With so many of us working from home these days, we now have more apps than ever careening across our household Wi-Fi networks. And some of these require not only a good amount of bandwidth, but steady bandwidth. When they don't have it, that chat you're having with your boss on your company's voice over IP (VoIP) phone system suddenly sounds like you're underwater. The same goes for many consumer-grade apps, especially video streaming services like Netflix, and certainly the latest games.

Also, I found the range on each individual node left something to be desired compared to the competitors.As a rule, we’re happy with anything over 120Mbits/sec (15MB/sec). To put that into context, Netflix recommends a connection speed of at least 5Mbits/sec for HD streaming and 25Mbits/sec for 4K video. A good, solid Wi-Fi network should easily be fast enough to cope with multiple simultaneous high-resolution video streams.

If money is no object, this is the WiFi extender for you, offering the most utility of all its competitors. For others, it might be on the prohibitive side of pricey. TP-Link’s RE300 is basic, but it’s incredibly easy to set up via the TP-Link Tether app and it comes with a couple of extra modes to help you make the most of your current wireless network. We found it worked best in default mode, where speeds averaged 11.3MB/sec in testing. If you’re a tinkerer, however, you can also set it up so it uses the faster 5GHz band as a dedicated link to your existing network and the 2.4GHz band for your devices.

Boost your home Wi-Fi speeds and kill dead spots with our pick of the best mesh Wi-Fi routers, including Prime Day deals

With home working from becoming the norm, there’s more need than ever for a reliable laptop, as well as a separate keyboard, wireless mouse and printer to complete the ‘home office’ setup. Add in your gaming setup (or your children’s) and an excellent internet connection is essential. Whereas range extenders communicate with the router via the 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio bands, most Wi-Fi system satellites use mesh technology to talk to the router, and to each other. Each node serves as a hop point for other nodes in the system, which helps the nodes farthest from the router to deliver a strong Wi-Fi signal as they talk to other nodes and don't rely on one-to-one communications with the router.

I also noticed that the connection between the nodes very occasionally flagged when I was walking from one part of the house to another. It only took a second to connect from one node to the next, but it wasn’t something I noted with any of the other devices. Naturally, however, connecting devices to an extender via Ethernet won’t be as fast as a direct wired connection to the router because the signal still needs to travel from your router to the extender over the airwaves first. What other features should I look for? It’s very easy to use as well, with setup managed by the superb TP-Link Tether mobile app, which provides access to all the settings you might need.When shopping for a range extender, it's important to find one that matches your router's specs. For example, if you have a dual-band AC1900 router, get a dual-band AC1900 extender (or better). If your router supports Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) data streaming, which provides enhanced performance by sending data to compatible clients simultaneously rather than sequentially, look for an extender that supports this technology if you want to extend your MU-MIMO network. The Deco X20 is a dual-band system supporting 2×2 MIMO, which helps to keep the costs down, but since WiFi 6 is designed to share bandwidth more efficiently across multiple connections, this shouldn’t be a huge problem. Depending on your needs, you may not need to invest in the fastest, most expensive kit you can find. Even a low-cost Wi-Fi 5 mesh system should be fast enough to deliver a connection of 40Mbits/sec or more around your home, which is plenty for working, browsing the web and even streaming 4K video.

On the face of it, it’s business as usual. Setup is no different to the other mesh networks I’ve already described and the app is easy to use and offers you a lot of control over your WiFi. In theory you could hook up a chain of WiFi repeaters to be able to extend your signal to the ends of the Earth. In practice if you use more than one, you’ll probably lose so much signal between the two that the exercise would be pointless.BT’s Whole Home WiFi is a really solid product which would have been higher on this list had it not been for a few strange choices BT has made. Select Advanced Settings again and then select WAN Settings from the submenu. Or directly select WAN Settings under Advanced Settings. As a bonus, if you have a TP-Link router that supports its OneMesh technology, you get hassle-free, seamless connectivity wherever you are in your home. Needless to say, you need a Wi-Fi 6 router and compatible devices to make the most of it, but this extender gives you the latest wireless tech at a bargain price. Though they’re certainly in vogue, a mesh network isn’t for everyone. Those with a smaller home probably won’t need to stretch their WiFi quite as far, so a (cheaper) repeater will do.