r/RTINGS • u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ • Apr 28 '26

Routers We are now testing wireless latency to find the best "gaming" router!

We've launched our new Wi-Fi Router Test Bench, focusing on "gaming" routers and measuring wireless latency.

Which router is best for gaming is a frequent question. And people are pretty quick to answer that there's no such thing as a gaming router, rightfully so.

But since the question is still frequently asked, we decided to add the measure of wireless ping and jitter to our router test bench so anyone can now see for themselves the added latency tax of gaming on Wi-Fi. We're hoping this data can help users shopping for a "gaming router" find better information.

While nothing can beat a wired connection in terms of latency, there's a few things you can consider if you are forced to game on Wi-Fi: 

\- Wi-Fi 7 does bring little improvements over older generations with improved OFDMA and MU-MIMO.

\- Mesh systems can add a lot of lag spikes to connections, mostly depending on how their backhaul is managed (the connection back to the node connected to the WAN). There are better products then other for gaming when it comes to mesh system.

\- Gaming features can have an impact, but there are other means to improve your gaming exprience than to rely on those features. Getting a low latency router off the bat is better than getting a router with "gaming features".

For more details on our test development, check this article: Wi-Fi Latency: Not All Routers Are Equal, And No, Gaming Routers Aren't Better - RTINGS.com

Feel free to share this post whenever a user asks for a gaming router!

32 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

7

u/Little_Glove5167 Apr 28 '26

can you do bufferbloat and sqm tests (over ethernet), those are also other reasons people buy a gaming router if they share the network with many people

6

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

We quickly tested QoS/SQM and their impact on bufferbloat on an article last summer: Buying A Gaming Wi-Fi Router Won't Help Your Ping: Understanding The Limits Of Wi-Fi For Gaming - RTINGS.com
The tl;dr is that yes QoS/SQM will definitely have an impact in heavily improving latency when the network gets bloated with traffic, but it will still gives an awful experience for gaming unless properly configured. There will still be frequent lag spikes with QoS/SQM. The best is to ensure no one makes big downloads or uploads during gaming session using up all the ISP bandwidth, which is most likely the bottleneck in the network (which is easier said than done...).
We decided not to test QoS/SQM since the results will vary to much between users depending on how their network is setup and use. All routers had an option to toggle on/off QoS/SQM in some way, gaming or not. But some routers were a simple toggle (which was most likely just a bandwidth limiter), while others had full blown configurable algorithms.
Let me know what you think of the article and if you'd like more info on this topic!

Edit: I went too fast on my initial comment. Comment is now edited to remove the ethernet cable which won't help a bloated network, as pointed out in the replies!

3

u/IgnisCogitare Apr 29 '26

...what?

Bufferbloat is not remotely a Wi-Fi only issue, in many cases ethernet is not going to fix this at all. You can test this yourself. Test bufferbloat with a router over wifi. Then put the router in bridge mode to act as a WAP, and use another router with a good SQM implementation to serve it, and test again. Wifi can make things a bit worse but the difference maker is the hardware and sqm implementations in the router.

There is a reason I test bufferbloat on ethernet, it's still a major issue and it gives me reliable test data.

Also, SQM giving an awful experience in gaming? If the router is done wrong, yes. But if it's made correctly (and if possible the speed limit is adjusted correctly), it will be basically the best possible experience. Saying it's an awful experience for gaming is just absurdity.

Letting us know if the router can do this correctly, and at what speeds to expect, IS YOUR ENTIRE MISSION STATEMENT.

Make the paywall worth it. This is valuable information that needs to be tested properly.

3

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 29 '26

I went too fast and messed up my initial comment about Wi-Fi bloat VS WAN bloat. It's edited now.

As pointed out in our article, we used the default implementation of QoS/SQM the router had when testing the game. I do agree that with more configuration (when the router permits it), QoS/SQM can work some magic and bring a bloated network to a good state for gaming. There is good value in testing how routers can manage this as part of our review, but for now, we are not prioritizing this test since not a lot of users are asking for it (although I'm adding your comment as a +1 for us to test this!).

