Over the past four years, we’ve spent hundreds of hours testing and evaluating more than 100 routers, and we’ve determined that the best router for wirelessly connecting your laptops, your smart devices, and anything else your daily life depends on is the TP-Link Archer AX55.
Our pick
TP-Link Archer AX55
The TP-Link Archer AX55 created a speedy, responsive network throughout our test house. You have to spend a lot more on a router—or a mesh kit if you have a very large home—to get anything even a little better. It’s our latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) router pick.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $98.
Hitting the sweet spot between price and performance, the $100 to $125 TP-Link Archer AX55 broadcasted a reliable and responsive Wi-Fi 6 network in our test home. You can find routers that offer faster speeds, and ones that are cheaper, but the Archer AX55 is the one in the middle we’d suggest for most people right now. It provides strong Wi-Fi service throughout a 2,000-square-foot, or larger, home.
Upgrade pick
Asus RT-AX88U
If you have gigabit internet service or want to dig into the settings to fine-tune your network, the RT-AX88U’s extra features and improved speed and range are worth the higher cost. But it’s overkill in most homes.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $269.
The Asus RT-AX88U had close to the least lag of any router we tested, and it was faster overall than our top pick, but you pay twice for what is basically a small improvement for most people. We think the upgrade is worth the expense if you’ve already invested in gigabit internet service and need a powerful router to work with all that bandwidth. This model is also great if you want to spend an hour or five over the weekend tweaking your router settings to optimize a new smart device or your videoconferencing performance, because it provides more options for customization than our other picks.
Budget pick
TP-Link Archer A8
The TP-Link Archer A8 is relatively inexpensive and still performs better at close range than pricier models. It’s a reliable option for a small home or an apartment with a few people and their devices.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $60.
If you’re looking to save money, or if you have modest needs, the TP-Link Archer A8 can still provide a solid network for a small home or a multiroom apartment. At longer distances, it’s measurably slower than our more expensive picks, so it’s not well suited for multistory houses, and the connection may stutter if it isn’t centrally located in an apartment or home with more than two bedrooms. But over shorter distances in our tests, the Archer A8 was still able to outperform some routers that cost over $150. The Archer A8 also has modern features like WPA3 and compatibility with TP-Link’s OneMesh extenders, eclipsing our last budget pick, the Archer A7, in that regard.
