Best Wireless Routers For A Large Home

Having internet connection problems in certain areas of your home?  Today we will go over the best wireless routers for a large home.

Did you know that the average wireless router signal can travel up to 300 feet?  That’s as long as a football field, but even that number like the advertised speed on your box, is meaningless.

So if you have a large home before you go out and buy yourself a wireless router there are a few things you need to take into consideration.

1. How big is your home?
2. How many walls does your home have?
3. What are your walls of your home made out of and  how deep are they?
4. What kind of devices do you have in your home and how many?

All these things can be interfering with your wireless signal.  We are going to go over some really nice long range wireless routers.  We will also go about how to determine what exactly you need for your home.

Things to Consider Before Purchasing Router

First here are some things you want to consider about your home.

What is your home made out of?  This is probably the most important thing.

If your house is made of regular wood and plaster then a wireless signal should have no problems traveling through the walls.

But if you have a brick or concrete home or even a lot of glass then you can have some wireless signal issues.  A wireless signal will get stopped almost dead in it’s tracks by brick, concrete, glass, and metal.

Now if you have that kind of a home, you may want to consider something else. The following devices could be good alternatives to a new powerful wireless router.

Powerline

A powerline device uses the electrical cables in your home to transmit your network signal.

Now the downside with powerline is it kind of depends on the quality and the kind of electrical wiring you have in your home. The network signal is only as good as the electrical wiring used. Your network signal can also become distorted by certain types of devices that are plugged into your walls.

Another consideration is how big is your home if you have anything bigger than say 2,000 to 2,500 square feet, you’re, going to want to start thinking about some of these other solutions

Click Here for Current Price and Reviews of NETGEAR PowerLINE

 

Mesh

Now, when I say a router that’s designed for a larger home, what do I mean?

Simply put these routers have got what we call high gain antennas. Now what do high gain antennas do by default? The signal that comes out of your wireless router is like a big globe.  This is the reason why they say to place a wireless router in a location that’s above everything else.  This is so that globe has the ability to spread around as much as possible.

So what does a high gain antenna do since it doesn’t really increase your signal? What it does is it just kind of squashes down the signal and stretches it out. So you gain more distance this way at the expense of distance.

This is okay if you have a one-story home.  But if you have a multiple story home, you’re gonna lose that signal on the upper and lower floors.

So how do you fix that? Well, that’s when you start looking into mesh solutions.  With mesh you can place devices all over your home on different floors and  different locations based on the layout of your home. The mesh network will basically combine into a single SSID and give You the ability to travel around your house without disconnecting and reconnecting every time you move to a different location in the house.

Click Here for Current Price and Reviews of Google Mesh Wifi System

 

Wi-Fi Extenders

Wi-Fi extenders are probably the least expensive device but I would recommend against extenders.

What does a Wi-Fi extender do? Basically, it gets aWi-Fi signal and then rebroadcasts it and amplifies it.

They’re kind of difficult to set up. Also consider your bandwidth.   Wi-Fi extenders use channels that communicate between devices. So since your router and the extender uses the same channel that you’re on, it also eats away at your bandwidth.

Typically, if you use an extender, you’re gonna lose about 50 percent of your bandwidth. So the only time I would really use an extender is if we had one room that needed a Wi-Fi signal and we just couldn’t get it any other way.

If you are on a budget or just need a Wi-Fi signal in just one room then throw a Wi-Fi extender in there by all means.  Just because I am not a big fan doesn’t mean it won’t get the job done.

Check out Current Price and Reviews of the Netgear WiFi Range Extender EX3700

 

Some Final Considerations

Here are some final considerations before buying anything.

1. What kind of stuff do you have running in your house?  A lot of people don’t realize that wireless phones, microwaves, baby monitors can all interfere with your Wi-Fi signal.  These types of devices usually run on 2.4 gigahertz frequency and can interfere with older models of routers.  Most newer routers use 5 gigahertz frequency so if you have newer router this shouldn’t be an issue.
2. How many walls does your router have to travel through?  The average wireless singal can travel through a single drywall and wood walls with no problem.  But the signal slows down after having to travel through three walls.  An easy fix to this problem is to move your router to a more central location so it doesn’t have to go through as many walls.

So if you decided that a new powerful router will be what you need take a look at the best wireless routers for large homes below.

 

Suggested Best Wireless Routers For A Large Home

Netgear Nighthawk X4S

Click Here for Current Price and Reviews of the NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S Smart WiFi Router

 

So the first router is the Netgear Nighthawk X4S. The X4S is an upgrade on the X as the X4S is faster and has greater range. The Netgear Nighthawk X4S is an extremely fast and powerful router which provides a strong and stable signal throughout a large home.

Even if you are a novice it’s ok as there is a downloadable app that you can use that makes this router extremely easy to use.

As far as setting up the router, you shouldn’t have any kind of a problems. No matter whether you’re an expert or novice this router basically comes out of the box ready to use.  It even has a network name and a password printed on the bottom of the router instead of having to lookup up the defaults on google.

