Our pick TP-Link Archer AX50 The best Wi-Fi router In our tests the TP-Link Archer AX50 created a speedy, responsive network even from across a medium house. You have to spend a lot more on a router—or a mesh kit if you have a very large home—to get anything even a little better. It’s our first WI-Fi 6 (802.11ax) router pick. Buying Options $150 from Amazon

The TP-Link Archer AX50 is capable of serving speedy, reliable Wi-Fi to the growing number of wireless devices in most homes. It wasn’t the fastest Wi-Fi 6 router we tested, but it did come close, and it’s much less expensive than routers that add limited benefits. It has the features we’re looking for, such as Wi-Fi 6 compatibility, great throughput, good range, quick responsiveness (aka low latency), four Ethernet ports, embedded security software, and an easy-to-set-up interface. Unless you have a large home better suited to mesh networking, the AX50 is a good choice, as it can provide a better network than what you get from routers more than a couple of years old or many networking kits rented from an internet provider.

The latest and greatest in technology isn’t always worth paying for, but the new Wi-Fi 6 standard (also known as 802.11ax) included in routers like the AX50 will make a noticeable difference in how most home networks perform. And this model is not that much more expensive than some Wi-Fi 5 routers even though it should feel faster, longer. The biggest improvements in Wi-Fi 6 concern how routers handle simultaneous connections to multiple devices—an increasingly common cause of wireless problems in busy households. Older routers simply switched back and forth between devices, albeit at an imperceptible rate; one “slow” device on an older router, and the whole thing would grind to a halt. But technologies such as OFDMA and MU-MIMO—which we discuss in a separate section below—make it possible for the AX50 and similar routers to keep more speedy connections active even with slower devices in the mix.

Across multiple test scenarios, the AX50 was consistently one of the fastest routers we tried. At short range, the advantage of Wi-Fi 6 was less pronounced, as the AX50 roughly tied with a handful of other routers in speed at a little over 500 Mbps. But the only router that was notably faster is also notably more expensive: Our upgrade pick, the Asus RT-AX88U, was more than 20% faster but typically costs as much as double the price.

At long range, the AX50 performed better than all of the competition except for TP-Link’s top-of-the-line Archer AX6000. The AX6000 is another router that costs twice what our pick costs, and even then it delivered speeds that were only 11% faster. The UniFi Dream Machine—from the highly regarded networking company Ubiquiti—and the Synology RT2600ac were in the same ballpark, showing that good radios and reception are more important than whether a router has the “latest tech.” And at long range, the benefits of better Wi-Fi radios were more clear: While the AX50 averaged 140 Mbps, the less powerful Archer A20 and Archer A7 were as slow as 39 and 24 Mbps, respectively.

Raw speed in the form of throughput, in megabits per second (Mbps), isn’t the only thing that matters, and our latency test showed how routers handled the added stress of multiple devices accessing the network at the same time. Many networks are prone to lag and delays while you wait for sites to even start loading. Judging by the Archer AX50’s results in our latency test, we can say it won’t keep you waiting, even while multiple members of your family are using the Wi-Fi at the same time. In this test the Archer AX50 finished a close second to the Asus RT-AX88U, even though the AX50 is considerably cheaper.

Like most of the routers we tested, the AX50 has five Ethernet ports: a WAN internet port for connecting your cable modem or fiber terminal, as well as four network ports for wired devices. That’s enough to keep your most demanding gear—streaming boxes, TVs, and game consoles—hardwired if you keep your router near your entertainment center. If you use a network-attached storage (NAS) server, you can link two of the router’s ports together to improve bandwidth and speed; this feature, called link aggregation, helps the NAS stream more data to the network. Link aggregation used to be restricted to more expensive routers, so its presence in the AX50 is a huge bit of future-proofing if you think you might upgrade to network-based storage later on.

If you find a NAS too intimidating or expensive but you want to take advantage of network-based storage anyway, the AX50 also has a USB 3.0 port for connecting a shared portable hard drive or SSD. This setup can’t replace a full-featured NAS, but it could help you back up your laptops regularly in the background. In contrast, less expensive routers are limited to much slower data transfers over USB 2.0 (the Archer AX20, for example) or lack USB connectivity entirely (the D-Link DIR-X1560, for instance).

One reason a router like the AX50 performs better than other routers making similar claims relates to the processor and memory inside. Just as in a laptop, the processor and memory inside a router affect its overall performance. A dual-core Intel processor and 256 MB of RAM power the AX50, and we found that those components were sufficient to keep four laptops and devices chugging along successfully in our performance tests. In contrast, the budget-oriented TP-Link Archer A7 makes do with a single-core processor and 128 MB of RAM. More cores aren’t a guarantee of success, however: The Archer AX20, for example, has a quad-core processor, yet it performed a bit worse than the AX50.

All routers walk you through initial setup, but TP-Link’s administration page for the AX50 resides in the Goldilocks zone—it’s neither too simple nor too complicated. Compared with TP-Link’s router setup, D-Link’s setup tends to be on the limited side, while Asus’s and Synology’s screens have multiple settings that appeal to tinkerers and similar geeks. Overall setup with TP-Link, either through the Tether smartphone app or the administration website, is quick. Note that you’ll have to sign up for a TP-Link cloud account if you want to use Tether.

Parental controls, security, and performance are relatively easy to configure in the Tether smartphone app. Among the parental controls, it offers basics such as time limits, content filtering, and bedtime settings. But don’t think these features are a replacement for talking with your kids: Toddlers and preschoolers are relatively complacent, but no one has more time, drive, or incentive to circumvent parental controls than a bored teenager. If you want to prioritize functions like streaming over gaming or vice versa, QoS (quality of service) settings are also included and easy to adjust.

As far as security goes, the AX50 comes with TP-Link’s HomeCare by Trend Micro, which includes a basic malware filter (blocking access to known phishing, spam, and scam sites), intrusion prevention (firewall), and infected-device quarantine. One notable feature is that it keeps a historical log noting when it has blocked malware sites; you can monitor this log and use it to warn family members that the bad sites they’re visiting are trying to phish them, for example. HomeCare is included, so there’s no subscription to pay for, as with some mesh-networking kits.

The Archer AX50 is priced squarely in what we consider the sweet spot. It performed better on our tests than our previous pick, the Wi-Fi 5 TP-Link Archer A20, even though it lacks the A20’s third Wi-Fi band. We don’t think $150 or so is a particularly steep price to pay for this router given that it uses the latest standards and had such consistent performance in our tests. Saving a substantial amount of money by choosing a cheaper model means making a noticeable sacrifice in performance. And folks who need more capabilities have to spend a lot to get just a small jump in performance.

TP-Link routers come with a two-year warranty, which is on a par with the coverage period for our other picks. The D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, and Ubiquiti routers have one-year warranties.