Your Wi-Fi router is at the heart of your daily computing experience. You can have the best CPU and the best graphics card on the market, but most workloads, from gaming to productivity, use an internet connection. So, if your router is less than ideal, you will leave real-world performance and usability on the table for any device not connected via Ethernet. Even if your internet connection is 300 Mbps and your router claims to be capable of 1,200 Mbps, you may not get full speed.
Fortunately, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to purchase a router that’s more than adequate for even a mid-sized home. Below, we’ll list the best Wi-Fi 6E, and 7 routers based on our testing, and some of these cost less than $100.
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Quick List
Best Wi-Fi Router for Most People
The TP-Link Archer BE3600 doesn’t support the full Wi-Fi 7 spec, but it does offer up respectable performance for just $99. You also get a 2.5 Gbps WAN port, which is a nice bonus at this price point.
Best Wi-Fi 6E Router
This router beat its competitors by nearly 200 Mbps on the 6 GHz band. It also has a great UI and built-in RGB.
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Best Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Router
The Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro is the fastest router we’ve ever tested, delivering close-range wireless speeds of over 3.5 Gbps on the 6 GHz band. The ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro is also backed by a feature-packed AsusWRT 5.0 software platform and the availability of comprehensive wired and wireless backhaul enhancements to improve overall network performance.
Best Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Value
With a price tag of under $300 for a two-pack, the TP-Link Deco BE63 offers a surprising amount of performance and features for general consumers. You’ll find tri-band support, four 2.5 GbE auto-sensing ports per node, and a wealth of configuration options (which are under app-only control).
Best Wi-Fi Routers You Can Buy Today
Best Wi-Fi Router for Most People
For the past few years, Wi-Fi 6 routers have been the sweet spot for value for price-sensitive consumers — it’s easy to find them for around $100 or less. However, TP-Link is turning that notion upside down with its Archer BE3600, which is a Wi-Fi 7 router with a price tag of $99.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, we should tamper your expectations by mentioning that that is a dual-band Wi-Fi 7 router, meaning that it lacks the speedy 6 GHz band. This is what allows TP-Link to hit sub-$100 pricing for the Archer BE3600. However, you do still get support for Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and 4K-QAM.
Once you get past the lack of the 6 GHz band, 5 GHz performance is quite strong for this budget router. Our review unit was able to surpass 1 Gbps on the 5 GHz band, and it even topped 200 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band at 6-foot and 25-foot distances.
Besides the respectable wireless performance, the Archer BE3600 also comes equipped with a pretty stout (for its price) assortment of ports on the back. You’ll find one 2.5 Gbps port for WAN and one 2.5 Gbps port for LAN, plus three 1 Gbps LAN. There’s even a single USB 3.0 port for sharing your external storage wirelessly over a network.
Read: TP-Link Archer BE3600 Wi-Fi 7 Router Review
Best Wi-Fi 6E Router
If you’re willing to spend closer to $200, the MSI RadiX AXE6600 is a fantastic choice. This Wi-Fi 6E router delivers really strong throughput on the 6-GHz band, which is exclusive to 6E (and Wi-Fi 7) routers. On our iPerf network tests, the RadiX AXE6600 achieved speeds of up to 532 Mbps, nearly 200 Mbps ahead of its nearest competitor. Those numbers shrank a bit at far distances, but you can’t get much faster when you have a solid connection.
At 5 GHz, the RadiX was also strong at near connections, hitting a rate of 486 Mbps, the best we tested. But those numbers dropped a bit when we moved farther away or introduced a lot more network traffic. The router’s 2.4-GHz performance was mediocre, but if you’re looking for high speeds, you’d use the 5 or 6-GHz band for your device.
The RadiX AXE6600 also has a great web control panel, filled with great information about your router, even the CPU and memory consumption, two things we rarely even look at on a router. MSI’s router also has a plethora of RGB lights, but to customize them, you’ll need to use the MSI Center software on your PC.
Read: MSI RadiX AXE6600 Wi-Fi 6E Review
Best Wi-Fi 7 Router
If you want lightning-fast speeds that can handle your growing number of Wi-Fi 7 devices, look no further than the Asus RT-BE96U. In our wireless testing, we measured throughput of over 3 Gbps, putting it even ahead of the more expensive ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro Wi-Fi 7 router.
Although it doesn't have as many high-speed ports as the ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro, you still get two 10 Gbps ports (one for LAN, one for WAN) and four 1 Gbps ports. You also get a USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 port, which can be used to tether to a smartphone. That's right, you can connect to your smartphone and use its cellular connectivity to provide internet access to your entire home in case of a service outage by your cable or fiber provider.
Asus provides a full suite of software features to help you get the most performance (and functionality) out of the router, including comprehensive parental controls, advanced guest network configurations, adaptive QoS, and remote access to the drives plugged into the USB ports.
All of this performance and features don’t come cheap, with an MSRP of $700, but that's still $100 cheaper than the ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro.
Read: Asus RT-BE96U Wi-Fi 7 Review
Best Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Router
The Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro is the overachiever in the Wi-Fi 7 router world, thanks to strong performance across the board, especially on the 6 GHz band. You, of course, get access to the full Wi-Fi 7 spec, including MLO, 4K-QAM, and support for 320 MHz channeling.
