Recently, Micro Center partnered with ASUS to bring you a brand-new tool, designed to make the hassle of improving your home network as easy as a few quick clicks: the ASUS Router Finder! Whether you're choosing your first router or upgrading because your current router is too slow, doesn't cover your whole house, or just quit working, the ASUS Router Finder can help you get the router you need to surf the internet with ease!
The ASUS Router Finder is located under our Networking tab on the main Micro Center website - or you can simply click this link and go right there:
Once you've arrived at the landing page, simply click the "Start Searching for Routers" button and you're off to the races!
We'll ask seven-to-eight questions about your internet, home, and use cases. Below, we'll break down each of these questions, what we're looking for, and why we ask them, so you can feel secure knowing we're recommending routers that'll work exactly as you need them to!
At the top of the page, once you've selected "Start Searching for Routers," you'll see two buttons: Back and Start Over. "Back" will move you back one question and "Start Over" will take you back to the beginning of the questionnaire.
The first question the Router Finder will ask is what your ISP - or Internet Service Provider - plan looks like: Basic, Mainstream, Fast, Extreme, or Not Sure. There are a lot of variables between ISPs plans, so we've simplified them to their speeds: up to 50Mbps, up to 200Mbps, Up to 500Mbps, and up to a gigabyte and above, respectively. Selecting the one that most closely resembles your internet speeds will help the Router Finder pick out routers that can handle your internet speed without going beyond your needs. If you're not sure what your internet speeds are, simply click "Not Sure." Once you've made your selection, we can move onto the next step.
Once you've selected your internet speeds, we'll ask about your coverage area. This is to understand how much space your WiFi signal will need to reach to fully cover your needed area, such as a house or office space. This will again help limit your options to routers that will fit your needs, as some may not have the power needed to reach the entirety of your coverage areas, while others may be far too powerful and reach well outside of your coverage needs.
Similar to the previous questions, understanding your WiFi usage will help the Router Finder remove routers that may be under or overpowered for your needs. Basic usage is perfect for folks with only a few devices who use their WiFi for light, daily tasks like single-device streaming, email, and similar tasks. Medium usage is where most users will probably fall, as it covers school, work, and smart home devices - the average household. High users will have lots of devices, gaming setups, multiple TVs streaming at the same time, and numerous smart home devices. Extreme users will have full home security, stream high-quality video regularly, have multiple users gaming simultaneously, and/or need high bandwidth for work and school.
Routers, by default, don't have a hard and fast limit to the number of users that can connect to them, but when more users are connected, they will start to slow down. This question helps to understand how many people will be connected to your router on average to ensure you don't throttle your network. An important note: this question is not asking for the total number of devices, but users - we'll ask about devices in just a moment!
Exactly like the number of users, as more devices are added to your router's network, it can start to throttle and slow down your WiFi. Stronger routers can handle more devices, but they come at a premium - knowing how many devices you'll have connected to your WiFi (approximately - it doesn't need to be exact) will help to ensure that you get the best power/price ratio that will fit your needs. Most houses have somewhere between 10 and 25 devices hooked up at any given time. Devices like: cell phones, laptops, desktops, gaming consoles, home automation, security, smart TVs, and more!
There are a lot of options and we'll go through each one individually, but here you can select any features that you either need for your home setup, like specific ports, or nice-to-haves, like RGB lighting. There is no limit on how many options you can select, but you may start to see your "Available Router" number decrease as you add more features to your perfect router. If you don't have any additional requirements, just click "No Preference." Once you've made your selection, click "Available Router."
The final question - are you looking for a single router, or do you want to set up a mesh network? Single routers are easier to set up and often provide all the coverage you'll need but may leave small corners of your coverage area with spotty connections. Mesh networks, however, take a bit more work to set up but offer stronger, more reliable connections and can be repositioned to ensure that your whole home is fully and completely covered. Of course, if you don't have a preference, select "Either one is ok." Depending on how many options you have left, you may be taken to your recommendation page once you've made your selection or you may be taken to the final question.
Choose Your Router: What's Your Budget Range?
The final question - how much are you looking to spend on a router? "Good" will show routers up to $100, "Better" will show routers up to $200, and "Best" will show routers over $200.
I've never used this tool before! I'll have to take a look next time I need an upgrade :)
Cool to see a feature like this on our site.
Very helpful!
This will be a very helpful tool.
Incredibly helpful. Love ASUS routers
This tool accurately "predicted" the router I have at home, which is the AX3000. I'm impressed.
One thing that you also need to take into account is what is the lowest wifi standard device you will be connecting to it, If you have something with 2) 5GHz andtennas and 1) 2,4 GHz antenna you can limit what devices connect to which antenna. Otherwise everything gets brought down to the same speed of whichever is slowest.
I've used asus routers for years and they've always worked the best for me!
A great tool to say the least!
I invested in an AX3000 when my Orbi router was giving issues and causing an unstable signal. I think the best feature that Asus routers have is AiMesh, in case you need more range. Keep in mind to make sure they are compatible with each other to use AiMesh.
Y'all are gonna hate me for this one, but routersecurity.org is a great repository of information regarding routers, and their security.
Wow, this is a great tool. I just tried it out and got some really good results!
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