Is a sluggish internet connection slowing you down and putting you in a bad mood for the holiday? If you've gone through the usual troubleshooting steps and determined that your crusty-old wireless router is to blame, then cheer up because there are a bunch of deals on fast models to turn that 'Bah humbug!' into Buddy the Elf-level enthusiasm.
To that end, one way to tackle a subpar home network is to invest in a mesh router system. This can be expensive, but you can save big on the
Netgear Orbi RBK735 Wi-Fi system (renewed), which is on sale for
$249.99 (49% off). That's essentially half off the sticker price.
The caveat is that this is a renewed item, though Amazon ensures it's been "inspected, tested, and refurbished as necessary to be fully functional according to Amazon Renewed standards." Part of that entails a 90-day warranty from Amazon, which is plenty of time to make sure everything is working as it should.
This is a three-piece system consisting of a Wi-Fi 6 router and two satellites. It offers coverage for homes up to 7,500 square feet, with combined speeds of up to 4.2Gbps. That's broken up into 600Mbps on the 2.4GHz channel, 1,200Mbps on the 5GHz channel, and 2,400MHz on a dedicated 5GHz Wi-Fi link.
Moving away from renewed products and into brand new territory, another deal that caught our eye is the
TP-Link Deco AXE5400 Wi-Fi 6E mesh system that's on sale for
$229.99 (34% off). That's its lowest price ever, which is further notable because both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now in the rear view mirror.
This system also bumps you up to Wi-Fi 6E territory, a protocol that was specifically designed to better juggle multi-device households (see our
2.5 Geeks episode on why you should care about Wi-Fi 6E).
TP-Link says its Deco AXE5400 system will cover up to 5,500 square feet while serving up a combined 5,400Mbps of bandwidth for 200 devices. It also features AI smarts to analyze and learn your network environment's characteristics, as well as user behavior, to keep your network running smoothly.
If you're not interested in a mesh system but want to go all-out on a high-end router for gaming, then check out the
ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE1600 that's currently listed at
$499.99 (17% off). Sadly, it was even cheaper last week during the Black Friday sales frenzy, but this still qualifies as the second-lowest price it's ever been (and is $100 below is MSRP).
It's not cheap by any stretch, but the GT-AXE1600 offers up ferocious speeds that are as menacing as its head-crab aesthetic. More precisely, this quad-band Wi-Fi 6E router delivers up to 4,804Mbps on the 6GHz channel and each of the two 5GHz channels, and 1,148Mbps on the 2.4GHz channel. That's a cumulative bandwidth rating of 15,560Mbps (hence the rounded up AXE1600 designation).
It also offers incredibly fast wired connectivity with dual 10Gbps WAN/LAN ports, plus a 2.5Gbps LAN port and four 1Gbps LAN ports. You also get a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port and a USB 2.0 port for sharing storage and/or a printer over your network.
Here are some more wireless router deals...