Best cheap wifi router for home

TP-Link TL-WR941HP 450Mbps 

The TL-WR941HP is a basic wireless router. The design is rather striking with 3 long 9dBi antennas. It comes with 4 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports. The rest of the design is rather simple with a matte black finish and ventilation holes both on the top and the bottom.  Make sure you do not block them to prevent overheating.

With its upgraded hardware, the TL-WR941HP easily outperforms standard routers, providing dramatically expanded wireless coverage and connections that are significantly more reliable. You can enjoy high speed Wi-Fi in every part of your home, in your garage, and even in the backyard.

The performance is rather good and I am really impressed by the wireless range of this router. TP-LINK claim this router comes with independent amplifier for each of the antennas and it supports a maximum transmit power of 1000mw. I can see this router being used in a lot of cafes and restaurant. The wireless can be configured as an access point or even a wireless repeater which TP-LINK call it range extender. In my usual configuration, I am able to achieve 90Mbps over wireless. I believe I can achieve better but it is limited by the 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports on this router. However, this is still a single band Wireless N router so do not compare it to a Wireless AC router.

Independent high power amplifiers provide significantly increased output power of up to 1000mw*1, which is up to 5x transmission power, when compared to a normal router. This ensures that your wireless signal is strong enough to penetrate walls and other obstacles.

=================================================================

ASUS RT-N 12+ (New) Wireless N300 3-in-1

Asus RT-N12+ Wi-Fi Router can have chance to be installed at your office as well as home because it is able to delivers incredible wireless performance and coverage range. Two antennas are given to get feature like adjustable transmission power technology, it makes possible to enhance signal strength and also extends the single range for better performance by eliminating dead spots.

It offers three modes Wi-Fi router, wireless repeater and range extender. Universal repeater provides seaming bridging to expand your wireless network. There is a WPS button to turn on wireless security encryption. The main thing is that wireless transmission speed is 300Mbps, isn’t good enough? Omni directional antenna is of 2.5dBi. Wireless link rates are – IEEE 802.11n: 300Mbps, IEEE 802.11g: 54Mbps, IEEE 802.11b: 11Mbps. Network data encryption is possible through 64/128 bit WEP, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK technology. In addition Asus RT-N12+ Wi-Fi Router supports VPN server function.

ASUSWRT Dashboard UI offers full control over device to optimize wireless network for performance. SSID provides you flexible wireless access control with 4 LAN and 1 WAN.

=================================================================

Cisco Linksys E900 Wireless (Wi-Fi) N300 Router

This router is the entry level router for the Linksys N series. From the N300 series, it’s closely tied with the E1200 v2. It features the usual ports routers are built with: it has 4 Ethernet ports on which you connect the devices via LAN cable. It has an internet port where the main cable is attached. Next up, it has a Wi-Fi protected setup button which is usually used to configure wireless security on devices with Wi-Fi.

There is a power indicator which is turned on most of the time when there is both power and internet connection. Of course, there is the power where AC power adapter is connected to. A green activity indicator is also present and it means that something is connected to the Ethernet ports.

For the CPU, it sports a Broadcom BCM5357C0 Intensi-fi XLR 802.11n Router. Its switch is In BCM 5357. It also comes with a 32 MB RAM and an 8 MB Flash capacity. It has a radio that runs 2.4 GHz in BCM5357. Visually, it looks to be flat, designed to be placed on flat surfaces since there are no indication of any wall mounting capabilities.

Some pros include it being relatively inexpensive costing at about 27 USD. Also, it comes with a 100 Mbps wire-speed routing. Some cons have already been mentioned above, with it having no guest WLAN. Another down side is that it has no internet service and no URL blocking.

=================================================================

Asus N600 RT N56U Dual-Band Wireless Gigabit Router

The signal strength of this router (with its inbuilt 3antenna system) is pretty good. But then, whether the signals would reach your neighbours or not would depend upon the distances along with the thickness of walls, interference with other equipment, etc. My friend has the same router in her apartment upstairs, and I can get the signals in the apartment just below – but only in one part. So best would be for you to check it out. And please use the 2.4GHz (the 5GHz band would have lesser reach – as per radio transmission principles). One more point of advice – keep trying out different bands (the bands 1 to 14) and see which works best. You can manually set the band on the router. If there is any other 2.4GHz router band being used in the neighbourhood, then interference of that router’s band can make your router’s performance poorer – especially at the edges. You can mitigate that by playing around with the band settings.

=================================================================

Netgear WNR614 N300 Wi-Fi Router

Netgear wnr614 the overall recommendation are that it has a wider range and many great features in the home network manager. In addition, the security of a double firewall, DMZ and DoS help WiFi users work and play on the internet with peace of mind.

Through one wall and at a distance of 25 feet, the WGR614 pumped out 22.2Mbps, higher throughput by a couple of megabits than that of any other 802.11g router we've tested. Between 25 and 50 feet, it dipped steeply to around 14Mbps, but otherwise, this router provided consistently high performance--not to mention long range. Only two other routers we've tested have managed to stay connected at 175 feet in our indoor distance tests. 

It provides a quality wireless router with decent features and for that reason, most of the people use these routers at their homes. Yes, it is an ideal router for small to medium houses. Compared with all Netgear routers, WNR614 N300 Wi­Fi Router is cheap and best.