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    The Juan Soto of Routers

    A Mets fan adapts baseball sabermetrics to find a WiFi router that performs as well as the star slugger

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    Asus ZenWiFi BT8 wireless router with a Mets game in the background.
    WAR (wins above replacement) can help you scout a router that provides top-notch performance—without melting your credit card.
    Photo: Asus, Getty Images

    As a lifelong Mets fan, I can tell you this season was . . . challenging.

    After a blistering start that had us all believin’, the team spent the summer in a slow-motion collapse that ended in the worst possible way: playoff elimination at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds on the final day of the season.

    Sigh.

    One of the only bright spots in an otherwise crummy year was watching Juan Soto, who became only the fifth Met in history to log 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a single season. Even though he took a few weeks to warm up at the beginning of the year, he did in fact become the player we all thought he’d be when he signed his big (and I mean big!) money contract late last year.

    What does any of this have to do with WiFi routers?

    In baseball, fans talk about WAR—wins above replacement—which is a simple way of asking how much better a player is than a basic, readily available substitute. According to Baseball Reference, the go-to source for advanced baseball stats, Soto was the top offensive weapon in the National League at the end of the regular season, with a WAR score of 7.0. (The sport’s overall leader at the end of the regular season was Aaron Judge, with a score of 9.7.) 

    This idea of trying to spot tried-and-true performance in a sea of high-priced alternatives was fresh in my mind a few weeks ago when I started combing through our in-depth WiFi router ratings. Instead of simply asking which router has the highest score, I thought, what if I used WAR as a guiding principle?

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    There are 102 routers in our current ratings, ranging from the $50 TP-Link Archer AX10 AX1500 to the $1,100 Netgear Orbi AX6000 Tri-Band Mesh System. With all the test scores and features (particularly the ritzy new WiFi 7 technology), it can be easy to lose your way when trying to choose the best pick for the money. And sure enough, a small shift in thinking surfaced some real surprises and a few pricey disappointments, totally changing how I look at routers.

    Here’s what I did.

    First, I set a baseline that, in my mind, represents a “good-enough” router. Think of it as the level where a lot of entry-level models cluster. Or, going back to our baseball metaphor, the level of performance you’d get from a run-of-the-mill player: acceptable, but nothing special. 

    In our current data, I set that replacement line at an Overall Score of 55. That number represents the 30th percentile in our data, meaning it’s the line separating roughly the bottom third of performers from the rest of the pack.

    A router’s WAR score, which I note throughout this article, is simply how many points the Overall Score is above (or below) that 55-point baseline. For example, a router with an Overall Score of 80 would have a WAR of +25. A big gap above the line means the router is an All-Star. A big gap below the line? Well, you may want to spend your money elsewhere.

    Next, I looked at current retail prices to determine which models give you a big jump for a few dollars more. We’re looking for top-notch performance for the money here, throughput speeds and versatility that may better suit gamers and other high-level users. I kept a few guardrails in place, including skipping over models with poor security or predicted reliability scores.

    As I stared at the spreadsheet I created to corral all this new data, what stood out was just how little connection there is between a router’s price and performance. In fact, a large price is an incredibly poor predictor of a great experience.

    The clearest example is the $1,100 Netgear Orbi 860 AX6000 (3-Pack) kit, which lands right at the replacement line. In baseball terms, that’s like paying a superstar contract for league-minimum production—think Albert Pujols with the Angels.

    At the other end of the spectrum, a few modestly priced models absolutely fly past the line. A good buy is a good buy, whether you’re building a robust home WiFi network or constructing a winning ball club. 

    With all of that said, here’s how everything shook out—including the model I dubbed the Juan Soto of routers. My read of the data revealed two more clear winners as well, each representing a different kind of victory. All three routers also earn official CR recommendations from our test team.

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    Nicholas De Leon

    Nicholas De Leon is a senior reporter for Consumer Reports, covering laptops, wireless routers, tablets, and more. He has been at CR since 2017. He previously covered tech for Vice, News Corp, and TechCrunch. He lives in Tucson, Ariz. Follow him on X for all things tech and soccer @nicholasadeleon.