Speaker 1: Your wifi signal will get weaker and weaker. The farther away you are from your router. So if your home office is on the other side of your house, or if you're just trying to stream TV in a back bedroom, then you might experience some slowdowns. That's where a wifi range extender. Like this one can really help you plug it in. You pair it with your router and then it re-broadcast that signal further out into your home. So let's take a look at how your top options stack up
Speaker 1: In this video. I'm gonna walk you through the range extender [00:00:30] tests that we do right here at the CNET smart home. I'm gonna identify the models that perform the best along with a couple of good value picks. And I'm gonna offer some tips on how to get the most out of extenders. Like these now keep in mind, they aren't a magic bullet. They aren't gonna solve every wifi. Whoa. In some cases you'll be a lot better off just upgrading to a mesh router. But we'll talk about that too. Let's start with the tests. The CNET smart home is a multi-story house of about 5,800 square feet, which is a lot of ground for a single router to cover on its own. Sure enough, when I set [00:01:00] up an entry level, wifi, six router upstairs, I found multiple dead zones down below on the basement level.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the sort of thing that range extenders like these are designed to help with, but which one would do the best job to find out? I picked a good spot in the basement for my test extenders adjacent to the dead zones, but not in the dead zones. That's important. Ideally, you want your extender to have a good connection with the routers. So if it's sitting in the dead zone, it's not gonna do it. Stop that well with each extender up and running. I started testing speeds in eight [00:01:30] rooms throughout the house. The first four up here on the main floor where the router is and the last four are downstairs on the basement level. This graph shows you what the speeds look like with just the router. And you can see that things really fall off a cliff down on the basement, but now let's see what happens when we add in our top performing range extender.
Speaker 1: There we go, much better. The extender taking the incoming signal from the router, rebroadcasting it out into the basement and eliminating those dead zones altogether. That top performing range extender was this one, [00:02:00] the TP link, R E 6 0 5 X available most major retailers for a hundred dollars or less. The re 6 0 5 X is a cinched to use and it delivered the fastest average download speeds. Plus the fastest average upload speeds of all the extenders that I tested. And if you're using older gear in your home than my wifi, six test laptop, don't worry. It did a great job when I ran the test on a wifi five device as well. And that one, wasn't the only model that performed well. This one, the links, this re 73 10 [00:02:30] finished right behind TP link in those speed tests with average wifi six downloads that were only four megabits per second lower than the re 6 0 5 X and average uploads that were only two megabits per second lower. My only complaints here are that it's a little bit bulky as range extenders go. It doesn't have a ethernet Jack for wired connections and it costs a little bit more than the re 6 0 5 X still, if you catch it on sale, I think this one's a pretty great choice
Speaker 1: As for the value picks. I liked this delink Eagle [00:03:00] pro AI range, extender, which shouldn't cost you more than $65 or so it wasn't as fast as TP linker links this and the range wasn't quite as strong, but it was reliable and easy to use. And it comes at a decent discount, especially given that it supports wifi six now by default, most extenders like these are gonna put out a network that's separate from your router's network, maybe the same name, but with ext tacked onto the end, that can get a little annoying. If you're moving about your house and you need to switch from one network to the other to get the best signal. [00:03:30] Fortunately, all of my top picks make it really easy to change the extenders network, name, and password to match your routers. And once you do that, you'll have a single unified network that's automatically connecting you through the best device to give you the best signal.
Speaker 1: You should also keep an eye on security as you're setting these things up. For instance, this ASIS model was a really strong performer in my tests, but I don't recommend it because it puts out an unsecured network. By default, if you forget to change that, then any neighbor or stranger could hop onto your network. One [00:04:00] last point, if you're dealing with multiple dead zones and you're living in a big house like this one, then you really want to consider making the upgrade to a mesh router with multiple devices spread throughout your home. A mesh router is basically just a router with its own dedicated range extenders. And in almost all cases, it's gonna be a much more effective option than going with plug-in range, extenders like these still, if all you need is to eek out an extra room's worth of wifi coverage from your router than a simple plug-in range, extender might be all you need for more on range extenders and [00:04:30] on mesh routers, check out the CNET links and the video description down below. And don't forget to leave us alike if you found the video helpful and to subscribe, if you wanna see more, thanks a lot for watching.
