Business Choice 2023: The Top Routers, Access Points, and Servers for the Workplace

We published the results of our previous reader survey on work routers at the height of the pandemic, in early 2021. Covid vaccines were just arriving, and more people than ever before were working from home. A lot has changed in the intervening two years, but there are still plenty of home offices—enough that we're adding a section here for routers and network storage devices that are specifically used for working from home.

Along with that, we're including the IT Managers' Choice for routers and servers at the office. We were able to conduct a successful survey thanks to our partnership with Spiceworks and its Aberdeen Strategy & Research division and their ability to reach IT admins.

You'll find a third new product category this year: access points, which increase the coverage area for office Wi-Fi.

When you want your office to have the best internet connection and shared file and media storage, the winning brands below should be your first choices.

(Spiceworks is owned by PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis.)

Top Home-Office Routers and NAS Devices for 2023

Asus has a long history of winning our Business Choice award for use by small businesses and home offices, but this year, it takes a close second place. The top pick is Google Nest, the Alphabet brand on smart home products including mesh Wi-Fi devices (some are labeled Google, some Nest.)

Readers give Google products for home offices the same overall satisfaction rating as that of Asus devices, but Google ranks higher on almost every other criterion. The two also tie for setup.

This chart combines our audience's standalone and mesh router options at use in home offices.

Note: Click the down, left, and right arrows in our interactive charts to view different elements of our survey results.

In a couple of categories, neither Google nor Asus can keep up—Amazon's Eero mesh devices nab the highest scores for setup and ease of use. But Google otherwise steals the show.

At the bottom of the list is router hardware from the big ISPs: Comcast's Xfinity and Charter's Spectrum. If you want to work from home and be happy with your internet speed and service, buy your own router or mesh system (or preferably, get the boss to buy it for you).

Readers of our previous business- and consumer-survey results for network-attached storage will not be shocked by our first home-office NAS winner. Synology has been on top since we launched Business Choice coverage in 2013. This marks the brand's ninth win in a row.

The only other player with enough responses to be considered for the Business Choice award is Western Digital, but it trails behind Synology in every category. WD is almost a point behind in overall satisfaction.

Synology used for working at home has particularly high ratings for reliability, media and file storage, and PC backup. All these features must be rock-solid in a work device.

IT Managers' Choice: Top Routers, Access Points, and Servers

We have IT admin responses in this year's story thanks to our partnership with Spiceworks and its Aberdeen Research arm. The IT favorites include one brand we haven't seen in this survey previously (Ubiquity) and one very familiar name (Synology).

Routers

When it comes to routers, the top brand for IT Managers' Choice has never won in our Business Choice coverage before: Ubiquiti. The company sells a range of products for homes (under the Amplifi brand) as well as for offices of all sizes (UniFi). It places just ahead of Fortinet: Ubiquiti routers, in this case, lag slightly when it comes to reliability and Wi-Fi speed, according to admins. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of these products for IT is network management, and in that category, the two companies tie. But ratings for overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend—our top-two criteria—push Ubiquiti into the lead.

Access Points

Things are even closer between Ubiquiti and Aruba in our new category, access points—the devices placed around large buildings to provide Wi-Fi to users, typically wired to the router or gateway or sometimes part of a mesh topology. (access points should not be confused with range extenders, which are intended more for home use; and mesh remains the better option to fill Wi-Fi gaps at home.)

The two companies tie at 9.0 for overall satisfaction and for setup. Ubiquiti access points fall behind for reliability and ease of use by a tenth of a point and a bit more for Wi-Fi speed. But for the rest—in particular, the likelihood-to-recommend score—Ubiquiti earns top points and another IT Managers' Choice award.

Servers

The final set of numbers is for servers. Only three vendors received enough ratings to make the list. The scores earned by both second-place Dell and last-place HP are fantastic and would beat the competition in almost any other survey. But here, Synology takes first place, with a solid set of scores the other two brands can't match.

Full Results

The PCMag Business Choice survey for Routers, Access Points, and Servers was in the field from April 24 to May 15, 2023 For more information on how we conduct surveys, read the survey methodology.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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