The Best Routers 2018

I own the netgear nighthawk r7800 as a replacement for the not so super hub my ISP provided. Works well, regular firmware updates, acts as a NAS and provides housewide wireless. Might not quite justify the cost (£150) but I was fed up with using my phone data just because the super hub needed rebooting again to get the wifi working.
 
I have had 2 Netgear routers and while I loved intitally both had issues. My first was the Nighthawk 7000 ac1900. The main issue I had was the performance of it. Yes it was ok but what I had found out over time was the it used extra security called Nat Filtering that caused havoc with online games. Especially games that used NAT like CoD. When I set the NAT Filtering to open, things got much better. Never could get my ping below 60-80 on certain games. While 60-80 is ok, I would have liked it to be much lower. Had the router for about 2-3 years.
My 2nd Netgear was the Nighthawk X4S 7800 AC2600. Performance was on par with the original Nighthawk, a little bit better but nothing all that special I was looking for. Also had the NAT Filtering issue again. Had to set it to open. This one actually would end up failing. First time ive ever had a issue with a router failing. Whether it was hardware related or if something happened with the firmware/update, it would no longer work. Had the router 2 years or less.

I now have a Linksys router which I use to use a lot then switched to Netgear. I switched back to Linksys when I had issues with my Netgear so I gave Linksys another shot. So far, after 1 year, its working better than ever. The Linksys I am using is the WRT 32X Gaming Router. The router compared to the other Netgears ive had, gives me a better/lower ping than I have ever had. I don't have to mess with any settings, it simply just works. One of the easiest UI/Interfaces ive ever used.

About the Netgears, I know that there are or maybe different versions out there and they may have fixed some issues and what not. I am not saying that they aren't good. I just was hoping for a lil better performance out of them and of course I had one die. Not to mention the nonsense of having to deal with NAT Filtering option. They may make a model that doesn't deal with that anymore, im not sure. My Linksys does not have to worry about that.
 
Netgear X10 is the best gaming router money can buy , not that 8 antena overpriced Asus. The X10 is one of the few routers to come with the AD standard , which is much better and stable than AC.

AD is short range and line of site its not meant as a replacement for AC that is AX which is now called Wifi 6.

"Much better and more stable"

hmm...

Spending $400-$500 on a gaming router to improve your ping times is for people that don't really understand networking.
 
Best router on price/performance ration that I've seen is C2 from tp-link, some peeps here dont know what they are smokin' about, I had them all, cisco, netgear, linksys, thomson, huwei, and I stopped at a measly $40 tplink after I got 1Gb fiber, didnt need anything more! ( sure I could go for an extremely expensive Asus for $ 400 that does the same thing as a router 10 times cheaper! the only difference being some features that regular folks will never use.

The TP-Link Archer C7 mentioned in the article is great, but the C2 is not so good for Wi-Fi.

I had a C2 before and it didn't provide a stable enough Wi-Fi connection using WDS, so devices on the extended network would get slow / dropping connection. This is due to their use of the awful MediaTek (Ralink) MT7610 chipset (which is also used in their T2UH USB adapter - DO NOT BUY, it has strange issues on Windows and does NOT work on Linux Kernel 4.0+ without half-broken custom drivers).

Switched to C7 and now the network works almost perfectly ("almost" because the root router is an older TD-W9980). If only I could find a USB adapter that works as well.
 
I will never buy a combo device ever again. Your router and your wifi should be separate devices. One of the two functions always becomes old (usually the wifi side) and then you just have to buy a whole new device all over again when the router side is still just fine. Personally I use Untangles free Linuz Firewall as my router on an old PC and then have Ubiquiti WAPS throughout the house. When the WAPS get old, buy new ones, they're cheap.
 
TP-Link C7 Archer is trash! I had more throughput issues with it then the Hitron router/modem that my ISP provided me with. I ended up with the ASUS RT-AC68U and never looked back.

Truth be told, I use the RT-AC68U as a VPN client for all the devices connected to it on my network. I may end up replacing the RT-AC68U as my main router with another ASUS tri-band router and go with an AiMesh setup.
 
This is NOT a great list. This all looks old except the very high end listings, and the information doesn't seem to be up to date. I had a Google wifi router, and it was not a great router. I had dead spots in a very small home. I bought an Amplifi HD router, without the extenders, and I have NO dead spots, and much, much, much better signal strength all around my house, and outside my house where the Google wifi wouldn't even get a signal. Yet, you don't even mention it. Wow! So how do you have that piece of crap Google Wifi as best router????? They must have paid you a pretty penny or two. Not impressed...
 
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This is NOT a great list. This all looks old except the very high end listings, and the information doesn't seem to be up to date. I had a Google wifi router, and it was not a great router. I had dead spots in a very small home. I bought an Amplifi HD router, without the extenders, and I have NO dead spots, and much, much, much better signal strength all around my house, and outside my house where the Google wifi wouldn't even get a signal. Yet, you don't even mention it. Wow! So how do you have that piece of crap Google Wifi as best router????? They must have paid you a pretty penny or two. Not impressed...
This was posted back in May.... it was simply re-posted this week... obviously, the data will be from May...
 
Cisco EA4500 Smart Router with 1.2GHz NPU No real issues with it at all. Really all routers can be built around Quad, dual or Single Core NPU. Util we have very higher through-put the need to spend like $499 for router not ideal for all of us. No router is the best they all have to follow the same FCC guidelines. Some can make it faster with more buffer memory. Cooling is where it counts under load. Can he handle large downloads or uploads for gaming. Does it choke on you cause the game to be sluggish. That's what I would deem the best router how does it handle cooling. Fan, fin or nothing..
 
So...really? The "Best Router for Most People" category is pushing a $140 router? Sorry, but despite my love of gaming, my primary Internet usage falls under this category, yet I do not need most of the features on this router:

-- 600Mbps (2.4GHz band) or even 1500Mbps (5GHz band)? Sorry, but I'm going to run out of Internet speed (100Mbps connection from Spectrum) well before my WiFi devices hit that threshold. And the most bandwidth-using purpose any of my devices have is watching Netflix or Amazon Video (Roku stick/box). I don't transfer files in between our tablet/smartphones, our laptops, & our main desktop PC...& wireless printing (when we use it) to our inkjet doesn't come close to using the bandwidth.
-- Range? Seriously? Yeah, I understand that my 960 square foot house might be considered a bit on the slow side, but when they built it back in the 1950s they put a lot of metal inside -- metal reinforcing wires in the walls, all of the original interior doors are metal, etc. -- so a little stronger of a signal can be nice. But our current router gives me 2 out of 3 bars on my smartphone out to the detached garage (about 50-60 feet from the router), so I don't need more range than I already have. And neither do most people.

If anything, that Archer C7 would have been a better pick as the "router for most people"...because most people aren't going to be comfortable spending that much money for a router just so that they can avoid using their smartphone data plans at home.
Where I live you can get 1Gbps, unlimited, fiber in your home, for under $10 per month. Good routers are important and even if they advertise 1500Mbps it's generally just the peak numbers, not sustained.

But I do agree that 150$ for a router is on the expensive side and generally only for those that have large homes with many devices and do more than just play CS:GO :D
 
I've got the Netgear Orbi set up for one network and an ASUS RT-AC68U on another network. Both work flawlessly for my setups. Although I may expand the ASUS into an AiMesh setup sometime soon.
 
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