• $199.99 

• NETGEAR 

It's big, black, and blazingly fast: the 8300 router puts out a dual-band 802.11n/802.11ac wireless signal which reached far beyond our older Apple Airport Base Station; where once corners of our apartment were wi-fi deadzones, the 8300 offered a strong and fast signal throughout. Internet wi-fi speeds were not noticeably faster in real world tests using a cable connection, but network Photoshop file copying was near instantaneous from computer to computer, alongside from a shared connected hard drive (two USB 2.0 ports available). If you want to get to the benchmark nitty-gritty, check out these numbers, but this early-adopter 802.11ac router should serve most households well into the next generation of faster ISP services.