Event Coverage

HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2017: Editor's Choice - Part 2

By Team HardwareZone - 14 Mar 2017

Best Wireless Router

Best Wireless Router

For readers who demand the very best in wireless connectivity, AC5300-class routers are what you want because they offer both speed and bandwidth. For speed, these routers offer a maximum data transfer rate of up to 2,167Mbps. And for bandwidth, these routers broadcast three separate networks and also provided a total data transfer rate of up to 5,334Mbps. This makes them ideal for performance-hungry users and also users with many connected devices.

To make the cut for this year’s awards, the nominee must be a tri-band router that supports AC5300 speeds. It must also have been released in 2016.

 

Nominees:

  • D-Link DIR-895L AC5300 Ultra Wi-Fi router
  • Linksys EA9500 Max-Stream AC5400 MU-MIMO Gigabit router
  • TP-Link Archer C5400 AC5400 Wireless Tri-Band MU-MIMO Gigabit router

 

And the winner is...

Linksys EA9500

The Linksys EA9500 is the winner because of its unbeatable combination of performance and features. On the performance front, it recorded very respectable and consistent numbers across all tested ranges. And on the features front, the EA9500 router benefits from having Linksys’ excellent Smart Wi-Fi software stack, which is easy to use and has all the bells and whistles one would expect from a flagship router from one of the biggest brands in home networking. It also has a whopping eight Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports! The only thing that kept us from giving it a higher rating is its rather high price tag. Here's a snapshot of its performance from our shootout:-

Scoring Breakdown
Model D-Link DIR-895L Linksys EA9500 TP-Link Archer C5400
Design 8.5 7.0 8.0
Features 7.5 9.0 8.0
Performance 8.5 9.5 7.5
Value 7.0 7.0 8.0
Overall 8.0 8.5 8.0
Price $449 S$539 $399

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

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