Best WiFi Routers 2025: High-Speed, Low Cost Choices for WiFi 6E and 7

Your WiFi 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 WiFi 6E and 7 routers based on our testing, and some of these cost less than $100.

Quick List

Best WiFi Routers You Can Buy Today

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Best WiFi Router

The TP-Link Archer BE9700 is the best WiFi router out of the tremendous number of units that we've benchmarked exhaustively. Now that Wi-Fi 7 products have been on the market for a few years, prices have dropped significantly from their initial highs. You can grab a dual-band Wi-Fi 7 router like the TP-Link Archer BE3600 for less than $100. However, if you want a tri-band router that fully encompasses the entire Wi-Fi 7 feature stack, you can grab the Archer BE9700 at a street price of $200.

There are standalone Wi-Fi 7 routers that are faster overall, and there are Wi-Fi 7 mesh routers that will give you better coverage, but the Archer BE9700 hits the absolute sweet spot when it comes to wireless performance and features. Lurking beneath the unassuming, black exterior with six moveable antennas is a router that delivers solid performance across the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. It’s not class-leading performance, but it’s right in the same ballpark and more than sufficient for everyday users. Where the Archer BE9700 shines, however, is with its 6 GHz performance. Here, we saw the router crack the 2.5 Gbps mark at close range.

As if the wireless performance wasn’t enough, TP-Link also delivers on the wired front. You get a single 10 Gbps WAN/LAN port and four 2.5 Gbps LAN ports. That 10 Gbps port should come in handy if you have an ultra-high-speed fiber connection at your home, or if you just want to use it as a LAN connection for your gaming desktop. There’s also a USB 3.0 port on the side of the unit for connecting storage devices (Time Machine is even supported for Macs).

When it comes to delivering good overall performance for most people, the Archer BE9700 is hard to beat. And with a price tag of under $200, it’s also priced right.

Read: TP-Link Archer BE9700 Router Review

Best Budget WiFi Router

The TP-Link Archer BE3600 is the best budget WiFi router, providing exceptional value for the money. 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 temper your expectations by mentioning that it 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 in our extensive benchmarks.

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 Gaming WiFi Router

The TP-Link Archer GE800 is the best WiFi router for gaming: If you're looking for a dedicated, gaming-centric router, look no further than the TP-Link Archer GE800. At first glance, the router's design resembles something out of Star Wars, featuring twin vertical blades that join the main body. And given its gaming roots, it has RGB located around the body to spruce up the design and offers several lighting patterns.

When you get to the actual hardware, TP-Link also delivers with four 2.5 GbE ports, one of which is designated as a gaming port. TP-Link automatically prioritizes game traffic to your connected device when using this port. The Archer GE800 also has two 10 GbE ports, a single 10 Gbps SFP+ port, and a USB 3.0 port for storage. That last port can be used to set up a Time Machine backup for Macs. There's also some powerful software onboard, including automatic QoS controls to optimize online gaming, game port forwarding, and game server acceleration via GPN.

For devices that won't physically connect to one of the Archer GE800's ports, the router also delivers stellar tri-band Wi-Fi 7 performance. In our extensive benchmarks, we saw over 2,800 Mbps on the 6 GHz band and nearly 1,900 Mbps on the 5 GHz band at a distance of six feet, with relatively small performance falloff when moving out to 25 feet.

The Archer GE800 carries an MSRP of $599, and when we tested the router in September 2024, it was selling for just under $400. Today, the Archer GE800 still sells for around $499, but regularly falls to $349 on sale, so keep an eye out for those drops.

Read: TP-Link Archer BE800 Wi-Fi 7 Gaming Router Review

Best Mesh WiFi Router

The Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro is the best mesh router. This 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 in our benchmarks. 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 Budget Mesh WiFi Router

TP-Link’s Deco BE63 is the best budget mesh router. The Deco 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 benchmarked 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

Best WiFi 6E Router

If you’re willing to spend closer to $200, the MSI RadiX AXE6600 is a fantastic choice. This model is the best WiFi 6E router overall, delivering really strong throughput on the 6-GHz band, which is exclusive to 6E (and Wi-Fi 7) routers. On our iPerf network benchmarks, 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

What to Look for in a WiFi Router

How We Test WiFi Routers

How We Test WiFi 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.