The best gaming routers in 2020 – CNET [CNET]

If you keep getting shot dead when you try your hand at Fortnite or scored on when you play Rocket League, well… maybe you just aren’t all that good at competitive online gaming. Then again, if you’re plagued by persistent lag during those critical split-second decisions that make the difference between victory and defeat, perhaps your internet connection is to blame for your sluggish speed. Some gamers battle lag by hardwiring their devices via an Ethernet port, but others cannot resist the siren call of a wireless device and refuse to be tethered by a cord. If that’s the case, you might be thinking about upgrading your wireless router.

Before buying any routers for gaming, I’d recommend reading my beginner’s guide to gaming lag to see if there isn’t anything else you can do to help bring down your ping. In many cases, something as easy as moving your wireless router to a different spot or adjusting the angle of antennas might be all you need to hit a passable level of performance. But if you’ve tried all of that and you’re ready for an upgrade, you’re in the right place.  

You’ve got plenty of options that promise to boost your gaming experience — but which gaming router is truly best? Is it worth splurging big on one that supports the speedy new Wi-Fi 6 standard? That’s what I wanted to know, so I started testing the things out, on a personal quest to find the fastest router to boost my internet connection. This buyer’s guide encompasses everything I’ve found so far, starting with the models I think you should zero in on first in your hunt for the best gaming router. I’ll update this list periodically.

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Best gaming router overall

Asus RT-AC86U

Tyler Lizenby/CNET After months of tests, the Asus RT-AC86U is my first recommendation for best gaming router. Currently selling for about $180, this dual band wireless router with a 1.8 GHz dual-core processor is the best wireless router for the price, offering terrific performance and features. In fact, this Asus gaming router was the top overall finisher in our latency tests. Thanks partly to its dual-core CPU, it hit the fastest speeds on the 5 GHz band of any wireless router outside of the super speedy Wi-Fi 6 models we tested.

It also boasts an excellent Asus router app and web control interface, including a helpful quality of service engine and lots of other ways to optimize your connection, plus the design is gamer-friendly without being too over-the-top. If you want a gaming-minded wireless router upgrade but you’re worried about buying more than you need, look no further — this gaming router hits the sweet spot.

One last note — Asus has a new version of this router coming later in 2020 that’ll support Wi-Fi 6. We don’t know very much about this newer Asus router yet, but we’re expecting to have one in hand to test out very soon, so stay tuned.

$179 at Amazon

Fastest Wi-Fi speeds

TP-Link Archer AX6000

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

OK, it isn’t technically a gaming router, per se — but the Wi-Fi 6-equipped TP-Link AX6000 is the fastest router we’ve ever tested, period. It nailed our latency tests, too, performing just as well as gaming-minded TP-Link routers like the Archer C5400X. You’ll also find plenty of useful networking features to play with in TP-Link’s Tether app. 

It’s still early for Wi-Fi 6, but if you’re looking to future-proof your home network for a new generation of connected devices (for the gaming experience or otherwise), this is the router I’d point you toward. At $300, it definitely isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot easier to stomach than Wi-Fi 6 gaming routers that cost $400 or more.

$300 at Best Buy

Best gaming router design

Amplifi HD Gamer’s Edition

Chris Monroe/CNET

If you’re looking for a router with gaming-minded key features and design, but you’re also interested in multipoint mesh networking, then take a look at the Amplifi HD Gamer’s Edition from Ubiquiti. It wasn’t a standout in our lab-based top-speed tests, but with plug-in range extenders that are about as easy to use as it gets, it excels at spreading a stable, speedy Wi-Fi signal from room to room. 

On top of that, the unique, attractive design doesn’t take up an obnoxious amount of space — and with a touchscreen on the front and LED lights around the base, you’ll actually want it to sit out in the open, where it performs better. You’ll also appreciate the app’s easy-to-use features, including a dedicated low-latency mode that can help you tweak your connection and avoid lag on multiple devices.

At $380, it’s an expensive option for sure, but that’s still more or less in line with other high-end mesh networks that include two range-extenders (for comparison, the Nest Wifi mesh system costs $349 for a three-piece setup).

$340 at B&H Photo

Best on a budget

D-Link DIR-867

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Regularly selling for less than $120, the D-Link DIR-867 was the most inexpensive gaming router that I tested for this roundup — and it performed surprisingly well, boasting the fastest average speeds on the 2.4 GHz band in both our lab-based top speed tests and our home-based real-world speed tests. It held its own on the speedier 5 GHz band, too, beating out several wireless routers that cost significantly more. 

Die-hards will likely want more features focused on their gaming experience and performance, but the DIR-867 gaming router at least includes a quality of service engine to let you prioritize gaming traffic above other types of network traffic. That’s enough for most — especially if you don’t want to break the bank on something fancier.

Just note that it’s getting difficult to find this model in stores, as stock seems to be running low. We’ll update this space once we find another affordable option that we like as much. Read our D-Link AC1750 Wi-Fi Router review.

$117 at Target

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Best for die-hard gamers

Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC2900

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

It doesn’t offer the same top speeds that you’ll get with Asus’ Wi-Fi 6-equipped GT-AX11000, but that didn’t stop the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC2900 dual band router from outperforming it in my home throughout several rounds of tests. In fact, the GT-AC2900 was one of the top finishers in terms of average download speeds, latency and range. It offers the same excellent suite of gaming features as other gaming routers from Asus, including a customizable Quality of Service engine and game-and-platform-specific open NAT port-forwarding rules.

