Which wifi is best

However, it may not offer the same speeds as a wired alternative, which is something to consider if you need the highest performance. Plusnet has launched its lowest-ever fibre broadband deal for Black Friday Find out how. The provider has launched its first exclusive offer for customers who use both services.

At Connected Britain , broadband providers showed their efforts to support digitally-excluded UK citizens. We use cookies and similar technologies. You can use the settings below to accept all cookies which we recommend to give you the best experience or to enable specific categories of cookies as explained below.

Find out more by reading our Cookie Policy. Look out for Black Friday. Enter your postcode to start comparing broadband deals available to you:. Wireless broadband deals explained Related pages Broadband deals news. Wireless broadband deals explained You'd be hard-pressed to find a home or business that still relied on a wired internet connection, as pretty much all broadband deals are now wireless broadband deals. Our best wireless broadband deals on Uswitch. Is wireless internet better than wired?

Does wireless internet cut out more often? Today's wireless routers are highly reliable and should give a level of consistent performance similar to that of wired connections. However, they may have trouble penetrating to every corner of a home, which may mean you need a booster to enhance the signal. How does wireless broadband work? Home wireless broadband will need a Wi-Fi router. These are included for free in most broadband deals and come preinstalled with the right settings, so should be simply plug-in-and-play.

You can buy your own if you prefer, but you'll have to set it up yourself - your internet provider can provide instructions for how to do this. Broadband deals news News 9 November News 18 October News 24 September 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. 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.

Total redeemable TimesPoints 0. Notification Center. Your search for the best wireless router ends here. We have enlisted here some of the best options that have the capability to power a whole home's worth of connected gear, while providing unmatchable power for gaming and securing every gadget you own.

What is a house without a good wireless router? A Wi-Fi router is actually the unsung hero holding your smart home together. Here are some of our recommendations of the best wireless routers:. You have successfully cast your vote Login to view result.