Wi-Fi 6 has brought a new generation of premium routers designed to take advantage of improved speeds and bandwidth. Is it time to upgrade and future-proof your network? We’ve tested all the latest entries to help you decide.
With home offices becoming much more important for the majority of office workers as the pandemic has dragged on, it’s well worth the effort to take a close look at the heart of your home network, namely your router. What also makes this an especially good time to go router hunting is the Wi-Fi 6 standard, which finally has compatible routers showing up in real numbers. If your current router is more than three years old and you’re looking for both a speed and security boost over what you’ve got running today, the Wi-Fi 6 standard has you covered. If you’re wondering what kind of router you’ve got now, it’s probably compatible with the still-viable Wi-Fi 5 standard. Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) has been the leading wireless networking standard since it first appeared on the scene in 2013. Its ability to deliver multi-band connectivity with theoretical throughput speeds of up to 5.4 gigabits per second (Gbps) have kept it dominant for more than half a decade. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) ushers in a new era of wireless networking, boasting theoretical speeds of up to 9.6Gbps. However, there’s a lot more to Wi-Fi 6 than speedy throughput. More client capacity, enhanced battery life for client devices, better security, and increased efficiency are also on the benefits list, and these routers are now available in a variety of configurations with prices starting as low as $70 for budget router models, though climbing past $600 for top-of-the-line devices. That’s a rather large swing price-wise, so before choosing a Wi-Fi 6 router try not to think about money as the primary differentiator and instead think about why you want to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6. (Our handy guide can help.) Once you know it’s the right move, start by calculating the size of your coverage area and the number of clients that will be connecting to the network. In addition to PCs, tablets, gaming consoles, and phones, be sure to consider the ever-growing list of connected smart home devices, such as cameras, doorbells, locks, and smart TVs to name a few. As you would expect, the wireless routers with more I/O ports, robust management tools, and blazing throughput potential tend to be the most expensive ones. But once you’ve figured out who and what you’ll be connecting to your network, you’ll know if you really need one of these high-priced devices, or if a less-expensive model will do. In this guide, we tell you what you need to know to make an informed decision when buying a new Wi-Fi 6 router, and offer up our latest Wi-Fi 6 router reviews. What Is Wi-Fi 6? For those new to Wi-Fi 6, it’s good to cover exactly what this new standard entails and why it’s important. Wi-Fi 6 is another name for 802.11ax, the newest generation of wireless tech and an evolution of the popular 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) standard, which many of today’s routers and client devices use to connect to one another and to the internet. Wi-Fi 6’s primary benefit is a theoretical throughput bounce from 5.4Gbps to a maximum of 9.6Gbps, which PCMag’s router testing has so far confirmed (though with some variance in numbers among the different players). But there’s more to Wi-Fi 6 than faster speed, including greater client capacity, better range performance, and reduced network congestion and power consumption. Wi-Fi 6 also adds entirely new capabilities to your router’s arsenal, such as the Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) protocol. OFDMA enhances throughput by breaking Wi-Fi channels into sub-channels and allowing up to 30 users to share a channel simultaneously. Target Wake Time (TWT) is a power reduction scheme that allows Wi-Fi 6 devices to decide when they will emerge from a power-saving sleep mode to begin sending and receiving data. Smart devices such as security cameras and video doorbells are expected to benefit from TWT technology, as are smartphones, tablets, and laptop PCs. Netgear Nighthawk AX8
Another area of improvement is channel size. Wi-Fi 6 doubles the channel width from 80MHz to 160MHz. This expansion helps create faster connections between the router and its clients.
