The More You Spend on a Wi-Fi Router, the Worse It Gets

Spending $1,302 on a Wi-Fi router will get you a Netgear Orbi 970, a quad-band Wi-Fi 7 mesh system with every available specification on the box. It will also get you a Critic Score of 70, a result that can be matched by a $79 budget router. That is not a freak outlier. It is, according to the data, fairly representative of how this category works.

Across 30 Wi-Fi routers scored using aggregated professional reviews on Criticaster, the category average sits at 74.3, the lowest of any of the 39 product categories on the site. Gaming mice average 80.1. Wireless headphones hit 78.8. Robot vacuums, a category with its own quality problems, average 77.4.

The router industry has spent five years running a spec arms race. Wi-Fi 6 in 2019. Wi-Fi 6E in 2021. Wi-Fi 7 in 2024. Each generation promised dramatically faster speeds, lower latency, and meaningfully better real-world performance. Professional reviewers are not finding those promises in the products.

Part of the problem is structural. Most home internet connections are not fast enough to need a newer standard. An ISP connection tops out well below what even a Wi-Fi 5 router can saturate, which means the throughput gains in Wi-Fi 6 and 7 are largely theoretical for most households. Critics are grading accordingly: when the premium does not translate into anything users will actually notice, the scores reflect that.

The eero Pro 7 makes this concrete. At $699, it is one of the most reviewed Wi-Fi 7 mesh systems available, with 14 professional reviews. It scores 74. The eero 6, its predecessor from 2020, costs $79 and scores 81 across 15 reviews. Paying nine times more for the newer flagship got you a product critics rate notably worse. The brands that score best, the ASUS RT-BE96U at $399 (86/100) and the eero 6+ at $299 (83/100), tend to prioritize reliability and setup simplicity over headline specifications. Neither is the brand's own flagship.

The eero Max 7 is the most professionally reviewed Wi-Fi router in the database, with 26 critic reviews, more than any other product in the category. It scores 77. In most competitive tech categories, the products that accumulate the most professional attention tend to be the best ones. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra, the most-reviewed wireless headphone with 53 reviews, scores 86. The Logitech G502 Lightspeed, the most-reviewed gaming mouse, scores 89. In Wi-Fi routers, the market's most scrutinized product gets a 77 and reviewers call it fine.

TP-Link, which has more router products in the database than any other brand, makes the research problem unavoidable. Its scores run from 53 to 84 across its lineup. The AXE5400 Tri-Band Router at $89 scores 84. The Archer AX3000, also at $89, scores 53. Same brand, same price bracket, completely different reception from professional reviewers, and nothing on the box to indicate which one you are about to buy.

That is the broader issue with this category. Routers sit in a market where the primary buying environment is an ISP promotion or an Amazon search sorted by sponsored placement, not a careful review-driven decision. Most people buy a router once and ignore it until something breaks. Brand name and price, the two signals most consumers rely on when buying tech, do not work here. The category that causes the most universal consumer frustration is also the one that punishes the least-informed buyers the most.

Browse all Wi-Fi routers ranked by Critic Score to see every product we cover with scores, review counts, and links to the original professional reviews. The data does not make for cheerful reading, but it is more useful than a spec sheet.