The best gaming routers in 2020 – CNET

If you keep getting shot dead in Fortnite or outmaneuvered when you play Fall Guys, 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.

Sure, some gamers battle lag by hard-wiring their devices via an Ethernet cable, 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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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.

As for wireless speeds, the graph above shows the top speeds for each router on both the 2.4GHz band (blue) and the faster 5GHz band (red) at distances of 5, 37.5 and 75 feet. 

Here’s what jumps out to me from these results. First, it’s easy to spot the three Wi-Fi 6 routers we tested up at the top — they each clocked top speeds on the 5GHz band that were much, much faster than any other router we tested. Bear in mind that we’re running these speed tests on a laptop that supports Wi-Fi 6 — if we weren’t, those bars would likely be a lot shorter.

The fastest among them was the TP-Link Archer AX6000, which we measured an average speed of 1,523Mbps on the 5GHz band at a distance of 5 feet. When we increased the distance to 75 feet, the average speed fell to 868 Mbps, which is still a faster speed than any of the Wi-Fi 5 routers we tested were able to reach at all, even up close.

I should note that those Wi-Fi 6 routers didn’t blow the competition away on the 2.4GHz band (again, blue). In fact, the router with the fastest average speeds across all distances on the 2.4GHz band was actually the Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500, which doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6 at all. Right behind it, the D-Link DIR-867, which also holds the distinction of being the cheapest router we tested for this roundup. That, coupled with the fact that it includes a Quality of Service engine that can prioritize gaming traffic, is what made it an easy value pick among this field.

That Netgear model was also the fastest Wi-Fi 5 router on the 5GHz band, which tells us that it’s a pretty capable piece of hardware. Meanwhile, our top overall pick, the Asus RT-AC86U, was right behind it with the second fastest Wi-Fi 5 speed on the 5GHz band, though its speed dipped a bit at medium range. The aforementioned DIR-867 and the Zyxel Armor Z2 each scored well in this speed test, too.

Real-world speeds

Measuring top speeds in a controlled test environment gives us a clear look at what these routers are technically capable of, but you won’t see speeds that fast in your home. Remember, your router can only pull data from the cloud as fast as your ISP speed allows and signal strength will vary from home to home based on the layout and the amount of obstructions in the way.

To account for this, we ran a second batch of tests. This time, I tested each router in my own home, a smallish shotgun-style house of about 1,200 square feet where I have AT&T fiber internet speeds of up to 300Mbps. I ran my speed tests on a Dell XPS 13 laptop that’s a few years old and doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6. The goal was to get a good look at the types of speeds most people would experience if they brought one of these routers into their home.

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.

Those averages proved telling. The top finisher on the 5GHz band turned out to be the Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500, which averaged more than 250Mbps across all of my speed tests, including ones in the back of my house where the signal strength is typically poor. The Amplifi HD Gamer’s Edition, which uses plug-in mesh extenders to help relay the signal around the house, was the runner up — it was one of the worst performers when we measured top speeds, but unless you have a blazing fast internet connection of 500Mbps or faster, you won’t notice that at all.

Meanwhile, it was the bargain-priced D-Link DIR-867 that, once again, led the way on the 2.4GHz band. With an average speed of 85.9Mbps throughout my place, it was the top finisher, but I’d note that speeds dropped considerably at range. In that back bathroom I mentioned, it averaged a download speed of 32.3Mbps, which is about 62% slower than the overall average, and a bigger drop-off than I saw from just about every other router I tested. That tells me that the DIR-867 would work best in small homes like mine — anything bigger, and you’ll want something with better range.

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. 

Latency

One last point — my glut of at-home speed tests allowed me to take a look at latency, too. As said before, there’s only so much your router can do to bring lag down, especially if you’re connecting to a busy server that’s thousands of miles away. Still, a good gaming router should help minimize those occasional latency spikes that can be a real killer when they hit your network at a critical moment during an online match.

With that in mind, I made sure to run each of my dozens and dozens of speed tests for each router to the same server located a few hundred miles away and I logged the ping to that server each and every time. In most cases, that ping would come in at around 15ms or so, but I also saw plenty of spikes that were a lot higher than that.

The worst offender was the Linksys EA8300, which returned average latencies of 37.5ms on the 2.4GHz band and 35.4ms on the 5GHz — dead last on both fronts. The TP-Link Archer A9 AC1900 struggled on the 2.4GHz band, too, with an average latency of 34.8, though it did manage to do a little better on the 5GHz band, with an average ping just below 20ms.

The best of the bunch? That’d be our top pick, the Asus RT-AC86U, which returned an average of 13.1ms on the 2.4GHz band and 12.9ms on the 5GHz band. That was good enough for first place in both cases. The only other routers to finish in the top five on both bands were the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC2900 and also our budget pick, the D-Link DIR-867.

That said, we might soon have a new king of the latency leaderboard. We’re still in the process of testing it out, but the Asus RT-AX86U — the new Wi-Fi 6 version of our current top pick — looks to be especially strong at managing lag. Across 90 speed tests at my home, it didn’t see a single spike above 20ms, which is truly outstanding.

One last point on latency. Most of these gaming routers and others like them will do things like route your gaming traffic to the nearest possible server, or keep you from joining public rooms with especially laggy competitors. Features like those can help prevent common latency pitfalls, but they won’t do much of anything on their own to improve your latency across the board.

What to watch for

As I mentioned earlier, we’re still testing a few models, including the TP-Link AX11000 and the Asus RT-AX92U. The latter of the two is a two-piece Wi-Fi 6 mesh system that uses those next-gen features for faster data transfer between the two new nodes. That could mean better speeds throughout your home, even if you aren’t using Wi-Fi 6 devices yet.

As for the AX11000, it features the same, spidery design as the TP-Link C5400X, but promises top speeds that are much, much faster. The C5400X did well in our latency tests, so an upgraded model that adds in the bells, whistles and top speeds that come with Wi-Fi 6 should be pretty interesting.

Beyond that, we’re expecting to see the very first routers that support Wi-Fi 6E at the end of 2020. Routers like those will add in access to the newly-opened 6GHz band, which they get to use as sort of an extra-wide, private highway for Wi-Fi 6 traffic. Asus was first to announce a router like that, and sure enough, it’s a high-end gaming router. 

We’ll continue testing all of it, along with budget-priced routers, mesh routers, and other high-end, next-gen modern routers of note. Expect regular updates to this post whenever we test new hardware that might be a good fit for gamers and let us know in the comments if there are any specific models or features you’d like us to take a closer look at.