// WIRED US/UK — MOBILE & WEB
The Best Gaming Routers (2026): Tested By a Family of Gamers
Few things are more frustrating than packet loss or high ping causing in-game lag. It always seems to happen at the worst possible moment, when you’re about to snipe an unsuspecting opponent or screech into a hairpin bend. While there are other potential causes, your substandard router could be doing you dirty. The best gaming routers promise rock solid connections and can usually prioritize game-related traffic to reduce the risk of issues. They also frequently feature fancy designs and customizable lighting to fit your gaming room.
Now, you don't necessarily need a special gaming router. A good router is a good router, and you’ll find tons of them in my guides to the Best Routers and Best Mesh Systems. You can also get a better connection simply by running an Ethernet cable from your router to your gaming PC. That said, I have tested several gaming routers, and my top pick is the fastest router I have ever tested.
Love WIRED? Add us as a preferred source on Google to see more of us.
The brand I recommend as the best for gamers is Asus. The Taiwanese company has a long gaming history and dedicated sub-brands like Republic of Gamers (ROG). It produces fast, highly configurable routers with free security software and many gaming extras. Ports are usually generous, there’s no need for a subscription, and you can combine different Asus routers that support AiMesh into a mesh system to extend your coverage. The potential downsides are the relatively high prices, occasionally buggy firmware, and the need to dig into configuration settings to get the best performance.
Topping my testing charts, the Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro is a supremely capable, quad-band Wi-Fi 7 gaming router. In terms of raw speed, this is the best router I have tested to date. That alone makes it feel worthy of the “gimmick” of being designed explicitly for gaming. It is very similar to the RT-BE96U in my regular router guide, but with the ROG model, Asus has added a second 6-GHz band on top of the existing 2.4-GHz, 5-GHz, and 6-GHz bands. This massively increases the available bandwidth, affording you plenty of space for multiple gaming streams, or giving you an extra band for wireless backhaul if you decide to set up a mesh using Asus's AiMesh connectivity. It also has an extra 10-Gbps LAN port, giving you one 10-Gbps WAN/LAN, two 10-Gbps LAN, four Gigabit LAN, one USB 3.2, and a USB 2.0 port. The USB ports come in handy for NAS devices. You must pay extra for these additions, so if you don't have multiple gaming streams or a NAS, you can save money with the RT-BE96U and still get great performance.
This is also easily the biggest router I have ever tested at nearly 14 inches across, with eight huge antennas, and it weighs 4.4 pounds. It is far from subtle, won’t blend in, and could prove tricky to place due to its size. Because it’s a gaming router, Asus has included Aura RGB lighting, so you can pick the colored lighting you want and make it a feature.
AiProtection Pro security software and parental controls, powered by Trend Micro, are bundled into the cost. This comprehensive security combo includes a firewall, intrusion prevention, malicious site blocking, automatic updates, and more. Parental controls include scheduling, website filtering by age, and usage stats. You also get VPN support with the option to connect remotely when you are out and about. You can redeem a free year of NordVPN service with this router. Naturally, there are some gaming-focused features, with game acceleration enabling you to prioritize gaming-related traffic through ports and packet analysis. If you have Asus' ROG gear, it can be prioritized with a click, and Asus includes server acceleration to minimize latency through the third-party WTFast service.
Apart from the size and cost, there isn’t much to complain about here, but it is worth considering that the range on the 6-GHz band is limited and struggles to penetrate through walls, so you will need Wi-Fi 7 devices n