Sure, maintaining smooth Wi-Fi performance and throughput for video streaming, gaming, and linking up smart home devices is important. But now that so many folks are working from home, you also need to consider how crucial work applications and different modes of work communication (especially video conferencing) perform over your home network. If your job or your children's education rely on robust connectivity, strong, whole-house wireless coverage goes from a nice-to-have to a must.

That's where Wi-Fi mesh router systems come in. These kits blanket your home in a consistent web of Wi-Fi signal. Let's take a look at the best Wi-Fi mesh systems we've tested, followed by tips for understanding the features to consider before you buy one.

The Asus ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 mesh system that delivered speedy throughput scores in testing. It’s a two-piece system that offers plenty of coverage for medium to large homes (up to 5,500 square feet) and can be paired with other Asus devices that support AIMesh technology. It’s a snap to install and manage thanks to a user-friendly mobile app, and it comes with free lifetime parental controls and network security software.

The Asus ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is a solid choice for anyone looking for an easy way to eliminate wireless dead spots. Its robust parental controls and anti-malware software make it an ideal choice for families that want to monitor and limit online activities while providing secure Wi-Fi 6 coverage to all corners of their home. It’s also a great choice if you plan on making wired connections, as its 2.5Gbps WAN/LAN port lets you take advantage of high-speed internet plans and provides speedy connectivity to NAS devices.

At just under $60, the Vilo Mesh Wi-Fi System is the most affordable three-piece mesh system we’ve tested. It’s not a superstar performer, and it uses older Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) technology, but it is very easy to install and manage, offers good range, and comes with parental controls that let you schedule internet access times and allow or disallow internet access for any device.

If you need to fill in Wi-Fi dead zones but don’t have the money for a mesh system that uses the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology, the Vilo Mesh Wi-Fi system will get the job done. We don’t recommend this system for users who do a lot of 4K video streaming or those who download large chunks of data, but it is more than suitable for everyday web surfing and basic home networking duties.

The Netgear Orbi RBKE963 is a three-piece mesh system that employs the latest Wi-Fi 6E technology to access the relatively uncrowded 6GHz radio band. This wildly expensive system delivered very fast throughput speeds in our performance tests, and it offers excellent signal range. It’s loaded with high-end components and is easy to configure.

People with very large dwellings (up to 9,000 square feet) and very large bank accounts who want to blanket their home in the latest Wi-Fi technology should take a look at the Orbi RBKE963. This beefy mesh system offers multi-gig WAN and LAN ports and comes with basic parental controls, but you can subscribe to Netgear’s Smart Parental Controls if you require age-based web filters, detailed browser history reports, and internet time rewards.

Any Wi-Fi mesh system worth its salt is easy to use, delivers good performance, and comes with parental control software that allows you to monitor and limit internet usage. The TP-Link Deco W7200 Mesh Wi-Fi 6 System checks all these boxes. It installed in minutes using the intuitive Tether mobile app and performed admirably on our throughput and signal strength performance tests. It uses most of the latest Wi-Fi 6 technologies, but as is the case with most similarly priced mesh systems, it doesn’t support 160MHz channel bandwidth.

If your current Wi-Fi router is unable to bring a strong wireless signal to every room in your two-to-three-bedroom house, the Deco W7200 can help. It’s a moderately priced two-piece system that covers up to 5,500 square feet and comes with free basic network security and parental control software. It’s also easily expandable using any compatible TP-Link Deco component, making it a good choice if you plan on moving to a larger home in the future.

Speedy throughput performance, strong signal strength, and the ability to access the 6GHz radio band earned the ZenWiFi ET8 our Editors’ Choice award for Wi-Fi mesh systems. It’s expensive, but it uses the latest Wi-Fi 6E technology, and is equipped with multi-gig ethernet ports and USB ports. It also comes with Asus’ AiProtection software, which provides free lifetime parental controls and network security tools.

There may not be that many 6GHz clients out there right now, but they are coming. If you want to future-proof your network, the ET8 mesh system will let you take advantage of all that uncrowded bandwidth. It’s also an excellent choice for users who don’t mind spending extra for a system that is expandable and easy to manage.

Amazon’s Eero 6 Plus is more than just a stylish three-piece Wi-Fi 6 mesh system. Sure, it delivers fast wireless throughput and strong signal transmissions in homes of up to 4,500 square feet, but it also has hidden talents. It functions as a home automation hub that controls Zigbee devices such as cameras, smart plugs, and thermostats. And of course, it works with Alexa voice commands and routines.

The Eero 6 Plus is a good fit for those who use Amazon Alexa to control their smart home devices. It uses sleek, low-profile nodes to bring Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and home automation control to every room in the house, and it can access 160MHz channels. It comes with a thoughtfully designed mobile app that lets you control everything from your phone, but you’ll have a pay a bit more for parental control and network security software.

Designed to be placed out in the open, the Google Nest WiFi is a two-piece Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) mesh system that also serves as a Google Assistant smart speaker. It delivered impressive throughput scores in our tests and was easy to install. It can be expanded with up to five nodes for larger homes and offers easy-to-use parental controls that allow you to pause internet access, create access schedules for family members, and restrict access to websites that contain adult content.

With the Google Nest WiFi mesh system, you get impressive Wi-Fi 5 performance and three stylish nodes that pull double duty as Google Assistant smart speakers. That makes it a great choice for people who want a router and smart home hub all in one device to listen to music, place hands-free calls, and control certain smart products such as lights and cameras.

The Arris Surfboard Max Tri-Band AX6600 (W121) delivered fast throughput scores and strong signal strength in our performance tests. It’s based on the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology and comes with a handy mobile app with basic parental controls that let you create access schedules and block Internet access altogether. As with nearly every mesh system we’ve encountered, it was relatively easy to install and manage, but settings are somewhat limited.