Vital Statistics

• The Nick Air Nighthawk X4S, has a 1.7 dual-core processor
• Has a four by four quad stream support on each band. The first band is 800 megabits per second on the 2.4 gigahertz and 1733 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz.
• It comes with four Gigabit Ethernet ports for removable high gain antennas,
• 2 USB 3.o ports
• 1 SATA port that you can use to plug in an external hard drive.

Pros

• The pros of this router are, of course, speed and range instability.
• This router provides a strong, stable signal which makes it great for homes which are less than 4,000 square feet with a dozen or fewer wireless devices.

Cons

• The only caveat with this router is that some people have noticed that the network storage performance on it is kind of slow compared to other routers in this class.
• Another downside to this router is some people find the web interface to be kind of confusing.

 

 

Linksys AC5400 EA9500

Click Here for Current Price and Reviews of the Linksys EA9500 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router

 

Now the next wireless router is probably one of the biggest baddest Home Wireless Routerss on the planet.

Another way of looking at justifying the purchase of this router is ssimple. It’s pretty much future proofing your home network for a long time. This beast has eight high gain antennas all of which provide mu-mimo support, which provides Wi-Fi to multiple devices all at the same high speed.

Basically, all your devices can connect to this router at their highest speed and not slow down other devices on your network.  Definitely some good stuff especially is you have a house full of kids.

This router also comes with proprietary Linksys technology called max stream.  Max Stream will work with other max stream range extenders to allow seamless roaming in your home.  What this means is you can basically walk around your house and not have to connect or reconnect to other wireless extenders or routers.

Vital Statistics

• Has one USB 3.o port and one USB 2.o port.
• This router has a 1.4 gigahertz dual-core processor
• Has 3 bands with Wi-Fi speeds up to 5.3 Gbps (5 GHz / 1000 Mbps) + (5 GHz / 2166 Mbps) + (2.4 GHz / 2166 Mbps)
• Get’s 1000 megabits per second on the 2.4 gigahertz frequency which totals totals out to 5333 megabits in total.
• Enjoy 4K HD streaming and gaming in high quality without buffering
• Multi User Multiple Input Multiple Output provides Wi-Fi to multiple devices at once, at the same high speed

Pros

• Has a 8 Gigabit LAN ports and the seamless roaming.
• Provides an all powerful home network
• Has 8 high gain antennas

Cons

• Router is really big and bulky.
• Cost of device.

 

TP Link Archer A10

Click Here for Current Price and Reviews of the TP-Link AC2600 Smart WiFi Router

 

Ok now we come to a budget priced router and it’s made by TP-Link.  This could be a brand that people associate with cheaply made devices but is not the case with the Archer A10 router.

In this case TP-Link nailed it with the archer A10. Ok, on the surface the specs on this router are not that outstanding. But for whatever reason in tests this router excels in long distance or long range signal strength.

So the TP-link Archer A10 is basically everything you would expect in a high-performance router at an affordable price. Expect to see Wi-Fi speeds of up to 1300 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz band.  This  is more than capable of 4k streaming and lag free gaming.

You also get the usual features you would expect on a high-end router.  Such features as four Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB ports, removable antennas and beamforming support. The unassuming and somewhat lame design conceals a 1 gigahertz dual-core processor. This router can easily handle multiple connections to laptops tablets and even Alexa enabled devices.

It even has an app called tether which works with both iOS and Android devices. This router is extremely easy to set up and almost never needs to be restarted. It’s has got a strong, stable signal and works great over long distances and can provide full coverage in even large homes with multiple devices.

This is a router you want to get if you don’t want to spend your entire life constantly tinkering with the Wi-Fi.

Vital Statistics

• 3 external antennas and 1 internal antenna for wireless networks amplified
• One USB 2.o port and One usb 3.0  port.
• You get 600 megabits per second on the 2.4 gigahertz frequency band and 1300 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz frequency band.
• Has MU-MIMO + Smart Connect + Airtime Fairness for maximum throughput
• Open & PPTP VPN Server for secure remote access to your home network via the Internet

Pros

• The pros of the router are its a its value, its speed and range and its reliability.
• Gives best bang for the buck compared to other routers with similiar capabilities

Cons

• You can’t really lay the router down or mount it to a wall.
• Short distance speeds

 

 

Best Wireless Routers For A Large Home Summary

Ok, so those are three of the wireless routers which I consider to be the best out there for a large home.

I tried to include different size homes and different sized budgets.

However, long-range routers usually carry a high price tag.  But in addition to serving a larger area these routers also offer faster speeds as well.  So you pretty much get what you pay for.

These long-range routers also offer high grade security features, greater bandwidth, and advanced network management tools.

Something to consider though is if your internet service provider has slow internet speeds it won’t do much to help there.  But you still get all the extensive and varied features these routers come with.  So no matter the size of your house or speed of your internet connection a long range router might be a worthwhile investment.