If you are reading this article, you are probably already determined to complement the humble router that your Internet company provided you when you signed the contract. However, it is also likely that you are not so clear if investing a certain amount of money will represent a significant improvement in your user experience. For that, from Xiaomipedia, we are going to clarify all the doubts you may have regarding the different routers of the Asian giant.

First of all, what is the router for? It seems like a pretty obvious answer question, but maybe you didn't know that you could share local content in streaming or use it as an automated backup system. It is not the goal of this article, so we are not going to delve into it further. Where we do have to invite you to reflect is when classifying yourself as a casual or extreme user. Maybe with the features that your standard router has, you will have enough. To answer this question, you will need to know how many devices are connecting to your router at the same time. If the number exceeds 4 or 5 devices, you may need a more vitaminized router to get all the performance out of your internet connection.

Suppose we are in this case, then: what differences are there between the different models available? The most important thing is the connectivity section. In this section, we can see the different routes that our devices can take to connect to the router, and they will always choose the one that is emptiest. As with the roads, there are roads that have a higher permitted speed than others, and that is where we have to look at the bands. We have to be sure that our router has the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, as well as the WiFi 5 (802.11 ac) standards onwards. This standard allows the transfer with a speed of up to 1.3 Gbps if you have at least three antennas.

Something that is very easy to overlook is the router's CPU, which indicates the number of tasks that this device can carry out at the same time without affecting performance. In general, a Qualcomm processor provides better performance than a Mediatek, although a direct comparison would have to be made between the two processors that we are comparing to reach a conclusion. RAM is also important in this regard, from experience we will tell you that it is better to invest in a newer technology than in the amount of RAM itself. For Xiaomi routers, we have a wide memory catalog that ranges between 64 and 512 MB of RAM for the different product ranges.

The number of inputs is something capital since it limits the devices that we can have connected via LAN at the same time. In the Xiaomi range, we have several LAN ports and some WAN. The latter is the one that we connect to the telephone socket in the house, but it can be useful to have more than one if we require the use of servers. The LAN ports are for our computers or networks. The firmware is important to the extent that we will have to configure it, so we will always have to look for one that is multilanguage, or we will have a perfect excuse to learn Chinese...

General functions can be the differential section when deciding on one device or another. There are those that can hide the SSID, as well as the wireless access control (something that seems very important if you have to configure many devices). Some, in their security protocols, can detect if they are trying to hack the password and notify the user, something very useful to avoid that neighbor who does not have Internet but who spends the afternoons playing Fortnite... Some even allow you to make copies of security automatically.

Finally, we would like to draw attention to the PLC routers. They receive the name of the acronym in English of Power Line Communications and are perfect for large surfaces or homes with many rooms, where the walls make it difficult for the network to circulate. The trick is that it supplies the internet signal through the electrical installation of the home, so each plug to which we can connect one of the PLC adapters works as if it were a router.

Bottom line: there are dozens of features that make each router unique. To choose the ideal one we have to take into account the connectivity (bands and antennas), the software that allows us to configure it (where we include the firmware), the number of ports, and their type. Xiaomi offers a wide catalog as we see in the comparison table, where we have gathered all the available information so that you can easily compare and find your ideal device. These types of routers serve as a complement to those provided by companies, increasing their possibilities and increasing their power, but they do not replace this product in most cases.