If you’re fed up with slow downloads and patchy coverage in your home, a Wi-Fi extender is the answer. These come in a variety of different shapes, sizes and types, but can dramatically improve your home's Wi-Fi connection from as little as £40.
You'll find our pick of the five best Wi-Fi extenders on the market at the bottom of the page; if you want to know more about which you should choose, and the technical considerations to take into account, then just carry on reading.
The best Wi-Fi extenders: Buyer’s guide
Is a Wi-Fi extender definitely the answer?
Before you buy an extender, you should check that it really is the performance of your wireless network that’s slowing you down – and not your internet connection. You can use free speed-testing website such as speedtest.net to test your download speeds at different distances from your router and see whether this is the case. Before you shell out for an extender, it’s also worth experimenting with different radio bands or connection modes too – see below – as this may enable you to get a better signal from your existing equipment.
What speeds can I expect?
Some extenders promise data rates as high as 1,733Mbits/sec – but these are theoretical maximums. In your home, where the signal has to cope with all sorts of obstructions and interference, you’ll be lucky to see a tenth of those speeds. In the real world we’d say anything over 15MB/sec is great. And, for now at least, that’s enough bandwidth to keep up with the very fastest fibre-optic broadband connections.
Be aware though that wireless connections don’t just smoothly slow down as the signal gets fainter: lower speeds reflect an increasing incidence of dropped data packets. When the data rate drop below 1MB/sec, you can expect to see noticeable problems, such as web pages timing out and LAN connections intermittently hanging.
Do I want single or dual-band Wi-Fi?
Modern routers use two radio bands – the 2.4GHz band associated with the original Wi-Fi specification, and the 5GHz band, introduced in 2009. The 5GHz band usually provides better performance, if your hardware supports it, not least because it’s less susceptible to interference from other electrical appliances. If you’re on a budget, you might be tempted to go for a cheap 2.4GHz-only extender – but do your own tests to find out whether 2.4GHz performance in your home is acceptable for your needs.
What’s the difference between 802.11n and 802.11ac?
These days, 802.11n is the default lowest common denominator for wireless. It works on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and anything you’ve bought in the past five years is likely to support it.
For the best speeds, though, you want to be using 802.11ac. This requires 5GHz support, but in theory it can deliver six times the speed of 802.11n. While you probably won’t see that sort of benefit, you can certainly expect a boost from making the switch. Even if your current devices don’t all support 802.11ac, it’s sensible to choose an extender that supports it, for the sake of future performance.
What else can a Wi-Fi extender do?
In addition to regular Wi-Fi boosting duties, many extenders support alternative roles. Most extenders offer at least one Ethernet socket, and you can normally use this to make a wired connection available to wireless clients – effectively turning your extender into a Wi-Fi access point.
Some repeaters can additionally assign and manage IP addresses, so they can be connected directly to an ADSL or cable modem without need for a router. This probably isn’t something most of us need to do often, but it could be useful in an emergency.
It’s also sometimes possible to segment the network such that the repeater connects to the router over 2.4GHz, while clients connect over 5GHz (or vice versa). In theory, this can deliver a performance benefit by making more efficient use of the bandwidth – but in practice we found that keeping everything on 5GHz was faster than relying on the 2.4GHz band.
What types of Wi-Fi extender are there?
The simplest sort of extender is a wireless repeater. Set up one of these in a central location and it’ll act as a relay, receiving data packets from your router and re-broadcasting them at full strength for the benefit of devices located at the other end of the house. A stronger signal means a faster connection – and a repeater can even extend the signal into areas of your home where the router alone can’t provide coverage at all.
Alternatively, you can invest in a pair of powerline extenders. These work by turning your mains electricity circuit into a data network: you simply connect one unit into your router, then plug the other end into a mains socket at the other end of your home, and it’ll act as a wireless access point. Powerline extenders can be perfect for extending wireless coverage to remote areas of the house where even a repeater might struggle to reach.
Not all extenders are created equal, however. There are many manufacturers to choose from, and each one offers a range of options. Some are designed for ultra-fast coverage on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, while others offer more limited features and range. To test them, we installed a variety of extenders in the central hallway of a typical three-storey home, relaying the signal from a router located in the living room, and measured speeds in various locations.
The best Wi-Fi extenders to buy
1. TP-Link RE450: A low-cost repeater with great performance
Price when reviewed:£45
The low price of the TP-Link RE450 might suggest a budget product – but its three aerials did a top-class job of relaying the wireless signal around our home. At close quarters, we were able to get phenomenal download speeds of 16MB/sec over 802.11ac. Even out on the terrace at the rear of the house, we got a very speedy 9MB/sec. Performance over 2.4GHz 802.11n wasn’t quite so impressive, but we still saw a very usable 4MB/sec in the hallway and 2MB/sec out on the terrace.
