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We conducted a 55 store survey on wi-fi routers. We asked three simple questions:

What is the best wi-fi router?

What is the cheapest wi-fi router?

What is the fastest wi-fi router you have?

The answers were not surprising on the surface but a little digging offers some interesting finding. The “Best” wi-fi router was deemed to be Linksys by 26 out of 55 stores (47%) we called. D-Link was the number two brand with 12 out of 55 (22% ) recommending it as “best”. Netgear was the only other brand to get mentioned more than once with 8 responses out of 55 (15%). While these results on the surface might be expected, we checked responses by store and found that 70% of Best Buy and Circuit City reps recommended Linksys while only 17% of employees at independent electronics or smaller chain stores recommended the Linksys router.

On the topic of cheapest wi-fi router to buy, Netgear and Belkin were ranked number 1 and 2. Netgear was the cheapest at 27% of stores (15/55) while Belkin was cheapest at 16% (9/55). Linksys was reported as the cheapest at 15% of stores (8/55). We saw more brands pop up in this survey area around the cheapest wi-fi routers including Airlink, Trendnet, Network Everywhere, Borscht and Netcomm.

The final question on the fastest wi-fi router brought back many answers around the G and N versions of 802.11. Top speeds were reported to be 54Mbs (most often cited) to 225Mbps (for the Apple Airport) and beyond. Some respondents claimed speeds up to 300Mbs. It is fairly clear that awareness of new G and N standards are thoroughly in the marketplace but none of these newer standards based routers are being mentioned as “best” or “cheapest”. The shift for consumers to G and above for wi-fi appears to still be on the horizon despite the products clearly moving into the retail sales channel across almost all retailers.

We’ll re-run this survey later this summer to see if we pick up any shifts in market share among the top brands or changes in allegiance from the likes of Best Buy and Circuit City.

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