Fast Wi-Fi throughout the house: 5 best routers of 2017
In this table, you can compare the technical characteristics of wireless routers from the review. You can choose the best model yourself in the catalog of Wi-Fi equipment.
A cheap two-antenna 300-megabit router Tenda N301 is a mandatory minimum for building a home wireless Internet network. It doesn't make sense to buy an even more primitive single-antenna router with 150 Mbps, because the price difference is negligible. Moreover, now even low-cost laptops, smartphones and tablets support data transmission over Wi-Fi at a theoretical speed of 300 Mbit/s (in fact, 80-90 Mbit/s with direct visibility of the router).
But even if all your mobile devices support only the very old Wi-Fi 802.11g standard (theoretical 54 Mbps), the Tenda N301 will still be a justified purchase, since its bandwidth will be shared between all connected clients. But they will all have to settle for a common 2.4GHz frequency, since the 5 GHz band of the Tenda N301 is not supported.
The Tenda N301 has only three output 100-megabit Ethernet ports (there are already honest 100 Mbps in fact), whereas most other routers have four of them. However, even this amount should be enough. With patch cords instead of Wi-Fi, it is most reasonable to connect a desktop PC (to quickly download games that now weigh 50-75 GB), a smart TV (their wireless connection is usually unstable) and NAS storage (these devices are often devoid of wireless interfaces).
As a result, Tenda N301 is well suited for building only the simplest Internet networks — less than three to five active Wi–Fi clients. For more simultaneous connections of a 300 MHz MIPS architecture processor and 16 MB of RAM, the router will most likely no longer have enough, which is why it may start to slow down and hang up.
At the beginning of this year, TP-Link suspended the production of single-antenna 150-megabit routers. The long-term bestseller TL-WR740N is still on sale, but it will last only until the end of inventory. The younger two-antenna model TL-WR840N is also retiring, and a brand new TL-WR842ND will take its place. The main difference from its predecessor is the USB port. Otherwise, everything is the same – speeds up to 300 Mbit / s and only a 2.4GHz frequency range, infernally noisy with neighboring Wi-Fi networks and other consumer electronics.
There are three main scenarios for using the USB port of the router: connecting a printer to provide printing access to all computers on the local network; turning an external hard disk into a network file storage (Samba or FTP protocol); distributing the Internet from a 3G/4G modem. TP-Link TL-WR842ND supports only the first two scenarios.
The frequency of the TP-Link TL-WR842ND processor is 400 MHz, and the amount of RAM is 32 MB. The characteristics are not record-breaking, but still better than the cheapest routers. Therefore, in addition to home use, TL-WR842ND is also suitable for small offices of Internet users for ten. And the wireless printing function will come in handy here.
Xiaomi Mini Wi-Fi Router is one of the most affordable routers on the market with support for the advanced Wi-Fi 802.11ac standard. It is able to broadcast in the interference-free 5 GHz band and provides a theoretical wireless data transfer rate of up to 867 Mbit/s.
The real speed of Internet traffic could reach 200 Mbit/s, if not for the 100-megabit limit of the input Ethernet port. However, you can still benefit: for example, when copying files between two AC devices on a local network.
In addition to 5 GHz wireless networks, Xiaomi Mini Wi-Fi Router also supports classic 2.4GHz networks with a speed of 300 Mbit/s. But how is this possible with only two antennas? All thanks to MIMO technology, capable of transmitting two data streams simultaneously over one antenna.
It would seem that Xiaomi Mini Wi-Fi Router is an perfect and at the same time relatively inexpensive AC router that suits absolutely everyone: fast, dual-band, with a USB port, 580 MHz processor and as much as 128 MB of RAM. That's just it is sold with Chinese firmware, which complicates the process of setting it up to impossible. Therefore, if you do not have experience flashing electronics, it is better not to save money and choose a slightly more expensive model, but with a menu localized for our language.
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If you do not take into account Xiaomi Mi WiFi Router 3 and Xiaomi Mi WiFi Router 3C with only the Chinese-language official firmware, it is the Netis WF2780 that is the most affordable four-antenna router on the market. The maximum Wi-Fi speed supported by it is exactly the same as that of two antenna AC routers (theoretical 867 Mbit/s), and the Ethernet speed is 1000 Mbit/s.
So what is the use of four physical Netis WF2780 antennas compared to two dual-channel MIMOS? It's simple: two antennas have to broadcast 180 degrees each, which weakens the signal strength. I broadcast four antennas at a maximum of 90 degrees each, and with a small number of Wi-Fi clients in general, point-by-point, thereby achieving a much longer signal range.
Thanks to the four-antenna design, the Netis WF2780 is simply irreplaceable if you need to provide Internet access to a large private house or a similar office. Moreover, he has a high-performance 660 MHz processor (the frequency is higher than that of Xiaomi routers), but only 64 MB of RAM. However, due to the lack of a USB port, the WF2780 firmware is lightweight (there are no extra drivers and applications responsible for USB operation), so it does not need a lot of RAM.
Asus RT-AC66U is perhaps the most functional and expensive router that makes sense to buy for home or office. Only so-called "gaming" routers are more expensive, but this is pure marketing. If you need to increase the number of wired or wireless Internet users, it is cheaper to use a switch and repeater, respectively.
The RT-AC66U has three physical antennas, but there are as many as nine MIMO antennas. Thanks to this, it is able to accelerate to a theoretical speed of 1300 Mbit/s over the air. In fact, it turns out about 350 Mbit / s, which is a very real figure, given the presence of an input Ethernet port at 1000 Mbit / s. The undeniable advantage of the RT-AC66U are two USB ports at once. The connection of printers and 3G/4G modems is supported.
But the most interesting thing is to connect two external hard drives at once and turn the RT-AC66U into an ultra-large storage for movies and music. Moreover, he even has his own application for downloading torrents. A 600 MHz processor and as much as 256 MB of RAM will be enough for all these functions. As a result, the main target audience of Asus RT-AC66U is owners of gigabit Internet channels (providers have been providing similar services in large cities for several years) who want to turn the router into a universal multimedia centre. Or those who want to buy a router for growth.
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