You might think that the return to offices after the pandemic means less internet usage at home. Nope. Not at all: According to the February 2023 OpenVault Broadband Insights report, at the end of 2022, the United States rose to a new all-time high in internet usage for individual subscribers. Average broadband data consumption hit 586.7 gigabytes per month, up from 483GB per month in 2020 (that number fell slightly to 560.5GB per month for Q1 of 2023). In addition, the number of individual subscribers with ultra-fast gigabit speed tiers for the internet has doubled since the end of 2021.
All that internet traffic flows through your home router, which lets you share your internet connection and also supplies the Wi-Fi or Ethernet that connects your other devices.
For media and other files you want to store and share, you might also own a network-attached storage (NAS) device—aka a home media server, though that nomenclature hasn't quite caught on.
Each year, we ask PCMag readers to rate their routers and NAS devices and the top-rated brands earn our Readers' Choice award. Read on to discover which you should consider when building your ultimate home network.
The Top Home Routers for 2023
There are several types of routers. Most well known are standalone Wi-Fi routers, which plug into your broadband modem. And many ISPs provide a hybrid modem-router unit (a few people even buy them that way). Also available are mesh networks, which can provide connectivity to an entire home and beyond by using multiple network nodes. We select winning brands for all these types of routers, based on your ratings.
Standalone Routers
These devices can look like a subtle speaker, a gray box with rabbit ears, or a spider on its back, accommodating a slew of Wi-Fi antennas. For years, Apple dominated our router category. As Apple slowly exited the router business, Asus has taken over as the favored brand with PCMag readers.
But this year, TP-Link is on top.
TP-Link and Asus tie on some key measures, like overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend. They also tie for categories such as reliability and network management. But TP-Link gains has a definite edge; it scores higher for setup, value, and ease of use and thus swoops in for the win once again.
(Note: Click the down, left, and right arrows in our interactive tables to view different elements of our survey results.)
Few readers are ever disappointed when purchasing an Asus router.
Few vendors match up to TP-Link or Asus, with only Linksys coming close, in third place. Netgear fills out the top four for standalone routers that are generally sold individually.
The brands at the bottom of the list are either ISPs that provide hardware to customers (Verizon, Xfinity, Spectrum) or, like Arris, a vendor that sells to ISPs. All are likely to sell or freely provide end users with hybrid routers: products that feature an integrated modem. Many people may not even realize they have a hybrid router at home. The readers who do know it obviously don't care for products provided by the ISP—the most likely scenario with these particular brands—compared with standalone routers they purchase on their own. (More on this below.)
Mesh Routers
When you want to supply your entire home and beyond with Wi-Fi, you should go with a mesh router. A whole-home network that only gets stronger and bigger as you add more nodes, a mesh system has few downsides, except cost.
When it comes to mesh (a category we've been giving brands awards for since 2017), we haven't had one consistent winner. The Readers' Choice award has been earned by Linksys, Google, and for the last two years, Amazon's Eero brand.
But this year, the award goes to the long-time winner for standalone routers. Asus's ZenWiFi mesh brand has won several Editors' Choice awards, and it can now add the Readers' Choice to the list.
Asus takes a clear lead in this category, with scores of 9.0 for both overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend. The next three brands on the list (Eero, Google, and TP-Link) tie for second place in overall satisfaction.
Asus scores exceptionally high for mesh coverage, Wi-Fi speed, and network management. It lags behind Eero just slightly in setup, reliability, and ease of use. Asus's only failing is the perceived value of its products, which falls behind TP-Link and Google.
The bottom mesh brands are Netgear and Linksys, vendors that have been in the networking business for a lot longer than the rest. While many people use their products, these brands earn weak scores from readers.
Hybrid Modem-Routers
Netgear makes up for that by taking the lead in a new category for us: routers with integrated modems. We're not surprised to see Arris and Xfinity on the list—Comcast's Xfinity ISP supplies them to its customers, and Arris supplies them to ISPs (including Xfinity).
But as we've seen in other surveys, people don't tend to like hardware they didn't choose themselves. A hybrid modem-router from an ISP falls into that category, and thus Netgear bests both the ISP brands. Netgear sells a number of hybrid modem-routers, even some with mesh networking support.
The only categories in which Netgear doesn't come out on top are setup and ease of use, and even then, the brand is only a tenth of a point behind Xfinity. On every other measure, Netgear's hybrids beat the competition.
The Top Home Network Attached Storage Devices for 2023
It's not often we see a streak of wins for 12 years straight, as Asus achieves for home routers, above. But Synology manages to do as well in our Readers' Choice awards. Since 2012, the brand has been the pinnacle of what PCMag readers appreciate in a network attached storage device maker. We wouldn't claim that NAS devices are generally well known, but anyone seeking one should become familiar with Synology.
Synology has had higher overall satisfaction scores—9.4 in both 2017 and 2021—but the brand remains on top. As it did last year, Synology makes a clean sweep, with high ratings across all the criteria we ask about. It stands out for reliability, media storage, file storage, and PC backup. Synology's lowest scores are for value and tech support, but it earns a solid 8.5 out of 10 in each category.
The only competitors this year that garner enough responses to include are Western Digital and QNAP, the same brands as last year. A dozen years ago, eight vendors made the cut, but the rest have since gone under, no longer make NAS devices, or simply don't have enough users in our survey group.
When you need NAS, go Synology. If you don't know about Synology, learn about it, and you may find yourself wanting a NAS device. The company makes routers now too, so we're curious about what next year's survey may show.
Full Results
The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for Routers and NAS Devices was in the field from April 24 to May 15, 2023 For more information on how we conduct surveys, read the survey methodology.