The 9 Best Wi-Fi 6 Routers of 2023

How to Choose a Wi-Fi 6 Router

The advent of Wi-Fi 6 is a big deal considering it’s been almost ten years since the 802.11ac standard emerged in 2014 (now retroactively known as Wi-Fi 5). 

It’s not uncommon to find households where everyone has a smartphone, tablet, and laptop, plus one or more game consoles and smart TVs—and that doesn’t even include the fact that just about everything from your living room lights to your toaster wants to get online. 

So Wi-Fi routers have a lot more to handle than they once did. While manufacturers have done an admirable job of pushing older 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 technology to deliver the kind of performance necessary for fast-paced online gaming, 4K streaming, and uninterrupted video conferencing, it’s a problem that’s ultimately best solved by evolving the underlying Wi-Fi standard to handle these challenges.

Advantages of Wi-Fi 6

However, even if you have a Wi-Fi 6 smartphone or laptop, you won’t be able to take advantage of it unless you’re also using a Wi-Fi 6 router since both ends of the connection have to support the same standard.

As you might suspect, Wi-Fi 6 naturally offers faster speeds, but there’s much more to the new technology than just raw speed. Single-client speed is probably the least of the benefits of having a Wi-Fi 6 router. After all, most people have a hard time maxing out a good Wi-Fi 5 connection, which can easily offer speeds of up to 800Mbps to a single device. 

Where Wi-Fi 6 routers shine, however, is in their ability to deliver those speeds at longer ranges. Wi-Fi 6 routers use modern signaling methods like orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) and advanced MU-MIMO to keep speeds faster even when you’re farther away from the router.

Those same technologies also allow Wi-Fi 6 routers to handle congestion more effectively by preventing device interference. This means that pound-for-pound, a Wi-Fi 6 router will be able to support more devices on your home network than an equivalent Wi-Fi 5 router. This will have the most significant benefit on public networks in places like shopping malls and sporting venues, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a big win for home users too.

Lastly, Wi-Fi 6 is also significantly more energy efficient, which can benefit battery-powered devices like smartphones. Thanks to a feature called Target Wake Time (TWT), devices can enter a lower power mode when not actively transmitting or receiving data. Tests have shown this leads to 67 percent lower power consumption over an equivalent Wi-Fi 5 device. You won’t need to worry about hitting a charger with your iPhone or Galaxy nearly as often when you’re just hanging around at home. 

Dual-Band or Tri-Band Frequencies? 

Firstly, unlike older 802.11n Wi-Fi 4 routers and the occasional Wi-Fi 5 router, there are no such things as single-band Wi-Fi 6 routers. Wi-Fi 6 runs on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, so dual-band Wi-Fi is the minimum standard on all Wi-Fi 6 routers.

This differs from 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5, which operates exclusively on the higher-frequency 5GHz band. This means that no matter what Wi-Fi 5 router you used when your devices switched to the 2.4GHz band, they’d drop down to older (and slower) 802.11n Wi-Fi 4 technology. 

The rule of thumb for Wi-Fi frequencies is that the higher they are, the shorter the range, but the faster the speeds. So, 2.4GHz has a longer range than 5GHz, but 5GHz is faster than 2.4GHz. It’s always a tradeoff. In the case of Wi-Fi 5 routers, however, the 2.4GHz band is even slower since devices can only work at Wi-Fi 4 speeds.

Since 2.4GHz frequencies can penetrate walls and extend to longer distances than 5GHz ones, this resulted in even slower speeds when drifting farther away from the router. 

By contrast, the newest and fastest 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 technology can be used across all the bands on a Wi-Fi 6 router. This means you can still get surprisingly fast speeds even when your devices fall back to the 2.4GHz frequencies. 

One caution, however: A few more inexpensive Wi-Fi 6 routers, like TP-Link’s Archer AX10, cut corners by only offering Wi-Fi 4 speeds on the 2.4GHz band. While it’s an understandable omission in budget routers, it’s still something to look for. 

Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 routers are also available, which offer a second 5GHz band, much like tri-band Wi-Fi 5 routers. However, since you can get the full benefits of Wi-Fi 6 on the lower-frequency 2.4GHz band, and Wi-Fi 6 is considerably better at handling congestion, there’s less need to go with a tri-band router, especially if most of your high-performance wireless devices already support Wi-Fi 6. 

With any tri-band router, it’s also essential to remember that any given wireless device can only connect to one band at a time. A tri-band router will never give you faster speeds for a single device by itself, but if you have a lot of 5GHz devices on your home network, the extra band can help divvy them up to avoid congestion. 

However, another good reason to get a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router is for use in a wireless mesh Wi-Fi system. The additional band can be a backhaul channel to keep everything running fast between your mesh stations without sacrificing client-facing performance. Mesh systems like the Orbi AX6000 and Velop AX4200 use tri-band WI-Fi for this very reason. Still, it’s also something to consider if you’re building a mesh Wi-Fi 6 system with traditional routers using technologies like Asus’ AiMesh or TP-Link’s OneMesh. 

What about Wi-Fi 6E?

You may have heard about Wi-Fi 6E, an emerging technology that builds on the Wi-Fi 6 standard. As the name implies, it’s not a whole new Wi-Fi technology but an evolution of Wi-Fi 6 that moves wireless traffic into a new 6GHz band faster and less prone to congestion.

At this point, Wi-Fi 6E routers are only just beginning to appear. Most are tri-band routers, but instead of one 2.4GHz band and two 5GHz bands, they offer separate bands for 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz. 

Unfortunately, Wi-Fi 6E isn’t yet available on most client devices, so buying a Wi-Fi 6E router is premature. Further, unlike standard tri-band Wi-Fi 6 routers, which feature a pair of 5GHz bands that your Wi-Fi 5 devices can also use, Wi-Fi 6E routers are effectively dual-band routers non-Wi-Fi 6E devices since they can’t get at the third 6GHz band at all. 

Speed: How Much Do I Need? 

Since the more technical term for the Wi-Fi 6 standard is 802.11ax, Wi-Fi 6 routers use an “AX” prefix to define their speed ratings. The number after the AX indicates the total speed available across all the frequency bands.

So, an AX6000 router can have 6Gbps (6,000Mbps) of throughput, but this will be divided across two or three different wireless bands. Most Wi-Fi 6 routers that offer AX6000 speeds or less are dual-band routers, while AX11000 models are tri-band. 

In practical terms, the maximum single-band speeds you’ll get from any Wi-Fi 6 router right now are 4.8Gbps on the 5GHz bands and 1.2Gbps on the 2.4GHz side. This would be an AX6000 dual-band router (4.8Gbps + 1.2Gbps) or an AX11000 tri-band router (4.8Gbps + 4.8Gbps + 1.2Gbps). 

Of course, some don’t even go that high. AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 routers are standard, usually offering either 2.4Gbps/600Mbps or 1.8Gbps/1.2Gbps speeds on the 5GHz and 2.4GHz channels. AX4200 is also reasonably common among tri-band mesh Wi-Fi routers like Linksys’ Velop and the Eero Pro 6, which have an even more unusual split of 2.4Gbps/1.2Gbps/600Mbps. In this case, the faster 5GHz band operates as a wireless backhaul. The Netgear Orbi AX6000 does something similar, except the second 5GHz band is also 2.4Gbps (2.4Gbps/2.4Gbps/1.2Gbps).

The question you’re probably asking is how much this really matters. To put these numbers into perspective, a 4K UHD stream on Netflix only requires a maximum of 25Mbps of bandwidth per device, and even when 8K streaming services arrive someday, they’re likely to cap out around 65-80Mbps. 

So if you have a small family, you may be surprised that you can probably get along just fine with an AX1500 or AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 router. The higher speeds are ultimately intended to handle busy homes since they offer all that bandwidth to guarantee that every device in your home can get the internet performance it needs. If you have a larger family with kids who are always online, a faster AX4200 mesh system or AX6000 router is more worth it. 

Of course, downloading is another story, and if you’re regularly downloading large files, it’s nice to have the extra bandwidth to get those 4K movies down onto your hard drive or NAS device in only a few minutes instead of a few hours but remember that your wireless router can never offer download speeds that are any faster than your internet connection. 

