The 10 Best Wireless Routers

Name	Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router AC 1900 (WRT1900AC)	Trendnet AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router (TEW-812DRU)	ZyXel MWR102 Travel Router	Asus RT-AC66U Dual Band 3x3 802.11AC Gigabit Router	Linksys Smart Wi-Fi AC 1750HD Video Pro EA6500	Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router (R7000)	Skydog	Western Digital My Net N900	Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (A1521)	Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR4500
Editor Rating
Lowest Price
Chipset	Marvel	Broadcom	Ralink	Broadcom	Broadcom	Broadcom	Atheros	Atheros	Broadcom	Broadcom
Wired Ports	4 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	1 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	7 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)	4 (excluding WAN)
Parental Controls	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
NAT	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stateful Packet Inspection	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
IPv6 compatible	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Networking Options	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4 GHz only)	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband)	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband)	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband), 802.11ac draft	802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (2.4+5 GHz Dualband)
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Some capabilities that make for an excellent Wi-Fi router include great throughput speeds, good range, easy set up and manageability, a decent feature set, and, of course, fair pricing. The ten routers that follow strike the best balance among all our criteria.
A wireless router is the hub of your home or business network. In a nutshell, a router delivers a single Internet connection to other devices on the network, through either wired Ethernet or wireless connectivity. Some routers, targeted at novice users, are easy to set up, while others take a little more know-how. Routers also vary in the throughput they can crank out, depending on the antenna configuration and the hardware inside.
Routers also often provide additional capabilities, such as USB ports for attaching an external drive or printer and then sharing those devices on a network, built-in firewalls to protect against invading Internet threats, and services such as UPnP and DLNA to allow streaming multimedia content throughout the network.
Some Wi-Fi routers go even further, allowing you to set up access for guests to connect to your wireless network and use your Internet service, while controlling or restricting their access to resources like files and printers. You can also use a router's QoS (quality of service) feature to give priority to the type of network traffic most important to you, be it VoIP (voice over Internet protocol), video, or even file-sharing. Some can police what your children access on the Internet, and just about all can restrict which devices can connect to your network via a feature called MAC filtering.
Below you'll find short summaries of the top 10 routers we've tested. To read more about any of the routers (including throughput testing data), click through to the full review. To get more information on the type of router you need, read How to Buy a Wireless Router.

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