The Best Small Wifi Router For 2024

Piers Anthony By, Piers Anthony
Updated
Best Small Wifi Router
Best Small Wifi Router

The Rundown

1. Best Overall: NETGEAR 4-Stream WiFi 6 Router

The NETGEAR 4-Stream WiFi 6 Router is the perfect solution for staying connected with up to 1,500 square feet of coverage for 20 devices. It offers fast AX1800 Gigabit speed with WiFi 6 technology, giving you a powerful and reliable connection. Read Review

2. Runner Up: TP-Link AC1200 Gigabit WiFi Router

This TP-Link AC1200 Gigabit WiFi Router is a great choice for upgrading your home network. It is a dual band router that can provide up to 1200 Mbps high speed internet (300 Mbps for 2.4 GHz and 900 Mbps for 5 GHz). Read Review

3. Best Unique: Amazon Eero Mesh WiFi Router

The Amazon Eero Mesh WiFi Router is a powerful, fast, reliable, and easy-to-use standalone router. It offers up to 1,500 sq. ft. of coverage with strong, reliable WiFi so you can enjoy fast internet speeds and reliable connection in your home. Read Review

4. Best Efficient: Speedefy AC2100 Smart WiFi Router

The Speedefy AC2100 Smart WiFi Router is a powerful and secure solution for your home or office network. It features a dual-core CPU and 2100M of processing power that delivers fast and reliable internet access. Read Review

5. Best Technology: ASUS AC1200 WiFi Router

The ASUS AC1200 WiFi Router is a powerful and reliable router that offers maximum range of up to 3000 sq ft and fast wireless performance with speeds of up to 300 Mbps (2.4GHz) and 867 Mbps (5GHz). Read Review

Today, everyone is looking for ways to get more out of the limited data that their internet plan provides. Do you have a slow internet connection at home? Are you worried about your social media accounts or gaming sessions taking up a lot of data? A good wifi router can solve all these problems and much more. After all, what’s the point of paying top dollar for unlimited data if you can only use a small fraction of it?

Luckily, finding the best wifi router is easier than you think; keep reading! In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need about the best wifi routers on the market. Whether you’re searching for something simple like an affordable alternative to your cable modem or something with greater connectivity and amenities like a smart wifi router, we’ve got you covered.

We think the highly recommended product for the best small wifi router is NETGEAR 4-Stream WiFi 6 Router. You can also check out the TP-Link AC1200 Gigabit WiFi Router. If you need more alternatives and in-depth guidance, you may explore the following.

Our Top Picks

TOP Choice #1 NETGEAR 4-Stream WiFi 6 Router
Our Score:
9.7
NETGEAR

This router is an excellent choice if you require support for multiple devices and engage in bandwidth-intensive activities like online gaming, video streaming, or video conferencing. It outperforms standard routers with its exceptional performance, offering speeds up to 1.5 times faster and reaching a maximum speed of 1.8 Gbps. It can effortlessly handle up to 20 advanced household devices, catering to your connectivity needs.

Moreover, this router is designed to handle 1G connections, ensuring fast upload and download speeds. Not only does it deliver impressive speed, but it also prioritizes robust security measures to safeguard all connected devices against potential cyber threats. Advanced parental controls enable parents to easily monitor and manage their children's online activities. The Nighthawk app simplifies router setup and provides convenient WiFi features such as remote network access, speed testing, and the ability to pause the internet. Unfortunately, there is room for improvement in the app's advanced features.

TOP Choice #2 TP-Link AC1200 Gigabit WiFi Router
Our Score:
9.6
TP-Link

The TP-Link AC1200 Dual Band Router is a high-performance device that significantly enhances your home internet experience. With blazing speeds of up to 1200Mbps, this dual-band router provides an excellent platform for seamless 4K movie streaming and gaming without frustrating buffering. The router features 4 Gigabit LAN ports, enabling direct connections to wired devices, ensuring a fast and smooth internet experience.

Furthermore, the router incorporates cutting-edge MU-MIMO technology, allowing it to handle multiple devices simultaneously, ensuring uninterrupted browsing, streaming, and gaming. It also has an AP mode feature, enabling easy switching to access point mode for wireless internet sharing. With guest WiFi and parental controls, it's an ideal choice for family households. Managing the network is effortless with the TP-Link Tether app. Unfortunately, its parental control features may be limited.

TOP Choice #3 Amazon Eero Mesh WiFi Router
Our Score:
9.4
Eero

The Eero mesh wifi router brings fast, reliable wifi coverage of up to 1,500 sq. ft. to homes, ensuring seamless connectivity throughout the entire space. With Alexa compatibility, users can easily manage wifi access for network profiles, allowing them to prioritize essential activities over excessive screen time. The flexibility of quickly expanding the system with cross-compatible hardware ensures that the Eero router can adapt to changing needs.

