Question from Sean P.: I have a twin brother and our birthday is coming up soon. Our grandfather has agreed to buy us a new router and we can pick the one we want.
What we’re looking for is the best (fastest) router to connect our gaming PCs and Xbox to the Internet (and to one another). Our family also has several TVs, phones and tablets that we use a lot. We do a lot of streaming on Netflix and Hulu too.
We have a Verizon FiOS Gigabit Internet connection and we’d like to be able to use all of the available bandwidth. Can you recommend a router that will work best for us?
Rick’s answer: Hi Sean. First of all, allow me to wish you and your brother Happy Birthday! I hope you have the best one ever!
As far as the router is concerned, there are several models on the market that are super-fast and would work well for your household.
The one I like most is the NETGEAR Nighthawk X8, a fantastic AC5300 tri-band quad-stream Wi-Fi router that is currently one of the fastest consumer grade routers on the market.
The Nighthawk X8 has a total of six Gigabit wired Ethernet ports and it can support up to 32 active users on each of the three Wi-Fi bands. It also supports MU-MIMO which will allow multiple Wi-Fi devices to stream data at the same time without pauses and hangups.
This router should easily allow your family to do everything you want to do with your connected devices while also allowing you to make maximum effective use of your awesome 1Gbps fiber Internet connection.
I hope this helps Sean. Good luck!
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