Readers' Choice 2023: The Top Routers and NAS Devices for Your Home Network

pcmag.com:

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(Opens in a new window), 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.

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.

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