Working harmoniously with most major internet service providers, eero replaces the traditional wifi router, streamlining the connection process. Setting up the Eero router is a breeze, as the user-friendly Eero app guides users through the installation and enables network management from anywhere. By eliminating wifi slowdowns, the Eero router empowers you to make the most of your wifi network, facilitating smooth streaming, gaming, and work tasks throughout your home. The only minor downside of this device is it may sometimes drop the wifi signal.

4 Speedefy AC2100 Smart WiFi Router
Our Score:
9.2
Speedefy

The Speedefy K7 wireless router offers a reliable and robust internet experience. With dual-band gigabit WiFi support, it provides a remarkable speed of 2100M, ensuring smooth web browsing, video streaming, and gaming. The router's dual-core CPU minimizes buffering and maintains high-speed connectivity. Its standout feature is the powerful signal, thanks to 7*6dBi external antennas and 4*4 MU-MIMO technology, ensuring strong and stable coverage in your entire room.

Setting up the Speedefy K7 is quick and straightforward, with a simple installation process taking just 5 minutes. You can easily manage the router through the app or web interface, customizing your preferences conveniently. The router prioritizes internet security, employing complete WPA2 protocols to keep your connection safe. Real-time risk detection ensures a stable and protected WiFi experience. Additional features like parental control for managing kids' internet access and Accelerate WiFi for performance optimization make it even more appealing. Nevertheless, the router's user interface could be improved for better usability.

5 ASUS AC1200 WiFi Router
Our Score:
9.0
ASUS

The Asus wireless router is an excellent option for reliable, high-speed wireless connectivity in homes or small offices. It offers coverage for up to 3000 square feet, ensuring uninterrupted and fast performance throughout most homes. The dual-band Wi-Fi supports speeds of 300 Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 867 Mbps on the 5GHz band, making it perfect for streaming and gaming.

The router features four Gigabit LAN ports, delivering connections up to ten times faster than standard Ethernet, ensuring smooth connectivity for multiple devices. It also includes a USB 2.0 port for convenient local and remote file sharing through the ASUS AiDisk network file-sharing feature. The user-friendly ASUSWRT dashboard UI makes setting up the router easy, allowing for effortless management. The four external antennas improve coverage and performance for multiple devices. Nonetheless, the router's instruction manual may not be beneficial.

6 TP-Link AC1900 Smart WiFi Router
Our Score:
8.8
TP-Link

This Wave 2 wireless router offers reliable and fast internet connections with 600 Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 1300 Mbps on the 5GHz band. Its MU-MIMO gigabit technology enhances device performance by optimizing communication efficiency. The router's Beamforming technology extends coverage throughout your home, ensuring uninterrupted streaming, gaming, and browsing experiences.

Moreover, the router has full gigabit ports, including 4 x Gigabit LAN and 1 x Gigabit WAN, providing fast and dependable wired connections for your devices. TP-Link's parental controls offer peace of mind, allowing you to block inappropriate content and set daily limits on your children's online time. These controls enable you to monitor and protect their online activities from potential threats. As a OneMesh-compatible router, TP-Link provides an ideal solution for your home WiFi network, though it may require occasional resets to optimize performance.

The ASUS RT-AX1800S is a next-generation WiFi 6 router that offers ultra-fast WiFi speeds and improved efficiency. It is designed to support the latest WiFi 6 (802.11ax) standard and comes with MU-MIMO and OFDMA technology, delivering faster and more efficient wireless connections. With 1024-QAM support, this router provides significantly faster wireless connections, making it perfect for browsing, streaming, gaming, and downloading. Its advanced technology efficiently allocates channels and simultaneously enables communication with multiple devices, increasing capacity and efficiency.

Additionally, the router features five Gigabit ports, including one Gigabit WAN port and four Gigabit LAN ports, offering data transfers that are 10X faster than 100-Base T Ethernet. It also ensures commercial-grade security with AiProtection Classic, powered by Trend Micro, safeguarding your home network from online threats. Moreover, ASUS Instant Guard provides a secure one-click VPN when away from home. You can easily extend your network and enjoy seamless roaming by adding any AiMesh-compatible router, effortlessly covering more areas in your home. Unfortunately, certain functions may require information registration.

