Rating of the best Wi-Fi routers of 2022

Next in our ranking of the best routers of 2022 is a little-known Chinese company, which is now one of the largest players in the global communications market, including network equipment. And “purely in Chinese” they offer a thing that is really attractive at first glance: a quite budget router on one of its four antennas flaunts the Wi-Fi 6 Plus logo, which means that it supports the most modern 802.11ax protocol. The router provides full-fledged MU-MIMO operation.

Please note that two versions of the router are available, externally identical. The cheaper one has a Gigahome dual-core processor (Hisilicon’s own subsidiary) at 1.2 GHz and does not have an NFC module for quickly connecting smartphones to the network, while the more expensive one already has a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor and supports NFC. The amount of RAM also varies by half: 128 and 256 MB, respectively. With a standard “home” load (a couple of smartphones, a laptop), the “junior” option is quite sufficient, but if there is a NAS, a network printer and many other devices in the home network, then you should not save.

Wired interfaces (1 WAN, 3 LAN) — gigabit. It supports the joint operation of several Huawei routers as part of a mesh network, both with a wired and wireless connection. And quite unexpectedly for a budget model, the router has an EAL5 level protection certificate — namely, devices from this class are tested not only formally in their work, but also with an assessment of the development process itself in terms of security.

And yes, let’s add in a whisper: in the «gray» internal Chinese version there are signal amplifiers, with which the «range» of the router increases decently (although in terms of signal strength, the router does not fit into the Russian certification requirements, which is why the «white» version lost them ). Unfortunately, when antennas are directly connected to the SoC on the Russian version, the signal is frankly weak — so this is more an option for small rooms. Or, armed with instructions from w3bsit3-dns.com (otherwise, try to figure it out in the Chinese interface of the “gray” version), we take the “Chinese”.

What can not be taken away from ASUS is its popularity due to affordable prices with good features. After all, last year the company received the «bronze» iXBT Brand 2021, losing only to Keenetic and TP-Link in the vote of readers. Another thing is that there are surprises behind low prices (for example, a banal lack of memory and processor resources in the cheapest models, which physically cannot distribute traffic if some application exceeds 40-50 megabits per second of data transfer speed).

As for the RT-51, its marking unequivocally refers to the old RT-51U, which was released back in 2019. However, the absence of «U» means not just the absence of a USB port and related features: there are many differences between routers.

The router received not only four physical antennas, but also MIMO support (2.4 GHz 2×2, 5 GHz 2×2). Under the new firmware, the amount of flash memory of the device had to be doubled (and the firmware is absolutely incompatible — with any firmware from RT-AC51U we will get a “brick” at the output!), The RAM has not changed. The processor is also different — no longer MediaTek MT7620A, but MT7628. Wired capabilities are standard for inexpensive routers: 4 100-megabit ports.

The configuration is carried out through the shell, which has long been familiar to «asusovods», or through the ASUS Router mobile application. Here there are already some subtleties, since in the option “just drive in the settings specified by the provider”, this does not work out with all providers. Moreover, I must say, the problem here is often more on the provider side (for example, for the author personally, after the provider has brought the network to mind, the uptime of the router is already approaching a three-digit number of days, and then only because of a power outage at the beginning of summer — and before that, I had to reboot regularly, because the external network stubbornly “lost” the router).

A useful feature of this inexpensive router is the use of a single network name (SSID), which allows the same smartphone to automatically switch between bands when you leave or return to 5 GHz Wi-Fi coverage. Just keep in mind that this type of roaming is not seamless, i. breaks at the moment of switching are inevitable. In addition, do not forget that after replacing the stock firmware with an alternative from Padavan or OpenWRT, a convenient feature will simply disappear. And there may be a need to upgrade the software because of the desire to watch IPTV from the provider (this functionality is not implemented in Mi Router 4A).

Please note that all the features and advanced settings of this router are available only through a proprietary smartphone application.

The Gigabit Edition of the base model offers faster WAN/LAN ports, more memory, a more powerful processor, and support for more encryption protocols.

The Keenetic brand has several good modern entry-level routers, and the KN-1310 model seemed to us the most interesting. It is not only equipped with a special amplifier that increases the range, but also allows you to conveniently change operating modes using a 4-position switch. The latest Keenetic Lite is capable of performing the functions of a router, Wi-Fi / twisted pair adapter, repeater and classic access point. The computing needs of the device are provided by the MT7628 single-chip system. The chip is low-power, moreover, it does not have a PPE block, therefore diverting resources to perform numerous routine operations. Simply put, the hardware of this router is not designed for high load. At the same time, the KN-1310 wireless module can work according to the 2T2R scheme, and its WAN port is able to remember the features of connecting to different providers.

The “scaly” top panel provides the router with effective ventilation of the 3-core 1.5 GHz processor and other fillings. All five wired ports (1 WAN, 4xLAN) are gigabit, with static link aggregation (LAG) available for two ports. The USB 3.0 port allows you to use 4G modems, connect drives, and so on.

But the fact that the security system (TP-HomeShield) is available for free only in a truncated version, and now it’s trite not to pay for it from Russia in full, this is a reason to slap a minus into the rating. Seriously, can you offhand remember at least one manufacturer of routers in this price segment that would require you to pay extra money for the safety of your own customers?

Keenetic brand products are famous for their almost perfect stock software, but they are too conservative in relation to technical innovations. In particular, at the time of writing these lines, the company’s product range does not have a single offer with support for Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax), and its middle-class routers cannot fully integrate into Mesh systems. In this sense, the new Keenetic Speedster (KN-3010) router is unique, since working in seamless wireless repeater mode is one of the main talents of the recommended router. An important factor, we consider, is the very high speed of repeated “capture” of KN-3010 in case of sudden disconnections (the best indicator among direct competitors). When used autonomously, the router is interesting even if only by the possibility of creating a network with a single SSID. In addition, unlike the Xiaomi implementation, the Keenetic router is quite allowed to create subnets with different names.