I even appreciate the touch of color with those pale blue accents, a nice break from boring white plastic. That's a good deal, especially on a Wi-Fi 6 model that boasts a newly designed control app on Android and iOS, plus adjustable antennas and a design that automatically syncs up with your router to put out a single, unified network as soon as you first set the thing up. It was never the speed leader in my tests, but it was never too far behind - and at $65, the D-Link EaglePro AI costs a lot less than the top picks listed here. I haven't tested that variant out just yet, but I'll update this post when I have, and I'll keep an eye out for another sale, too. Earlier this year, it was on sale for $20 less than the RE7310 at Best Buy, which is a pretty good deal given the specs. It's a bit bulky-looking, but the RE7310 is the best Linksys range extender I've tested yet, and it's an especially great pick if you can catch it on sale.Īlso, keep an eye out for the Linksys RE7350, which features a nearly identical design and specs. Still, the performance was solid across the board, and strong enough for me to take video calls in the Smart Home's basement dead zones, something I would have struggled with using just the single router I ran my tests on. The only thing keeping me from saying that the two finished in a virtual tie is that the RE7310 was slightly less impressive with earlier-gen Wi-Fi 5 devices, particularly with respect to upload speeds. As for the uploads, Linksys finished with an average whole-home speed to my Wi-Fi 6 test device of 124Mbps. That's only 4Mbps behind that top pick from TP-Link. In the CNET Smart Home, where we have a fiber internet plan with uploads and downloads of up to 150Mbps, the RE7310 returned average Wi-Fi 6 downloads throughout the entire multistory house of 132Mbps. TP-Link took the top spot in 2022, but the Linksys RE7310 was very close behind it, and would be almost equally as good on most home networks. All of that makes this extender an easy recommendation. That's better than extenders that put out an unsecured network by default - and if you use the app to delete that "-EXT" bit, it'll automatically sync up with your original network and work invisibly to keep you better connected, which is ideal. Throughout the entire 5,800-square-foot-home, among all the extenders I tested, the RE605X delivered the fastest average upload speeds to both Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 devices, the fastest average download speeds to Wi-Fi 6 devices and the second fastest average download speeds to Wi-Fi 5 devices.īy default, the extender puts out its own separate network when you first pair it with your router, and that network will use the same password as your original network, and the same SSID with "-EXT" added to the end. In my tests at the CNET Smart Home, an RE605X in the basement was able to extend the router's signal from upstairs just fine, giving my upload and download speeds a significant boost in every room I tested. The performance is particularly sharp, too. At $100, it's far from the most affordable extender on the market (keep reading for the value picks), but with a highly capable AX1800 design, full support for the latest Wi-Fi 6 speeds and features, adjustable antennas and a helpful, easy-to-use control app with strong reviews on both Android and iOS, it's about as well-rounded as range extenders get. If you're buying one in 2022, I think you should put the TP-Link RE605X right at the top of your list. TP-Link makes some of the most popular picks in the range extender category, with a fairly wide variety of options to choose from at various price points. That creates a single, seamless connection that you won't need to think about too much. All of today's top models are less expensive than upgrading to a full-fledged mesh router with its own range-extending satellite devices, they're a cinch to set up, they'll work no matter what brand of router you're using and in most cases it's easy to give them the same SSID and password as your original router. Plug one in near the edge of your router's wireless range and pair it with the network, and it'll start rebroadcasting the signal farther out into your home. A range extender, or Wi-Fi signal booster, is a compact, plug-in device that uses built-in Wi-Fi radios and antennas to pair wirelessly with your router. This is where a Wi-Fi range extender can come in handy. The result? Wi-Fi dead zones in the rooms farthest from the router where you just can't seem to maintain a strong connection. And often, a single router isn't strong enough to provide a stable connection throughout your entire house. Paying for fast internet speeds doesn't mean a thing if you don't have a good home Wi-Fi network.
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