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The first thing we learned is that the mobile apps designed to guide you through the setup process aren't as easy to use as the manufacturers would have you believe.Īll of the models except for one (the Linksys RE6300) supported this app-based setup, but our testers were often tripped up by the unclear directions. The larger place needed help getting a WiFi signal to the home office above the garage. The smaller house has an outdoor deck area with spotty WiFi. One house measures about 2,000 square feet and the other nearly 2,200 square feet. To answer that question, we put a half dozen models to work in two modest-sized homes owned by Consumer Reports testers. They often come in packs of three, too, which allows you to move the units around your home, creating widespread coverage. And that's in an ideal world, where the WiFi signal from the router hasn't been degraded by obstacles such as thick walls and large appliances.īy contrast, mesh routers use two different frequency bands, which limits the speed loss to roughly 10 percent. So, for example, if you're standing right next to your WiFi router (where the signal is strongest) and get 50 megabits per second (fast enough to stream two 4K Netflix videos at once), the speed in your extended network will be about 25 megabits per second. That extra step can reduce the speed of your WiFi signal by about half.

"So now the data that originally would have come directly from the access point to your connected device is going through an intermediate step," Athreya says. That's in part because an extender relies on the same frequency band as the router itself. The extender can then pick up the WiFi signal from your router and push it deeper into your home.īut you're likely to notice a significant drop in throughput speeds in the "extended" network, says Kannan Athreya, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State University. To get the best results, you have to plug the extender into a power outlet midway between your router and the dead-zone area. While it's tempting to think of a WiFi range extender as a device that can beam fast, reliable WiFi throughout your home, it's more like a spot fix for the dead zone in your bedroom or attic-turned-home office.