The Best Mesh WiFi Systems in 2023

An ever-evolving guide on the best way to connect your home.

Everyone needs good Wi-Fi in their home, but many home Wi-Fi setups suck for countless reasons. Maybe the hardware your ISP gave you isn't great, or your walls aren't compatible with wireless signals. Or maybe the signals from your all-in-one wireless modem and router just can't reach everywhere from their location in a far corner of your home. These are the diseases that mesh systems treat, a distributed set of smaller WiFi nodes that are spread around your home, pushing the Internet to every corner. Mesh routers aren't new and we've reviewed a lot of them, but now we're building a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know. That's because WiFi 6E is mature and affordable enough to deliver transformative wireless performance for everyone.

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Wi-Fi is governed by the international standard IEEE 802.11, and every few years the standards evolve. Until 2018, routers were sold under their IEEE designation, leaving consumers to deal with the soup of words of products labeled 802.11 b/a/g/n/ac et cetera. Fortunately, the wiser ones have chosen to rename the standards with numbers: WiFi 4, WiFi 5 and WiFi 6. We are currently between two generations of WiFi, WiFi 6 and 6E, which concerns the frequencies used by the standard. WiFi 6 covers routers that operate on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, while the latter means it can also use the 6 GHz band.

Each Wi-Fi band has tradeoffs, as slower radio frequencies have greater range but less speed. 2.4 GHz signals travel a long distance through your home but are not fast, while 6 GHz signals are extremely fast but can be defeated by a solid brick wall. Many WiFi-enabled devices, like many smart home products, only use 2.4 GHz because the range is better and it's much cheaper. But that means the group is also overcrowded and slow.

Linksys CEO Jonathan Bettino told Engadget why mesh systems are an "advancement in Wi-Fi technology" over buying a single point router. With a single transmitter, the signal may degrade the further you get from the router, or the local environment isn't ideal. "You may have a small [house], but there are thick walls [...] or things interfering with your wireless signal," he said.

Historically, the solution to a home's WiFi dead zone was to buy a WiFi range extender, but Bettino said the hardware offered both a "terrible user experience" and one of the lowest return rates. the highest of any consumer electronics product. Mesh WiFi, by comparison, offers "multiple nodes that can be placed anywhere in your home," Bettino says, resulting in "ever-present WiFi" that feels like having a "router in every room." .

Having a "router in every room" is the biggest selling point of mesh Wi-Fi, given how much we all depend on the internet. Each node is in constant contact with each other, broadcasting a single, seamless network to all your devices. There is no separate network for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, just a single name you connect to.

It's a good time to buy a mesh Wi-Fi system, as Wi-Fi 6E is a pretty big leap in technology. Matt MacPherson, Cisco's chief wireless technology officer, said WiFi 6E is a substantial "inflection point" and can take advantage of a much wider portion of the wireless spectrum than its predecessors. "If you use this spectrum with a WiFi 6 [device]," he said, "you're going to get significant [speed] gains."

MacPherson added that WiFi 6E will "probably carry you around for a long time", thanks to the fact that its "superior speeds now generally exceed what people can actually connect their homes to". In short, with a maximum theoretical speed per stream of 1.2 Gbps, WiFi 6E is fast enough to outpace all but the fastest internet connection. (You may also see talk of WiFi 7 devices, some of which have already launched ahead of the official launch of the standard next year. Given that it will take a generation to get all the devices in your home WiFi enabled 7, it's not worth thinking about for several years.)

Each mesh product will boast of its theoretical broadcast range in square feet, as well as its theoretical top speed. Since there are so many factors beyond the manufacturer's control, these numbers don't really mean much in the real world. The actual speed of your internet service provider, building materials and layout of your home, among other things, will all be a...