Range and Coverage

One consideration that doesn’t change much with Wi-Fi 6 routers is ensuring you get one with enough range to cover your entire living area. While Wi-Fi 6 routers can offer better speeds at longer ranges, their reach is still limited. If you have a larger home and want maximum performance everywhere you need it, you’re best to get a mesh Wi-Fi system instead of a single router. 

Most of the best Wi-Fi 6 routers can cover homes of up to 5,000 square feet, but your mileage may vary depending on the construction of your home. Solid objects block wireless frequencies, and concrete and metal block more of the signal than wood and drywall. This is called attenuation, and as the signal drops off, so will your speeds.

Wi-Fi 6 is better at offering respectable performance with a weaker signal, but it still can’t change the laws of physics. If the signal gets too weak, there’s not much even the most sophisticated wireless technologies can do about it. As mentioned earlier, however, one advantage of Wi-Fi 6 is that it also operates on 2.4GHz frequencies. These travel further and penetrate solid objects more effectively, but they’re still prone to interference from other household devices like cordless phones, microwaves, and garage door openers. 

The good news is that if you’ve invested in a Wi-Fi 6 router and find it’s not offering enough range, all hope is not lost. You can add one or more Wi-Fi extenders to a Wi-Fi 6 router to extend your router’s reach, and while there are some good Wi-Fi 6 extenders available, you can also add older Wi-Fi 5 extenders if you’re not concerned about performance. For instance, this can be an affordable way to extend coverage to low-bandwidth smart home devices. 

Some router makers, like Asus and TP-Link, also offer technologies like AiMesh that will let you build your own mesh Wi-Fi system by adding another compatible router. While this isn’t as cost-effective as a Wi-Fi extender, it’s better to increase your wireless footprint if you’re willing to invest. 

Wired Connections

Even with the faster performance of Wi-Fi 6 technology, sometimes you need to plug your devices in to get the best speeds. This is especially true for gamers, where wired connections almost always offer lower latency than Wi-Fi.

Most Wi-Fi 6 routers offer at least four Gigabit Ethernet ports; some push that up to even eight. It’s also not uncommon to see special, higher-speed 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps Ethernet ports. Depending on the router, these can be used for various things, from connecting a high-performance gaming PC to a network-attached storage (NAS) device. 

More importantly, however, if you’re fortunate enough to have a multi-gigabit internet plan, you’ll want to look for a Wi-Fi 6 router that lets you use this as a WAN port for connecting to your upstream provider. Alternatively, some routers allow you to pair up or “aggregate” two Gigabit Ethernet ports to create a single 2Gbps connection. In that case, your cable modem or another upstream link also supports the same link aggregation technologies. 

The bottom line, however, is that unless you have a Wi-Fi 6 router that offers a faster Ethernet port or link aggregation, you’ll be stuck at 1Gbps broadband speeds no matter how fast your internet plan is. 

Advanced Features

With Wi-Fi 6 routers still relatively new, you’ll want to pay close attention to whether they include the same anti-malware, parental controls, and other advanced features as their Wi-Fi 5 counterparts. 

In their rush to get their first Wi-Fi 6 routers out the door, many companies omitted these features in their initial hardware. For example, Netgear’s Nighthawk RAX series routers—the RAX80 and RAX120—were initially bare-bones Wi-Fi 6 routers with no anti-malware or parental controls. 

The good news is that these were added later via firmware updates, but since such features are standard on all other Netgear routers, it’s understandable that many buyers may have expected them to be there. 

A similar situation remains valid for the Linksys Velop AX4200 and the Eero Pro 6. Eero and Linksys were the first two companies to offer secure router features for Apple’s HomeKit on their Wi-Fi 5 routers, but as of this writing, they have yet to bring these capabilities to their Wi-Fi 6 models. We’ve been told by both companies that they’re working on it, but those features aren’t available on either company’s Wi-Fi 6 routers. 

So, it’s essential to read the fine print. We also never recommend buying a router based on the manufacturer’s promises of what might come in the future. If there’s a feature that you can’t live without, don’t count on it being offered in a firmware update; either wait to make your purchase or stick with a more established wireless router that supports it.