Checked September 2026
How we score
We publish two separate scores and never mix them up. Nobody pays to appear here, and no shop link, offer or commission has ever changed a number on this site.
The two indexes
- A. WiFiXpert Wi-Fi Experience Score — broadband providers
- Scores the company, not the box: their own Wi-Fi app, what their support team can see, and who owns the problem when it goes wrong. Unchanged by anything on the hardware pages. See the provider table.
- B. WiFiXpert Hardware Index — routers and mesh systems
- Scores the kit itself across fifteen weighted dimensions. See the hardware table.
- C. WiFiXpert Compatibility Index — gadgets
- Scores how well a speaker, doorbell or console lives on home Wi-Fi. Every compatibility statement on a comparison page is read from this one source. See the gadget index.
- D. Use-case recommendations
- The same published dimension scores, re-weighted for one situation — thick walls, Sonos, gaming. A product can win a use case without its overall score moving at all.
- E. Community Reliability Score
- What real households report, aggregated and moderated. Kept entirely separate from the indexes above.
- F. Offers and shop links
- Always in a separate panel, always labelled. Never an input to a score, a ranking or a "best for" verdict.
The fifteen hardware dimensions
Weights add up to 100. Each product scores 0-10 per dimension.
| Dimension | Weight |
|---|---|
| Wi-Fi performanceHow much of your broadband speed actually reaches a device in the same room. | 11% |
| CoverageHow far a usable signal reaches through a normal home. | 11% |
| ReliabilityHow often people tell us it drops, freezes or needs restarting. | 12% |
| Ease of setupHow easy it is to get working without help. | 7% |
| Mesh capabilityWhether you can add more boxes, and how cleanly devices move between them. | 8% |
| Wired backhaul supportWhether the boxes can be joined by an Ethernet cable — the single biggest upgrade in most homes. | 7% |
| Wi-Fi generationHow current the Wi-Fi standard is on the models sold today. | 4% |
| SecurityModern encryption, sensible defaults and updates that arrive on their own. | 6% |
| Management appWhether the app tells you something useful when things go wrong. | 7% |
| Parental controlsBlocking, bedtimes and per-person limits — and whether they cost extra. | 3% |
| Smart-home compatibilityHow well speakers, doorbells and hubs behave on it. | 8% |
| IoT friendlinessHow painless it is to add lots of small 2.4 GHz gadgets. | 4% |
| Troubleshooting & supportWho picks up the problem, and what they can actually see. | 5% |
| Value for moneyWhat you get for the money, including anything behind a subscription. | 4% |
| Upgrade longevityHow long it is likely to keep getting updates and stay good enough. | 3% |
Where the evidence comes from
- Manufacturer confirmed — stated in the maker's own documentation.
- WiFiXpert tested — we set it up and used it ourselves.
- WiFiXpert case data — patterns across the real support cases we handle.
- Community reported — reported by households and moderated before it counts.
- WiFiXpert interpretation — our judgement, clearly labelled as such.
We never present a community report as a manufacturer specification, and we never invent a specification we cannot point to.
Confidence levels
- High confidence — several independent sources agree.
- Moderate confidence — good evidence, some of it ours alone.
- Limited evidence — thin evidence; treat as a steer, not a fact.
- New product — not enough data yet — too new for us to be sure.
Confidence matters most for brand-new products, behaviour that changes with firmware, smart-home compatibility and faults only households have reported.
The provider Experience Score (unchanged)
The provider index keeps its own published weighting:
- Their own Wi-Fi app — up to 20 points. A provider-branded app you can actually use: see your devices, guest Wi-Fi, parental controls, restart and rename things yourself.
- Can they see your Wi-Fi? — up to 20 points. Whether the provider can see how your Wi-Fi is really performing in your home, instead of asking you to reboot and guess.
- Do they own the fix? — up to 20 points. Whether one team stays with your problem from first call to fixed, including the Wi-Fi inside your home.
- Can you check it yourself? — up to 10 points. Tools you can run on your own: room-by-room tests, speed checks in the app, clear results you can send them.
- Router and kit quality — up to 10 points. How modern and capable the supplied router is.
- Mesh and extra boxes — up to 10 points. Whether extra Wi-Fi boxes are supplied, and how well they work together.
- Security and updates — up to 5 points. Whether the kit keeps getting security updates, and for how long.
- What customers report — up to 5 points. Independent complaint and satisfaction data. Opinion alone never changes a score.
Methodology versions
When a methodology changes we publish the change and keep the old results. A score always says which version produced it.
v1.0 — WiFiXpert Hardware Index (routers and mesh systems)
Introduced September 2026
- First published version: fifteen weighted dimensions totalling 100.
- Every dimension carries an evidence type, a review date and a confidence level.
- Use-case rankings introduced as separate overlays that never alter the overall score.
Why: To score the kit itself separately from the broadband company that supplies it.
v2.1 — WiFiXpert Wi-Fi Experience Score (broadband providers) — unchanged by the Hardware Index
Introduced September 2026
- Published room guarantees removed as a scoring factor.
- Weight moved to the provider's own Wi-Fi app, the visibility their support team has, and who owns the problem.
Why: A guarantee nobody claims on is not a measure of help. What matters is whether they can see your Wi-Fi and will fix it.
Think a score is wrong? Tell us in the community with what you're seeing at home. Reports are moderated, and if the evidence stacks up we re-score using the published method and say so.