routers advertise their top speeds. For example, an AC router would usually say it offers speed performance up to 1, Mbps.

While those numbers may technically be true, routers actually perform well beneath the theoretical max. The Amazon Eero advertises a practical speed range rather than its theoretical speed, which makes its speeds look much slower than the other routers on this list. This is a great router for multigigabit internet plans because it supports LAN port aggregation for wired connections up to 2 Gbps which basically means you can combine two Ethernet ports for faster speeds.

Its eight high-powered antennas, quad-core processor, and VPN support also make this router a powerhouse. Make sure you actually need all those bells and whistles before investing in this top-of-the-line equipment.

This router is best for large homes with multiple users who are constantly online. Smaller homes and networks with only a few internet users can get by with a more affordable option.

The Google Nest Wifi mesh router system is wildly fast and virtually eliminates dead zones in your home network. The main router has a range of 2, square feet, and you can expand your network further with additional Wifi points. Each point also works as a smart speaker and adds up to 1, square feet of coverage.

Finding a router that will fill a large space with a strong Wi-Fi signal adds another layer of consideration. Go over these specs and features when searching out the right router for your home. There are two categories of long-range routers that work well in large spaces: expandable mesh Wi-Fi systems and traditional routers with amped-up antenna and Wi-Fi radios.

Traditional long-range routers use powerful antenna arrays and signal amplifiers to pump out Wi-Fi signals strong enough to reach the farthest corners of your home. Mesh Wi-Fi systems are expandable and offer flexible coverage over wide distances and difficult floor plans. Traditional routers have more coverage shortcomings than mesh systems—their range is more affected by obstacles like walls and weird house layouts. Mesh routers are a little more complicated to set up and can cost more, depending on how many devices you need.

Routers used to operate on Protocols refer to a set of features or a particular iteration of technology as it relates to your router. Routers use protocols called Wi-Fi standards that encompass a lot of things, but most people use them to identify how fast the router can transfer information.

Some of the more powerful routers and mesh networks that made our list use Wi-Fi 6 delivers better network efficiency to support more connections and give you even faster speeds. Snazzy speeds and a more advanced, efficient protocol can help if you are trying to compensate for signal loss over longer distances, so stick with routers that use the Back in the day, routers operated on a single band and broadcast only one frequency: 2. As connected homes and the Internet of Things IoT expanded, routers began to share that bandwidth with microwaves, Bluetooth devices, wireless phones, and more.

Modern routers adapted to the increase in traffic by becoming dual band, connecting devices on both 2. Consider a tri-band router if you have heavy internet usage due to streaming, gaming, or an unusually large number of connected devices in your home.

The number of bands being used has more to do with accommodating a higher volume of data than increasing your Wi-Fi range. So if your concern is distance rather than multiple devices, dual band should work well for you. Range is about signal strength, but until recently, most routers used omnidirectional antennas, and sent out equal amounts of signal strength in all directions.

Most of the routers that made our list have adjustable antennas lots of them so you can be intentional about covering certain areas of your home and reaching devices in previously dead zones. The number of ports you have is also more about the number of devices on your network than it is about enabling more efficient signals or longer range. Different routers have different numbers of ports, which allow you to directly connect wired devices to the network.

However, if you have an extensive and robust network, you may need to opt for more ports to avoid overcrowding at the network hub. Advanced routers allow users to specify which applications get priority when divvying out the internet signal. Normally, routers simply handle all signal distribution equally with no special preference, but quality-of-service features allow you to specify what gets premium bandwidth and what gets the leftovers.

This can improve your range by increasing the bandwidth to certain applications. A guest network allows you to set up security features and controls so you can offer Wi-Fi to kids and guests without potentially compromising the rest of your devices. These networks can be isolated from each other, offering selective access to certain kinds of activities and each requiring different passwords. Another feature, beamforming, allows you to boost a signal in a specific direction rather than to a particular device, and it can also be essential for increasing signal across longer distances.

Look for some variation of either or both of these features in your router for longer range. With up to 5, square feet of coverage, a ton of ports, and adaptive QoS features to prioritize gaming, this router has all the features you could want for your home network.

Wi-Fi routers often work using two frequency bands: 2.