8 Linksys Mesh WiFi 6 Router
Our Score:
8.4
Linksys

Powered by Intelligent Mesh Technology; Coverage up to 3000 sq. ft. and supports 40 plus devices

Dynamically maximizes WiFi speed and eliminates dead zones in your home

Linksys Mesh WiFi Router 6 Router, Wireless Mesh Router for Home AX6000 - Comes with Linksys Seal

VPN Server and Client: Archer AXE300 Supports both VPN Server and VPN Client (OpenVPN/PPTP/L2TP)

Wi-Fi 6E Unleashed - The brand new 6 GHz band brings more bandwidth, faster speeds, and near-zero latency

iF DESIGN AWARD 2022 Quad-Band Router- AXE16000 Quad-Band Wi-Fi delivers Wi-Fi speeds up to an unprecedented 15.6 Gbps( 6GHz, 4804 Mbps; 5GHz-1, 4804 Mbps; 5GHz-2, 4804 Mbps; 2.4GHz, 1148 Mbps)*

10 Wiflyer WE1326-KC 4G LTE Router
Our Score:
7.8
Wiflyer

【Detachable Antennas】Detachable design allows installation of your own antennas.

【Share 4G LTE】Insert a sim and enjoy Internet. Easy to use. Ideal for where wired broadband is unavailable or network backup. SIM card slot unlocked to any network operator including Verizon T-Mobile AT&T.

【Multiple Interfaces】1 Gigabit WAN for wired broadband, 4 Gigabit LAN for cable connection, USB and TF card slot featuring SAMBA and FTP, enables the 4G LTE router to share files.

Product Images, Product Titles, Product Highlights from Amazon Product Advertising API

What to Look For in a best small wifi router?

A valuable product is determined by many factors (included below). The process of researching the best small wifi router is pretty significant because of these features related to the products. However, rest assured that we are here to support your challenges.

Having a closer look at the following factors would benefit you a lot. These are the most important things among various ones you need to consider:

USB Ports

USB ports on a router are used for connecting to a flash drive, an external hard drive, or a USB printer if the router has a built-in print server.

Quality Of Service

Wireless Routers offer a great way to optimize the performance of your computer. You can change the router's settings to work best for streaming videos, making Skype calls, playing games, or streaming music. This will give those applications more of the bandwidth—so, for example, your Netflix movie doesn't pause and rebuffer because someone in your house is downloading a large file.

WiFi Standards

As of early 2021, the tech world is starting to transition away from the WiFi standard known as WiFi 5 and towards WiFi 6, which is faster and boasts better support for more devices connected at the same time. Older, WiFi 5-certified devices like smartphones and laptops can still be used with WiFi 6 routers, but you won’t receive the full benefits of WiFi 6 unless the device you are using is certified for the new standard. For more information on WiFi 6, be sure to read this article.

LAN Ports

Many internet-connected smart home devices, such as Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings products, require a LAN port-connected hub to function. If you need more LAN ports than the router has, you can expand the number available by adding an Ethernet switch. This is sort of like a power strip that adds open Ethernet ports.

App-Based Management

Every new router comes with apps meant to simplify the task of setting up and making adjustments to your WiFi network. The apps make it easier than ever before to monitor which devices are connected to your network and adjust which devices get priority. These apps can also alert you when an update is available for your router.

Security

To secure your router, you should use the latest available encryption standard. This is likely WPA2 or WPA3, depending on the age of your router. You’ll need to enter the password just once into each wireless device you use; afterward, the device will remember it.

Booster Club

When it comes to wireless routers, most ISPs offer several tiers of service. If you’re ever in a situation where you need more speed for streaming or gaming, you can always upgrade your service. A connection speed of around 200 megabits per second should be able to handle a family’s worth of activities like this.

FAQs

What is a small WiFi router?

A small WiFi router is a compact device that transmits and receives wireless network signals between computers and other devices. It is often used for home networks or small business networks because of its portability and convenience.

What are the benefits of using a small WiFi router?

Some of the benefits of using a small WiFi router are improved coverage, increased flexibility, lower costs, and improved security. Small WiFi routers can be placed in areas with limited space, allowing them to provide better coverage than larger routers. They are also more flexible, allowing you to customize settings and manage multiple users.

Can I use a small WiFi router to connect multiple devices?

Yes, you can use a small WiFi router to connect multiple devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The router will broadcast a single wireless network and all connected devices will be able to access the internet.

How do I set up a small WiFi router?

Setting up a small WiFi router is relatively simple. First, you will need to connect the router to a power source and then connect it to your modem with an Ethernet cable. Next, you will need to log into the router’s web page and configure the settings for your network. Finally, you will need to connect your devices to the router and enter the password for the wireless network.


1 ratings

About Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony

Piers Anthony is a freelance writer and computer expert who enjoys helping others get the most out of their technology. He has written extensively about laptops, soundbars, and other computer-related topics, and he currently serves as the editor of The Audio Insights website. When he's not writing or tinkering with his gadgets, Piers can be found spending time with his wife and family.