We observed over 3.5 Gbps in throughput on the 6 GHz band at 6-foot distances, which dropped to around 1.9 Gbps at 25 feet. Those are the fastest wireless speeds we’ve seen yet from a wireless router. Even 5 GHz performance saw speeds reach over 1.6 Gbps.
You get a router and one satellite in the box, both featuring one 10 Gbps WAN, one 10 Gbps LAN, and three 1 Gbps LAN. We would have liked to have seen those 1 Gbps LAN ports upgraded to 2.5 or 5 Gbps, given the $1,100+ price tag of the mesh system. With that said, Asus packed the ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro with a wealth of features, including Dual WAN capabilities, MLO aggregation for the wireless backhaul, wired backhaul support, and even cellular internet support via a connected smartphone via the USB 3.0 port. Throw in Asus’ comprehensive AsusWRT 5.0 software platform and you have a winning combination for a fast, full coverage Wi-Fi 7 mesh network.
With a street price of over $1,100, the ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro is aimed at enthusiasts who want the most out of their wireless network, and you won’t be disappointed.
Read: Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Router Review
Best Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Value
TP-Link’s Deco BE63 is a value-priced Wi-Fi 7 mesh router that should provide more than enough performance for most general consumers. For just $299 for a two-pack, and with ongoing discounts that can bring the price down to as low as $240, you’d be remiss to leave the BE63 off your radar.
We tested a BE63 two-pack, but you can also purchase a three-pack if you need additional coverage. The two-pack covers 5,800 square feet, while the three-pack boosts that coverage to 7,600 square feet. Each BE63 node comes with four 2.5 GbE ports and a USB 3.0 port for storage. You can also control 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands (across primary, IoT, and guest networks), access a comprehensive set of parental controls, and integrate a VPN via an easy-to-use smartphone and tablet app.
While the 2.4 GHz performance of the BE63 was slightly lower compared to its competitors, its 5 GHz and 6 GHz performance ranked near the top of the class. We achieved nearly 2,000 Mbps download speeds at close range, both with uncongested and congested traffic on the BE63.
Overall, the BE63 is an excellent bargain among tri-band Wi-Fi 7 routers, especially considering its sub-$300 pricing.
Read: TP-Link Deco BE63 Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Router Review
What to Look for in a Wi-Fi Router
- Wi-Fi 6, 6E or 7? If you can spend the extra money (usually in the $200+ range), you get an additional band, 6 GHz, with a Wi-Fi 6E router and some added throughput. However, the best value for the money lies at Wi-Fi 6, where you can get a really good router for less than $100. Wi-Fi 7 is significantly faster but it’s bleeding edge and costs at least $500, and most devices don’t support it yet.
- Control panel software? The traditional way to set up a router is using a web-based interface from a computer. Many routers can be controlled via smartphone apps, but we recommend avoiding any model that can only be set up via an app. That limits your ability to configure the router when your phone is not around and could force you to reset the router if you lose or wipe your phone.
- Mesh or not Mesh? Some routers are part of a mesh system that allows you to place one or more “satellites” in locations around your home in order to boost far connectivity. However, mesh networking devices cost more and the satellites can introduce latency into the network when you connect to them. So if you don’t have a huge home or connectivity issues on different floors, we recommend sticking with a single router.
How We Test Wi-Fi Routers
How We Test Wi-Fi Routers
To see how each router performs in the real world, we go through the setup process and test out its control panel software and any mobile apps you can use to control it. We then use benchmarks to determine both throughput and latency.
To measure throughput speeds, we use iPerf3, a tool that transfers packets on the local network between a server PC, which we connect to the router via Ethernet, and a client device that we use wirelessly. We use a local server rather than hitting one on the Internet, because we don’t want to be limited by the bandwidth of our Internet connection, which can vary even from one moment to the next.
Perhaps because we are dealing with both a client and a server or because there’s a lot of hype when it comes to router speeds, the throughput numbers we get on iPerf3 are always much lower than the theoretical maximums that vendors advertise. For example, while Wi-Fi 6E boasts theoretical speeds of 9.6 Gpbs, we never saw one go above 1,000 Mbps. And, in most cases, we got 500 Mbps or lower. On Wi-Fi 6 connections, we saw speeds in the 250 to 400 Mbps range and, on 2.4-GHz channels, those numbers were usually in the 50 to 150 Mbps range.
With iPerf3, we test all devices at both a near (5 feet or so) and far (25 feet or so) distance from the router. We also test under both uncongested (only device using the network) and congested (other devices sapping bandwidth) conditions. We benchmark on every band that the router supports (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz). Note that 6 GHz is only supported by Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7.
If you’re gaming, latency may actually be more important than throughput, because you’re not usually transferring a ton of data when you play. What you are doing is sending your movements to the server and getting a response back so that process has to be quick. We measure latency by pinging our local server under all the same conditions that we use for throughput (near, fear, congested and uncongested).
Latency is measured in milliseconds and can go anywhere from 2 milliseconds up to 20+ milliseconds. Lower is better.