If you want a Wi-Fi 6 powered mesh system that is easy to set up and manage, the Arris W121 is worth a look. It offers a dedicated 5GHz radio band for wireless backhaul and uses two nodes to cover up to 5,500 square feet. As every high-end mesh system should, it supports 160MHz channel bandwidth for optimal throughput speeds. A few more features and settings would be nice, but if easy setup and strong performance are your main concerns, the W121 will fill the bill.

Many late-model wireless routers can project strong signal to most rooms of a typical medium-size house. But larger homes and dwellings with dense walls, multiple floors, metal and concrete substructures, and other material impediments may require additional components to bring Wi-Fi to areas that a single router can't reach. Range extenders can help fill dead zones, but most provide only half the bandwidth that you get from your main router. Access points, meanwhile, offer more bandwidth than range extenders, but they require a wired connection to the main router. And both solutions typically create a new network SSID that you have to log in to as you move from one area of the house to another.

If you're new to networking, you might be worrying that all of the above will leave you sitting on the floor surrounded by a lot of router documentation and questioning your life choices. Fortunately, there's another alternative: a mesh Wi-Fi system.

Also known by popular brand names like Google Nest Wi-Fi, mesh systems are designed to blanket your home with wireless coverage. These systems are a hybrid of sorts, made up of several networking components. There's a main router that connects directly to your modem, and a series of satellite modules, or nodes, that you place throughout your house. They are all part of a single wireless network, and they share the same SSID and password. Unlike range extenders, which communicate with the router via the 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio bands, most Wi-Fi system satellites use mesh technology to talk to the router and to each other.

Setting up and maintaining a traditional wireless home network can be daunting, even if you're tech-savvy. Wi-Fi mesh systems, on the other hand, are geared toward users with little or no technical knowledge and can be installed in minutes. They typically come with a user-friendly mobile app that walks you through the installation process with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions. The app tells you where to place each node for maximum coverage and chooses the best Wi-Fi channel and radio band for optimal throughput performance, so you can maintain a strong wireless connection as you move about the house.

Wi-Fi mesh systems are easy to expand (with no current limit on the number of nodes you can add) and manage using your smartphone. From an app, you can disable Wi-Fi access to specific devices with the press of a button, or give certain devices network priority without having to log in to a complicated network console.

Most Wi-Fi mesh systems look nothing like a traditional setup with a router and range extender. The router and nodes use internal antennas and are almost always tastefully designed so you can place them out in the open rather than in a closet or under a desk. (Don't expect to find a lot of flashing LED indicators—these systems are designed to blend in with your home's décor.) They usually have at least one LAN port for connecting to devices like TVs and gaming consoles, but USB connectivity is a rare feature at this point.

Similar to modern standalone routers, mesh systems are multi-band networking devices that operate on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands. Some models offer support for Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) technology, which streams data to multiple compatible wireless clients simultaneously rather than sequentially. Most Wi-Fi systems use band steering to automatically select the least-crowded radio band for the best performance and offer easy-to-use parental controls, guest networking, and device-prioritization options. While designed for ease of use, they usually let you configure port forwarding and wireless security settings but lack the advanced network-management options such as individual band control, firewall settings, and wireless transmission rate settings that you get with a traditional router. Nor can you use third-party WRT firmware to customize the system for enhanced performance and network monitoring.

Some do, yes, and you should insist on it in a new mesh system if you own client devices that support it. Wi-Fi 6 (also called 802.11ax) is an evolution of 802.11ac technology that promises increased throughput speeds (up to 9.6Gbps), less network congestion, greater client capacity, and better range performance courtesy of several new and improved wireless technologies, including Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). OFDMA improves overall throughput by breaking Wi-Fi channels into sub-channels, allowing up to 30 users to share a channel at the same time.

Additionally, 802.11ax takes advantage of previously unused radio frequencies to provide faster 2.4GHz performance and uses MU-MIMO streaming, too. Some Wi-Fi 6 devices can also communicate on the less-crowded 6GHz band, which was recently opened for Wi-Fi and is known as Wi-Fi 6E. For more on the benefits of the 802.11ax protocol, check out our speed tests and primer What Is Wi-Fi 6?

If you're worried what these systems might cost, don't sweat it; aside from a few pricey contenders, most mesh systems are only slightly more expensive than a router/range extender combination. Wi-Fi systems range in price from around $150 for a single-node system to around $500 for a multi-node setup.

The pricing looks higher with these systems because, in most cases, you're paying for at least two devices, the router and a router node that forms the mesh. Most systems, in fact, come with two nodes, so you're buying three devices in total. If you break it down per device, you'll most often find that they cost only a little more than you'd pay for a similarly powered router and range extender solution. That's especially true now that we're seeing prices coming down on mesh systems, even the newer models compatible with Wi-Fi 6.

Also remember: Wi-Fi systems are all about ease of use. They are a snap to set up and manage, offer whole-house coverage via a series of attractive nodes, and provide seamless room-to-room roaming over a single network. If you want total control over your network and require the best possible throughput performance and connectivity options, stick with a traditional router solution. If you don't want to deal with things like assigning radio bands and logging in to different networks as you move throughout your home, however, a Wi-Fi system makes sense. (For more about the differences between these two technologies, check out our explainer Wi-Fi Range Extender vs. Mesh Network: What's the Difference?)

We've laid out our top mesh picks in the detailed spec breakout chart below. For even more detail, you can click through to our full reviews of the best Wi-Fi systems we've tested. Need some more help getting all your devices up and running their fastest? Check out our tips for troubleshooting your internet connection. And once you've picked out the best product for your home, read our primer on how to set up a mesh Wi-Fi system.

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