Mesh Wi-Fi systems expand internet coverage
Having a reliable internet connection is getting to be a must-have, particularly when you’re at home working, streaming a movie or your favorite show, or just about anything else. The farther away you get from your router, the weaker your internet connection tends to be. The best mesh routers can expand your internet coverage to every room of your house. For most homes, our top pick is the TP-Link Deco W7200, a two-piece mesh system that offers excellent performance for around $200. Many other top-tier mesh routers are worth considering, though, and we’ve spent years testing them to find the best systems of the bunch. We’ve still got lots of routers and mesh systems we’d like to try out, the majority of which use Wi-Fi 6 technology, promising better performance and faster speeds. Shop around and you’ll find mesh routers from Eero, Nest, Netgear Orbi, Linksys and others that support Wi-Fi 6E, which means they can also access a newly unlocked mass of fresh bandwidth in the 6GHz band. Below we highlight three of CNET’s top choices that came out atop the heap in our testing.
BEST MESH ROUTER OVERALL: TP-LINK DECO W7200
For a mesh router upgrade that really feels like an upgrade, you’ll want to look for these things: Wi-Fi 6 support and a tri-band design with the usual 2.4 and 5GHz bands. You’ll also want a second 5GHz band that the system can use as a dedicated backhaul connection for wireless transmissions between the main router and the satellites. The problem is that tri-band Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers like that are typically expensive. Not too long ago, I commended Asus and Eero for bringing the cost of a two-piece system like that down to around $400.
Now, TP-Link is doing even better and selling the Deco W7200 mesh router, a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 system that costs less than $200 for a two-pack. That’s an excellent value, and the even better part is that it performs like a champ, with fast, stable speeds and decent range. In addition, the setup process is about as easy as it gets, with satellite extenders that automatically join the mesh as soon as you plug them in.
All of that makes the Deco W7200 an outstanding value and the first mesh router we’d point people to if they asked for a recommendation.
A GREAT THREE-PIECE SETUP FOR LARGE HOMES: EERO 6 PLUS
Eero was an early pioneer of the mesh
networking approach, and in 2019, it got scooped up by Amazon. Then, in 2020, we got two new versions of the Eero mesh router: the Eero 6 and Eero Pro 6, both of which add support for Wi-Fi 6.
We liked the Eero Pro 6 as an upgrade pick, but the standard Eero 6 wasn’t quite strong enough for us to recommend it. Flash forward to the release of the Eero 6 Plus. With a list price of $300 for a threepack, it offers the same strong pitch as the Eero 6 — a relatively affordable and easyto-use three-piece Wi-Fi 6 mesh setup, complete with a built-in Zigbee radio for connecting things like lights and locks with your network. Best of all, with a faster AX3000 design (up from AX1800 with the Eero 6) and support for full-width, 160MHz channels (up from 80MHz), the performance is significantly improved.
In our at-home tests, the Eero 6 Plus returned average download speeds that were in the top 10 of the 30 or so mesh routers we’ve reviewed here, and none of the systems that outperformed it offer as good a value. Its upload speeds were strong as well, and it works great with previous-gen Wi-Fi 5 client devices, too; that’s important because gadgets like those still comprise the majority of Wi-Fi devices in our homes. With three mesh devices for $300 and a range of up to 4,500 square feet, it’s an excellent pick for large homes, where that additional extender will come in handy.
BEST VALUE:
NETGEAR ORBI AC1200
The AC1200 version of Netgear Orbi is a smaller, simpler version of the popular mesh system. It doesn’t offer blazing-fast speeds, but the performance is consistent and it costs a lot less than other, fancier Orbi builds.
Netgear brought the cost down by sticking with Wi-Fi 5, ditching the built-in Alexa speaker that comes with the Orbi Voice and skipping the tri-band approach
and the dedicated 5GHz backhaul band that other Orbi systems use to connect each device in the mesh. We wonder if Netgear missed an opportunity by not branding this system as “Orbi Lite.”
It all makes for a less robust mesh system than other Orbi setups, but we hardly noticed in our tests. Among the Wi-Fi 5 systems we’ve tested, the dual-band Netgear Orbi actually notched the fastest top speeds at close range, kept up with the Nest and Eero in our real-world speed tests and offered excellent signal strength in the large-sized CNET Smart Home. Netgear has a great reputation for performance — it received the top overall score in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s 2023 survey for Wi-Fi equipment.
Netgear’s app isn’t as clean or intuitive as Nest’s or Eero’s, and the network didn’t seem quite as steady as those two as it steered us from band to band in our tests, but those are quibbles at this price.