While the design looks rather plasticky, it’s pleasingly slim, sticking out just 37mm from the wall, so you shouldn’t trip over it as you walk past. The width of the casing means you probably won’t be able to plug anything into the adjacent power socket, but the softly glowing blue ring that encircles the WPS button (and turns red if you position the unit too far from your router) is quite attractive.
A single physical Ethernet port lets you hook up a wired client as well – or you can connect this to the router and use the RE450 as an access point. In short, it does everything you could ask for: at this price it’s a terrific deal.
2. Devolo WiFi AC Repeater: The compact and elegant option
Price when reviewed: £53
Devolo’s wireless repeater wins points right away for its neat design. The soft white LEDs showing signal strength are a classy touch, and the compact casing won’t get in your way, nor interfere with the adjacent power socket.
There’s a trade-off, though: the small internal antenna has limited wireless penetration. From right next to the repeater, we saw download speeds of 8MB/sec over 802.11ac, which dipped to 6MB/sec on the outdoor terrace. That’s absolutely fine for everyday web browsing and the like, but some way behind the RE450’s scores.
Switching to 802.11n on the 2.4GHz band caused speeds to drop further: here we saw just 3MB/sec near the repeater. Elsewhere in the house, download rates fell below 1MB/sec, and we started to see occasional time-outs in our web browsing. If you live in a quiet area you may have much less of a problem, but for urban dwellers who rely on 2.4GHz networking, it’s a concern.
Still, the low price and sheer compactness of the Devolo WiFi AC Repeater make it an attractive option for anyone who’d rather not invest in a bigger, boxier repeater.
3. Asus PL-AC56 kit: A fast extender with the flexibility of powerline networking
Price when reviewed: £150
With its boxy body and wide-shouldered antennae, the Asus PL-AC56 powerline extender unit isn’t a discreet bit of kit. But it’s easy to set up: the “Clone” button connects the wireless extender to your router via WPS, and automatically copies its settings, so wireless clients can connect to the extender using your familiar SSID and passkey, rather than having to enter separate credentials.
And those big aerials help make it a fantastic performer. It coped brilliantly with our ageing mains circuit, giving us download speeds of 15MB/sec download rate over 802.11ac wireless in our central hallway location. Believe it or not, moving out onto the terrace actually improved 802.11ac performance, to 18MB/sec.
Performance was decent on the 2.4GHz band as well. Here, with an 802.11n connection, we saw download speeds of 6MB/sec in both hallway and terrace locations.
It’s a bit of a shame that the extender unit doesn’t have a mains pass-through socket, as its sheer size is almost certain to block any adjacent mains socket. And at £150 it’s one of the most expensive range-boosters we’ve seen. However, with great performance, and powerline technology that gives you considerable flexibility as to where you locate the extender, it’s a great choice for larger properties where your average repeater just won’t cut it.
4. TP-Link WPA8730: A respectable and affordable powerline alternative
Price when reviewed:£125
TP-Link’s powerline kit has the delicate beauty of a pair of meat-fridges, but these big white boxes offer some quite sophisticated features. From the web-based management interface, you can restrict internet access for specific clients according a weekly schedule, and set up a secondary guest network, so visitors can get online but can’t access your LAN.
Performance is good too. From our central hallway, the WPA8730 served up a solid 15MB/sec to 802.11ac clients at close range, falling just slightly to 14MB/sec on the rear terrace. As ever, switching to 2.4GHz made things a lot more sluggish, but we still saw a very creditable 9MB/sec in both of these locations, and no matter where we roamed the connection remained stable.
The WPA8730 is at the pricier end of the scale, but as it’s a powerline model you have more flexibility than a simple repeaterit comes to positioning. It’s not quite as fast as the Asus PL-AC56, but it’s speedy enough to ensure you won’t be waiting around for your downloads – and it’s £25 cheaper.
5. Sky Q Booster: A brilliant booster - if you're with the right ISP
Price when reviewed: £69 (Sky customers only)
Most extenders and repeaters are designed to work with any kind of wireless setup, but the Sky Q Booster only works with the very latest Sky Q router. That’s a bit of a shame, because it’s a very desirable piece of kit. Unusually, it connects to the mains via a cable and sits flat on the floor or a shelf – in fact it looks just like the Sky Q router itself. In our view it’s one of the most elegant extenders around.
And performance is superb. In the hallway it gave us a very strong 15MB/sec download rate over 802.11ac, and even out on the terrace we saw 13MB/sec. Speeds remained strong in other rooms too. Inevitably, it struggled more over the 2.4GHz band: over an 802.11n connection it achieved a more modest 6MB/sec in the hallway and 4MB/sec on the terrace. But that’s hardly a bummer – it’s enough bandwidth to keep up with a fibre internet connection.
Buy the Sky Q Booster now from Sky
If you’re already using a Sky Q Hub, the Sky Q Booster is a superbly effective way to extend your Wi-Fi range. What’s more, we’ve also heard reports of Sky engineers handing boosters out for free in response to customer complaints about Wi-Fi coverage – so if you play your cards right, you may be able to get one of the best boosters there is without paying a penny.