Best and Worst WiFi Extenders
WiFi extenders from companies like Netgear and TP-Link can help eliminate pesky WiFi dead spots
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A WiFi extender can help improve your WiFi experience at home, especially if you’re trying to raise performance in one specific area like a home office. The device works by repeating, or extending, the existing WiFi connection created by your WiFi router. This extended network can then help eliminate dead spots.
WiFi extenders are useful but they’re not a foolproof solution. The biggest problem is that they cut the speed of your WiFi in half. So, for example, if you normally get 200 megabits per second on your WiFi, the extended network will top out at around 100 megabits per second. Depending upon your goals, however, that may be sufficient.
Best WiFi Extenders
Right now, these are the best WiFi extenders you can buy. They share many similarities, but most importantly they should do a good job eliminating any WiFi dead spots you may have.
Worst WiFi Extenders
While the above models should do a good job for you, these two score quite poorly. And even though one is cheap enough that you might think it’s worth a look, our testing indicates otherwise.
How We Test WiFi Extenders
Every year, Consumer Reports buys several WiFi extenders at retail stores, tests them inside our labs just north of New York City, and adds this data to our comprehensive ratings.
Our tests measure several aspects of the WiFi extenders’ performance, most notably their throughput, perhaps better understood as “speed.” We test the extenders across several different distances from the main router whose WiFi network they’re extending, including nearby at a distance of 8 feet and very far away at a distance of 55 feet. Of course, the faster the extender can transmit data at these distances, the higher the score it receives.
We also look at other aspects of the extenders, including how easy they are to set up and manage (including whether or not you can use a mobile app to do so) and how many additional ports there are for wired accessories like printers.
Once all this data is collected and crunched, we’re able to present our comprehensive ratings to CR members.
