Best Wi-Fi routers 2020: How to choose and buy the best router
How to buy a Wi-Fi router to suit your internet speed and budget, including routers for gaming, streaming video or simply scrolling through social media.
Whitson Gordon
Whitson Gordon
If you need more bandwidth than TP-Link's budget-focused router offers, their newer Archer Ax50 packs faster speeds with the enhanced Wi-Fi 6 for a more powerful step up.
While some people prefer to set their router up once and forget it, others (like myself) prefer to tweak settings and make use of advanced features to get the best experience possible. Asus’ feature set and excellent settings interface (not to mention its higher Wi-Fi 6 speeds) make it a great choice if you have more to spend and want one of the best Wi-Fi routers available today. There are even higher-end routers out there, like Netgear's Nighthawk AX12, but they're likely more than most people need.
If you have a larger home and a single router can't quite get you coverage everywhere, you might be better off with a mesh Wi-Fi system like Amazon’s Eero Pro. Each unit intelligently communicates the others to blanket your house in a single, far-reaching Wi-Fi network, and it's easy to set up.
A Wi-Fi router’s speed is measured in Megabits per second, or Mbps. That metric denotes how fast the router can move incoming data — like an internet signal — from one computer (like your modem) to another (like your smartphone or TV). For the past few years, the fastest Wi-Fi routers on the market used a standard called "802.11ac," or "Wireless AC." We're on the verge of a new standard right now with a simpler name: Wi-Fi 6.
When you shop for a router, you'll usually see a speed advertised on the spec sheet. The fastest AC routers, for example, might boast up to 5,300 Mbps of blazing-fast speed.
In other words, there’s a lot of complicated technobabble behind the numbers on the box, but there’s not much reason to overburden yourself with it: It’s mostly a benchmark that allows you to determine a router’s overall capabilities. Think of it like the available horsepower a car has — it’s less about utilizing that power each time you drive and more to categorize the general strength of the car’s engine.
The latest Wi-Fi 6 routers offer better speeds and more features than older AC routers, but a new iteration called Wi-FI 6E is already on the way. If you need a new router now, you can either get an affordable AC router as a stopgap before upgrading to Wi-Fi 6E down the line or grab an early Wi-Fi 6 router now. If you can, I'd recommend waiting until 2021 when Wi-Fi 6E will be fully baked.
You’ll see other features on a router’s product page, too. For example, “dual-band” routers are the norm now, which use two different frequencies — 2.4GHz and 5GHz — to get a better signal to your devices.
Having both allows you to get the best connection no matter where you are in the house. Some modern routers even sport the tri-band label, which allows more devices to communicate with the router at one time, eliminating congestion when the whole family’s using the web at the same time — whether Tik Tokking, streaming Netflix shows, blasting a Spotify playlist or checking for the latest sports reruns.
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