We Ranked the 4 Best Routers

The oldest and slowest of the bands on a router is the 2.4 GHz band, but it sticks around for a reason. Generally speaking, while this band features the slowest available speeds and has the lowest bandwidth, but also reaches out the furthest. It’s not the best band to connect to connect if you need high speeds, but if you just need to be connected for light browsing or anything that’s low bandwidth, it works. Alternatively, if you own a lot of old devices, this band may be the only band they can “see” and therefore, use.

Given the age of the band, top speeds on 2.4 GHz cap out very quickly. We recommend a speed of at least 50 Mbits/s, but if you aren’t really going to be using this band for anything other than checking web pages, you can go lower. It’s worth noting, though, that this might lead to a more frustrating and laggier time on modern sites with lots of scripting and high-quality images.

Upload speed is just the reverse of download speed. Instead of pulling down info, you’re uploading it. This is common when uploading documents or photos to a website or when you’re streaming content to a platform like Twitch.

Generally speaking, your upload speed is going to be limited more by your ISP than by your router, because bandwidth is a two-way street when it comes to routers. Pulling 100 MBits down means you should be able to push 100 MBits up, but if your ISP throttles your upload, then it doesn’t matter if your router allows for a full gigabit up, you can only go as fast as the “speed” limit allows. It’s for that reason we set 2.4 GHz upload limits at 25 Mbits, but in reality, anything you can get is acceptable, since this band isn’t – and shouldn’t – be used for anything that requires real speed.

The much faster 5 GHz band offers up much greater bandwidth and is much, much better at meeting high-speed demands. Streaming high-quality video, using streaming services, gaming, downloading large files and games – the 5 GHz band is what makes all of these activities quick and bearable. It reaches a lower range than the 2.4 GHz band, but it’s also much faster, so you’ll use it more, especially on newer devices that actually support the band.

Given how much you’ll be using this band, we recommend a speed of at least 200 Mbits/s to ensure you’re able to enjoy streaming and gaming on at least a few devices simultaneously. Any lower and you start to run into real bottleneck concerns, such as endless buffering, lagging, or drops in connection.

Just as 5 GHz download speed is faster than 2.4 GHz download, 5 GHz upload is usually faster than 2.4 GHz download. Why “usually”? Because if your upload cap is extremely aggressive, you might not notice a difference. This is purely ISP-dependent, but it’s worth keeping in mind that seeing an unusually low 5 GHz upload isn’t necessarily a router issue, and could just be your ISP throttling your connection. It’s worth noting that, despite the naming convention, 5 GHz is what’s used by Wi-Fi 6 (and also Wi-Fi 5) routers.

We recommend a speed of at least 100 Mbits/s, but you’ll want more if you plan on doing any kind of streaming to a platform like YouTube or Twitch and want to stream at a decent quality. Unfortunately, your choice of router isn’t the only thing that will determine the speed you get out of your connection – if your connection throttles you to 80 Mbits up, then nothing you buy will fix that.

The 6 GHz band is the latest band available on routers and is exclusive to routers that use Wi-Fi 6E. It’s slightly faster than 5 GHz bands, but the primary draw behind using 6 GHz is the reduced congestion, which reduces signal interference and as such, can potentially boost latency and speed. The newest devices can connect to Wi-Fi 6E, and because it’s a new standard, all new devices will eventually come to support it.

Because the band is only slightly faster than 5 GHz (if it ends up faster at all), we recommend a download speed of 250 Mbits/s. This is plenty for streaming, playing games, and watching Netflix – or all three across several devices, without seeing lag spikes or buffering. If you have new devices that support Wi-Fi 6E, you’ll need a router that supports the 6 GHz band to take advantage of it. Also, similar to how 5 GHz has a shorter range than 2.4 GHz, 6 GHz has a slightly shorter range than 5 GHz.

Just as the 6 GHz band allows for low congestion connections that help reduce latency and improve download speed for multiple devices, it also can improve upload speed. You’re still limited by your ISP, but you run the lowest chance of hitting major spikes in lag or dropping your connection when connected to this band.

We recommend a speed of at least 125 Mbits, but higher is obviously going to be better. Still, you’re only going to go as high as your ISP ultimately allows, so if you see low speeds, it’s worth checking what your ISP throttles upload speeds to.

The router range is exactly what the name suggests: how far can you get from the router before you start experiencing issues with your connection? The complicating factor is the simple fact that the range depends on the band you’re using. 2.4 GHz is a band that offers greater range, so it gives test results that show a greater range than tests that use the 5 GHz band. In general, our research found most publications used the 5 GHz band, so our recommendations are based on that.

As such, we recommend your router have a range of at least 50 ft. This gives you a good “bubble” around the router that you can connect to, but it’s important to know that things like the walls in your home can cause issues. Thicker walls block more signal, thinner walls block less. Some materials will also do a better job than others will at stopping signal, so if you see a router with a range of 65 ft, know that it might not reach that far in your home. It could reach further – or not nearly as far. This is also why you get dead zones in your home – it’s a matter of geometry and materials.

On a router, latency refers to how long it takes for the router to send out and receive a signal. The longer it takes, the more delay there is between you sending and receiving data, which can introduce lag in video games and also makes video conferencing harder since the person you’re speaking with now has to contend with your delay and vice versa. If you’ve ever spent a call talking over someone because you don’t know they started talking a second ago, that’s latency.

For that reason, we recommend a latency below 40 ms. As low as you can get it is obviously preferable, but latency is another aspect of your internet connection that is hard to manage. Latency differs to every single place you connect to, and every ISP has its own latency they “add” because you have to connect to their service too. Latency creeps in from your ISP, from the site you’re requesting data from, from your router, and from your own onboard Wi-Fi antenna – and that’s just to name a few sources. If you’re gaming, you also have a delay introduced by your connection to game servers and the delay that exists on a hardware level when you input commands.