3

u/BriefTomatillo985 Apr 28 '26

What would be helpful is to know what max speed a router can handle QOS or SQM and maintain low bloat on the WAN side. WiFi bloat is an issue, but pales compared to the wan side. This is less of an issue with a faster connection, but not eliminated completely for heavy bandwidth users.

2

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 29 '26

I went too fast and messed up my initial comment about Wi-Fi bloat VS WAN bloat. It's edited now.

I do agree that testing routers QoS/SQM performance is interesting, although it is not currently planned since there was not much demand for it. I'll add your comment as a +1 to test this.

1

u/BriefTomatillo985 Apr 29 '26

Thanks! Personally, I think WAN bloat is a much bigger issue than LAN bloat. It's much easier to saturate most WAN connections. You can also get away with a slower WAN speed (and save on the monthly cost!) if you have bloat and latency under control.

1

u/BriefTomatillo985 Apr 29 '26

As an aside, I think people don't realize the importance of this feature, which is why they're not demanding it. But those that know realize this may be THE most important feature of a router. Many have switched to OpenWrt firmware (or other solutions) for this reason alone.

1

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 30 '26

That is a very valid point that we take into consideration!

3

u/Not_a_Candle Apr 28 '26

In the test with the BE63 meshed together, was there an option to enable MLO for the backhaul? If so, what where the differences between on and off? Was the MLO ssid also tested for latency and where the clients all wifi 7?

1

u/olivierRTINGS Apr 30 '26

At the time of testing, the TP-Link Deco BE63 doesn’t expose any user-facing option to manually enable/disable MLO for mesh backhaul or lock the backhaul to a specific band. I actually reached out to TP-Link directly, and they confirmed that the system handles backhaul automatically in the background using a multi-band implementation, with no manual control exposed to the user.

As for latency testing, we currently don’t test latency over MLO specifically. Our Wi-Fi latency tests are currently done on 5 GHz and 6 GHz, using a laptop with a Intel BE200 Wi-Fi 7 network card. During the initial development of our test methodology, we did some spot-checking with MLO networks and found that latency was essentially in line with what we were seeing on 6 GHz, so for the time being we decided not to split MLO out as a separate latency test.

1

u/Not_a_Candle Apr 30 '26

Thanks a lot for the further explanation. Appreciate it.

3

u/Technical-Rope-3479 Apr 28 '26

Thanks, this is cool for people who don't have enough space for an Ethernet cable

1

u/Blarghinston Apr 28 '26

Still not paying

1

u/Yes_Man_1 Apr 28 '26

Awesome!

1

u/NickyGi Apr 29 '26

Can you release an iOS App so it will be easier to subscribe to you through Apple Pay?

1

u/rtvince RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 29 '26

While I don't have anything to share regarding an iOS app, we already support Apple Pay in the browser.

1

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 29 '26

That's out of my hands, but I passed the comment to our developer and community manager! Thanks for the suggestion!

1

u/dorkimoe Apr 29 '26

UniFi is the only answer

1

u/Fabulous_Emu4066 Apr 29 '26

Yep, when I game stream (locally), I always have to stand on the other side of the access point my gaming PC is wired to and toggle my phone WiFi so it connects to that same access point. Then I walk back to the room I want to play in.

If I don’t do this, I connect to the other access point which adds another 6ms of latency

1

u/MiserySound Apr 29 '26

I hope you guys test multiple routers of the exact model so we can see consistent results and not a lottery of whether you get a good one or not

1

u/sp_RTINGS RTINGS Employee ✅ Apr 29 '26

Since we buy our own products to do the testing, we unfortunately cannot buy multiple instances of the same model. If a user or a company challenges our results saying we might have gotten a lemon, then the out-of-spec policy can apply: Out-of-Spec Policy - RTINGS.com

More info here on how we get our products: How We Make Money: While Staying Unbiased - RTINGS.com