Top 5: The Best Wi-Fi Routers

Chart: Having a house or office full of the latest, most bleeding-edge computing, mobile and tablet hardware is awesome, but it’s all for nought if you don’t have an easy way to hook them all up to the ‘net. A new 802.11ac router gives you the best possible wireless transfer speeds, the longest range and the best new features. Here are the five best 802.11ac wireless routers available in Australia as of July 23, 2015.

Wireless router image via Shutterstock

Gizmodo includes scores (out of 100) on Australian reviews: full ‘How We Rate’ info is available here. That scoring is reflected in this chart, along with scores from a selection of other leading tech sites. In doing so, our goal is to make this meta-chart as useful as possible to you.

Also: Top 5 E-Readers

There are a huge number of Wi-Fi routers of all brands and varieties available in Australia, so we’ve narrowed the list down to some of the best of the best, and even then to a list of some that are easily available from a wide selection of retail stores around the country. Our list shows that if you want a solid Wi-Fi router with good range, good speed and good features, then you should take a look at well-regarded brands like D-Link, Netgear and Linksys. Our list has one or two from each brand, based solely on their aggregate scores from four different review websites including Gizmodo Australia.

Note: We’ve not included pricing in the table as this can change regularly, and differs between various telco plans. Use the Dick Smith links to get a guide to current costs.

Top 5 Chart Click review for more information	84	82	77	74	74
	Netgear Nighthawk R7000	Linksys WRT1900AC	Linksys EA8500	Netgear Nighthawk X6	D-Link DSL-2900AL
Scoring Panel
	Gizmodo Australia 85	Gizmodo Australia 85	Gizmodo Australia 93	Gizmodo Australia 82	Gizmodo Australia 81
	PC World US 90	PC World US 90	PC World US 60	PC World US 80	PC World US N/A
	PC World AU 80	PC World AU 70	PC World AU N/A	PC World AU N/A	PC World AU 80
	CNET 80	CNET 80	CNET 80	CNET 60	CNET 60
Key Specs
Speed	AC1900	AC1900	AC2600	AC3200	AC1900
Gigabit Ethernet	Yes, 4	Yes, 4	Yes, 4	Yes, 4	Yes, 4
USB Ports	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Modem	No	No	No	No	Yes
Dimensions	285×185 x50mm	248×195 x51mm	249×196 x51mm	296×227 x55mm	123×102 x220mm