To test the most popular WiFi extenders on the market and provide meaningful buying advice to you, we assembled the most knowledgeable hardware enthusiasts on the GearLab team. Using experience from thousands of product tests and countless hours spent delving into the intricacies of WiFi technology, we devised a testing plan that we knew would yield the kind of results that can help someone find the right extender for their home or office. Our team took it upon themselves to buy the 8 best WiFi extenders and evaluate them based on five important metrics: 5 GHz throughput, 2.4 GHz throughput, range, stability, and ping/jitter.
5 GHz Throughput
Our procedure for testing each WiFi extender metric includes both server and client laptops, equipped with software called iPerf3 that can measure and tune network performance. Before testing begins, we let the router warm up for 15-30 minutes to reach its “regular” performance state. We go to marked locations at each testing distance and run the iPerf3 batch file, and record the results. To maintain consistency and attention to detail, we only tested one product at a time. We weighted an extender's throughput on the 5 GHz frequency most heavily because our research showed that this is almost universally the most common frequency used today, and the one that more and more devices are preferring when establishing a connection.
2.4 GHz Throughput
We tested the 2.4 GHz frequency using mostly the same method as our 5 GHz evaluation. Keeping in mind that the 2.4 GHz frequency is known to have a longer range and more obstacle-penetrating capabilities, though, we pushed each extender to the limit during this test by measuring connection speed from as far as 60 feet away from the extender.
Range
Our range test was an evaluation not only of how far an extender's signal reached but also of how useful the signal was at a long distance. We took measurements from as far away as 130 feet from the extender, but our contenders had to be able to support 4K video streaming at long range in order to pass this test. Impressively, several extenders in our lineup were able to handle this task at 110 feet with minimal delay or buffering, even when scrubbing through the video.
Stability
In our WiFi extender stability tests, we looked for several ideal traits:
- High average throughput
- Small gaps between the minimum and maximum throughput
- Few or no dropouts
- Very few dips under 100 Mbps connection speed
- Short durations when those dips do occur
While extenders do not necessarily perform to the same standards as a router, we can judge them based on the same general benchmarks. For routers, we would expect to only see 3-6 dropouts over a 10-15 minute period. During that same period, we would expect to see fewer than 100 dips below 100 Mbps, an average dip duration of 6-9 seconds, and a maximum dip duration of only 15-25 seconds.
Ping/Jitter
We once again used our iPerf3 setup to test ping and jitter for each WiFi extender. These metrics refer to the “stuttering” and “variability” that you might notice when you're performing tasks over an internet connection. Almost every extender we tested performed well in this metric. On top of that, it's important to note that ping and jitter can be wildly affected by factors outside of one's control, even in our meticulously crafted testing environment — so it ultimately made little impact in our final rating of WiFi extenders.