At $180, you won’t pay too painful of a premium for it — and it even includes RGB lighting effects, if that’s your thing.

$180 at Amazon

What we tested

Along with seeing how today’s gaming routers stacked up against one another, I wanted to get a sense of how they compared with the sort of standard routers that you might be tempted to upgrade from. Given that a few of these gaming routers use next-gen Wi-Fi 6 technology, I made sure to test a few other Wi-Fi 6 routers, too.

All told, that left us with 14 routers. Here’s the full list, from least to most expensive (prices as of Aug. 10, 2020):

• TP-Link Archer A9 AC1900: $90
• D-Link DIR-867 AC1750: $100
• D-Link EXO AC2600: $131
• Linksys EA8300 AC2200: $130
• Asus RT-AC86U: $180
• TP-Link Archer C3150: $130
• Zyxel Armor Z2 AC2600: $178
• Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC2900: $180
• TP-Link Archer C5400X: $283
• Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500: $249
• TP-Link Archer AX6000: $300
• Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX11000: $447
• Amplifi HD Gamer’s Edition: $380
• Netgear Nighthawk AX12: $489

We’re still testing a few more models, including some additional Wi-Fi 6 routers like the TP-Link AX11000 and the Asus RT-AX92U mesh system. We’re also expecting a number of new gaming routers to hit the market later in 2020. When we have data on those models, I’ll update this post.

How we tested them

Testing routers is a tricky business. Wi-Fi connections are finicky, with lots of variables and key features that will affect your speeds. We do our best to account for those variables in our tests, but some factors are beyond our control — and beyond your router’s control, too.

For instance, your home’s specific internet service provider connection is like a speed limit for your router. If you’re paying for speeds of up to, say, 50 megabits per second, then your router won’t transmit data from the cloud any faster than that. The average ISP download speed in the US is somewhere around 100Mbps, while those living in areas with access to fiber connections might enjoy speeds of 200, 500 or — if they’re really lucky — even 1,000Mbps.

That raises an obvious question: How do you test the top speed of a router like that TP-Link AX6000, which promises Wi-Fi 6 data transfer rates as high as 5,652Mbps?

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Top speed tests

Our approach bypasses the ISP entirely. Instead of using a modem to pull data from the cloud, we pull data from a local server using a wired connection. Our local server of choice is a MacBook Pro. We connect it to the router using a CAT 7 Ethernet cable to keep interference as low as possible, plus we use an adapter to connect to the MacBook’s Thunderbolt 3 port, since it supports data transfer speeds that are plenty fast for our purposes.

From there, we take a second laptop and connect to the router’s wireless network, then we clock the speeds as we download the data that the router is fetching from the MacBook via that wired connection. We run this test several times on each router’s 2.4 and 5GHz bands, and at various distances, too. In the end, we get a great look at how quickly each router is able to transmit data to a connected device like your phone, gaming PC, gaming laptop or gaming console of choice.

Yes, you’ll see much faster speeds if you connect that gaming console directly to the router via Ethernet cable. We tested those wired speeds, too and didn’t see any noticeable difference between any of the routers we measured. Each came in within a megabit or two of 940Mbps, which is what you’d expect from a gigabit Ethernet connection.

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To gather my data, I ran an abundance of speed tests from five different locations in my home, ranging from the living room where the router lives to a back bathroom on the opposite end of the house. Throughout all of my tests, I always kept a TV streaming live video from PlayStation Vue (RIP) to simulate normal household network traffic in a controlled fashion (and also so my very patient roommate could at least watch TV while politely staying off the Wi-Fi during my tests). 

After running multiple speed tests from each of those locations, I averaged everything together. ISP speeds can fluctuate throughout the day, so to help account for this as best as I could, I’d run this whole process again with each router at a later time. Then, I’d average that data with the first batch of tests.

Fourteen routers, five locations in my home, three tests per location, two rounds of tests (at minimum). When you add in the additional tests I ran to double-check a result or measure the impact of specific features, it amounts to roughly 1,000 speed tests and counting.

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On that front, our top pick, the Asus RT-AC86U saw the smallest drop-off from the overall 5GHz average to that back bathroom average. On the whole, it clocked in with an average speed throughout the house of 187.3Mbps, which only fell to an average of 144.1Mbps in the far end of the house, with about four rooms worth of walls and furniture separating my laptop from the router (for comparison, the top-finishing Nighthawk XR500 saw its average speed drop from 310 Mbps up close to the router down to 72Mbps in that back room). The RT-AC86U was similarly strong on the 2.4GHz band, too.

Despite the complete lack of Wi-Fi 6 client devices in my home, the Wi-Fi 6-equipped TP-Link Archer AX6000 was another standout from my tests, with strong average speeds on both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, and excellent range from room to room. It saw the smallest dip in speeds in that back bathroom on the 2.4GHz band, and was a top-five finisher by that metric on the 5GHz band, too. 

I can’t say the same for the Netgear Nighthawk AX12 or the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX11000, though. Despite high top speeds in our first round of tests at the lab, neither of those Wi-Fi 6 routers tested well in my home. In fact, they were the two bottom finishers in terms of average overall download speeds on the 5GHz band. Both currently cost around $400 — for my money, the TP-Link Archer AX6000, which you can currently get for $269, is a much better upgrade pick for anyone who’s ready to jump in with Wi-Fi 6. And if you just want the gaming-centric features from the Asus ROG lineup, you’ve got other options that cost less, like the GT-AC2900. 

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What to watch for

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