The best way to find that spot? Grab your phone or laptop and run some speed tests. Whenever you're using a Wi-Fi range extender, that's typically the best place to put it: just shy of the edge of your router's range, where it will still receive a strong enough signal to put out a strong signal of its own. Pairing each one with the router only required me to plug it in nearby and press the WPS button on both devices - after that, I relocated them downstairs, to the basement rec room, which was the farthest point from the router that still had a decent signal and speeds. With my control speeds established, it was time to start adding in the range boosters and seeing which ones improved things the best. We don't have any barrels of our own, but it smells amazing in there. (Yes, the Smart Home has a bourbon room that the previous owners used to age their own barrels. That includes single-digit upload speeds in the bourbon room and the mud room. Sure enough, the router was able to deliver strong speeds on the home's main floor, but as soon as I headed down to the basement level, speeds started to fall. It's a low-power, budget-price Wi-Fi 6 model that offered consistent performance when I first tested it out, making it an ideal control router for these tests. I ran all of this year's range extender tests with a Netgear R6700AX router running the network. It offered reliable performance but limited range when I tested it - and that's exactly what I wanted for these range extender tests. I went with the Netgear R6700AX, a perfectly decent model I reviewed last year. However, it's in line with the average internet speed in the US, which makes it a great place to test how home networking products will work for the average consumer.įor my purposes, I started by setting up a router in the Smart Home's laundry room, which is where the modem is set up. That's a far cry from the gigabit connections more and more of us have access to (not to mention the new, blazing-fast multi-gig internet plans emerging in some parts of the country). The CNET Smart Home has a fiber internet connection with matching upload and download speeds of up to 150Mbps. Ry Crist/CNET Testing Wi-Fi extenders in the CNET Smart Home On its own, a single, entry-level Wi-Fi 6 router in the laundry room was able to deliver decent speeds on the main floor of the home (the first four rooms in this chart), but speeds plummeted in the basement (the last four rooms), especially the upload speeds. This is the control graph, showing you the average speeds in each room I tested with no range extenders in play at all. That creates a single, seamless connection that will give you the best Wi-Fi range available with your current setup - all without you needing to think about it too much. Plus, these Wi-Fi boosters are a cinch to set up, they'll work no matter what brand of router you're using, and you can typically use the same SSID and password as your original router. Wi-Fi extenders are generally less expensive than upgrading to a full-fledged mesh router with its own mesh Wi-Fi systems and range-extending satellite devices. Plug in one near the edge of your router's wireless range and pair it with the network, and it'll start rebroadcasting the signal farther out for significantly faster internet speeds throughout your home. Wi-Fi extenders use built-in Wi-Fi radios and antennas to pair wirelessly with your router. Check out our roundup of the latest Black Friday deals for the best prices on the Wi-Fi extenders listed below.Īlso called a Wi-Fi signal booster, a range or Wi-Fi extender is a compact, plug-in device that is simple and hassle-free to implement. There are a number of things you should try to eke out a better signal from your router, but if tweaks like those aren't doing enough, you could also try using a Wi-Fi extender. In many homes, a single router is too weak to generate a stable signal reaching every room, resulting in dead zones and glitchy connections. Your internet is only as fast as the equipment it's running through.
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