Comparisons

These pages are for people who have already narrowed it to two options and want someone to resolve it. Every one ends in a verdict rather than a table, and every one includes a section arguing against both — because the most useful thing a comparison can tell you is sometimes that neither option is the right purchase.

How we write a comparison

Four rules, applied to every page here.

• The table goes first. If you only want the differences side by side, you should not have to read eight hundred words to find them.
• The verdict is per use case, not overall. One product being simply better than another is almost never true of two products that both exist. What is true is that one suits a long single-story house and the other suits a dense apartment, so each page gives you a "choose this if" on both sides.
• We explain the mechanism, not the marketing. Orbi holds speed at range because its units are physically larger and its antennas better spaced. That is a real trade-off with a real cost, and it is more useful to know than a coverage figure.
• There is always a case against both. On most of these pages the honest answer for some readers is a third thing entirely — a cable, a free placement change, or nothing at all.

The recurring answer: a cable changes everything

It comes up on four of the five pages here, so it is worth stating once. Any wireless relay — an extender, or a mesh node without a dedicated band — spends radio time twice to deliver once, and passes on roughly half of what it receives. Feed the same device by cable and that disappears entirely.

So the comparison between two wireless products is frequently less important than the question of whether either of them could be wired. And wired includes options most people forget: the coax outlet behind the television via MoCA, or the electrical wiring via powerline. Both present as Ethernet, so the product on the end cannot tell the difference. Why this matters so much.

What a comparison cannot tell you

Whether you are shopping in the right category. If your signal is strong everywhere and your speeds are poor, no choice between two coverage products helps — that is congestion, and the fix is free. If speeds are bad standing next to the router, the comparison you want is between routers rather than between coverage products. Ten minutes of testing before you compare anything is the highest-value thing you can do: here is the method.

What we have and have not done

We have not tested any of these products in a lab, and we do not present anyone else's measurements as our own. Specifications come from the manufacturers; performance context comes from outlets that do run labs, named and linked on every page. Where we reach a judgment it is labeled as one, and the scoring rubric is printed alongside every pick so you can disagree with the weighting rather than only with the conclusion. Our methodology in full.