Good routers for gaming11/27/2023 ![]() ![]() If you find any of this confusing, the most important takeaway is this thing is a powerhouse that will ensure your wireless router isn’t the bottleneck when it comes to gaming performance.įor ordinary gaming, a router’s throughput is of little concern, but for good cloud gaming, it’s a bit more important, but only a bit. However, a later round of benchmarking I did with the Rapture saw much better performance. The only real issue I had during my first round of testing for the above review was with smart home devices behaving badly on the new network, which will be an issue with every new router, but was especially pronounced with this one. Throughput on all three is massive, topping out at over 1,800Mbps in iperf 3 transfer tests when I reviewed it for Gizmodo last year - that speed was recorded in my home with a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, not in a lab with specialized equipment.Īpart from custom computers, there are no gaming devices capable of achieving those speeds, of course, so the true test is latency: How long does it take for a signal to get from your computer to the game server and back again? It’s a test the Rapture passes with flying colors, achieving near-wired numbers when gaming in all but the most difficult areas of my home. The Rapture offers three bands and supports the big three protocols: Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and Wi-Fi 6E. If you can get past the looks, what’s under the hood is a very performative gaming router from one of the biggest and most consistent names in the industry. It’s just awful, offensive to behold, and in spite of myself, I actually like the way it looks. On the top of the router, the ROG logo, which looks like a 6th grader designed it, beams out at you with RGB colors, uncentered. It’s a visual mess, which may turn some offįor the John Hammonds out there who like to wave their hands at routers and say things like, “We spared no expense,” the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 (hereafter referred to as the Rapture, because, come on) is a chunky, tentacled behemoth that blasts Wi-Fi like there’s no tomorrow.Īll pointy and angular, it looks like an Asus product for sure, but one somebody injected mutagen into, resulting in a picasso-like monster that doesn’t just sit where it is so much as splay all over the place, its thick antennae like the skyward-stabbing ribs of a long-dead beast in the desert.Available for just $159.00 (when it’s not on sale), this router offers solid throughput, good-enough latency, and is extremely easy to set up and manage for most people, thanks to its friendly, app-based approach.Īlthough the company was acquired by Amazon in 2019, Bezos’ giant has seemingly taken a fairly light touch with the product line, making for product evolution that has remained consistent and performance that has never been particularly exciting, but is more stable and stress-free than many other routers in its price range.įinally, because this router is designed with mesh networking in mind, you can easily start with one and add more as you go to fill out coverage, although I have found that while it leads to an overall better network experience, mesh routing tends to negatively affect online gaming performance, including cloud gaming. The Eero Pro has been around in its 2nd generation form for five years now, and although it’s not explicitly a gaming router, it’s a great tri-band option for anyone looking for a router that will offer great performance without breaking the bank. The best budget option is an oldie but a goodie at this point. Network performance on other bands is similarly impressive, so any device you own will likely benefit, whether it supports Wi-Fi 6 or not (though in general, few consumer devices can even reach such lofty speeds). The Archer GX90 also boasts extremely high throughput on the gaming band, which I measured at over 1,100Mbps using a Wi-Fi 6 connection across several tests - something most routers can’t touch. These spikes were so mild, though, that I wouldn’t have noticed them if not for the fact I was actively measuring my ping. During my time with this router, I saw buttery-smooth online gaming performance in all but the most challenging places in my mid-sized, 100-year-old midwestern home, with some occasional spikes of latency. What makes this router special is not that it has a dedicated “Game Band” - after all, a third, higher-channel bandwidth connection is hardly a new thing - it’s that this band is crazy good at what it purports to do. ![]() In testing throughout my house, its incredibly low latency rivaled powerhouses like the Netgear Nighthawk RAXE500, which retails for over twice what the GX90 costs. Pricier than most standard consumer routersįor great range, low-latency performance, affordable pricing, and a nice array of dedicated gaming features, the tri-band TP-Link Archer GX90 is the router to beat. ![]()
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