As of mid-December, the best deal I'm seeing is on Amazon, where you can knock the price down to $70 by clicking to apply a coupon before checkout.įor the best performance from your mesh router, you'll want to prioritize getting one with support for Wi-Fi 6, plus a tri-band design that includes three separate bands of traffic: the usual 2.4 and 5GHz bands, plus an additional 5GHz band that the system can use as a dedicated wireless backhaul for transmissions between the router and its satellites.

Add in a functional bandsteering mode that automatically steers you between the 2.4 and 5GHz bands within a single network, plus guest network controls and even a quality of service engine for prioritizing traffic to the most important devices on your network, and you're looking at a decent home networking upgrade that's as simple and affordable as it gets. It's nothing fancy, but it offered near flawless performance for small- to medium-size homes in our tests, and it's a cinch to setup and use thanks to TP-Link's Tether app.īest of all, when tested against other, similar routers from names like Asus and Netgear, the AX21 held its own with faster download speeds, better range, and low latency, too. Available for $100 ( or less if you catch a sale), the TP-Link Archer AX21 is an entry-level, dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router that supports top speeds of up to 1,201Mbps (1.2Gbps) on its 5GHz band.

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