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I Used to Tell People Wi-Fi 7 Routers Were a Waste of Money. CNET’s Lab Data Just Proved Me Wrong

​Your home’s Wi-Fi router is the gateway to the internet and your devices. It affects every aspect of your online life.. “The router is the heart of your home network,” said Gianmarco Chumbe, CNET’s lab engineer who leads router testing. “Just like the heart pumps oxygen and nutrients everywhere it’s needed, your router pumps data to all of your devices. And just as a bad heart can affect your whole health, a bad router can ruin the internet experience in your home.”. This story is part of Crossing the Broadband Divide, CNET’s coverage of how the country is working toward making broadband access universal.. Most of us know the feeling. According to a new CNET survey, 86% of Americans experience Wi-Fi drops at some point, and 19% say drops happen always, daily or frequently.. If you’ve spent any time looking at routers over the past two years, you’ve probably seen a lot about Wi-Fi 7. As always with tech products, there’s a lot of jargon to wade through, and it’s hard to tell what’s marketing and what will actually improve your internet experience. Is Wi-Fi 7 really that much better than the Wi-Fi 5, 6 and 6E generations of routers?. The Netgear Nighthawk RS700S was the fastest Wi-Fi 7 router in our lab tests, and the fastest overall. Gianmarco Chumbe/CNET. Key takeaways. Avoid the dual-band trap: If a Wi-Fi 7 router says “dual-band,” keep shopping. Our lab data proves that only tri-band models offer the massive performance gains and access to the 6GHz frequency needed to justify an upgrade.. Future-proof your home network: With the average American household’s data consumption skyrocketing, investing in a tri-band Wi-Fi 7 router is the most reliable way to safeguard your internet speeds for the next decade. You don’t need to spend $600 for top-tier speeds anymore: While high-end models still exist, our tests of over 30 routers reveal that prices have dropped significantly. You can now get a lightning-fast Wi-Fi 7 router for less than $200.. TP-Link dominates the value category: Thanks to their unbeatable balance of price and raw throughput, TP-Link models completely dominated our lab tests and best list rankings.. Throughput: Wi-Fi 7 routers really are faster. Are Wi-Fi 7 routers faster than previous generations? The short answer is yes. Wi-Fi 7 routers recorded the highest total throughput scores by far: 3,169Mbps across all three bands combined, compared to 1,309 Mbps for Wi-Fi 6E routers.. That wasn’t entirely surprising — the buzz around Wi-Fi 7 has been focused on the addition of the ultrawide 6GHz band — but it was eye-opening to see that mirrored so starkly in our test results. Wi-Fi 6E supports the 6GHz band, too, but Wi-Fi 7 is still miles ahead in speed. Why such a large gap in performance?. “Wi-Fi 7 introduces several key upgrades that set it apart from tri-band Wi-Fi 6E routers,” David Coleman, director of wireless networking at Extreme Networks, told me in an email. “For example, Wi-Fi 7 supports 320MHz-wide channels — double the  

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Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 15, #1008

​Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.. Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough, but the yellow category has some fun options in it. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.. The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.. Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time. Hints for today’s Connections groups. Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.. Yellow group hint: Mine, all mine!. Green group hint: A part you might use to build something.. Blue group hint: Blended words.. Purple group hint: Not a cow, but close.. Answers for today’s Connections groups. Yellow group: Greedily control.. Green group: Toothed wheels.. Blue group: Portmanteaux.. Purple group: Bull ____.. Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words. What are today’s Connections answers?. The completed NYT Connections puzzle for March 15, 2026. NYT/Screenshot by CNET. The yellow words in today’s Connections. The theme is greedily control. The four answers are bogart, corner, hog and monopolize.. The green words in today’s Connections. The theme is toothed wheels. The four answers are cog, gear, pinion and sprocket.. The blue words in today’s Connections. The theme is portmanteaux. The four answers are blog, motel, smog and spork.. The purple words in today’s Connections. The theme is bull ____. The four answers are dog, doze, frog and horn.. Toughest Connections puzzles. We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.. #5: Included “things you can set,” such as mood, record, table and volleyball.. #4: Included “one in a dozen,” such as egg, juror, month and rose.. #3: Included “streets on screen,” such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.. #2: Included “power ___” such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.. #1: Included “things that can run,” such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.  

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Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for March 15, #1730

​Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.. Today’s Wordle puzzle is a fairly common word, but the beginning letter is one I rarely guess. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.. Read more: New Study Reveals Wordle’s Top 10 Toughest Words of 2025. Today’s Wordle hints. Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.. Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats. Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.. Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels. Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.. Wordle hint No. 3: First letter. Today’s Wordle answer begins with G.. Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter. Today’s Wordle answer ends with E.. Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning. Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a mark that a student receives in a class.. TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER. Today’s Wordle answer is GRADE.. Yesterday’s Wordle answer. Yesterday’s Wordle answer, March 14, No. 1729, was ANKLE.. Recent Wordle answers. March 10, No. 1725: SHOAL. March 11, No. 1726: TEDDY. March 12, No. 1727: SMELL. March 13, No. 1728: EATEN. What’s the best Wordle starting word?. Don’t be afraid to use our tip sheet ranking all the letters in the alphabet by frequency of uses. In short, you want starter words that lean heavy on E, A and R, and don’t contain Z, J and Q.. Some solid starter words to try:. ADIEU. TRAIN. CLOSE. STARE. NOISE  

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This Is the Bacon Upgrade You Didn’t Know You Needed

​I love cooking hacks and shortcuts, but only when they don’t sacrifice the final result. Microwave-poached eggs and reverse-seared steak are two such examples. More recently, I discovered a bacon-making trick, and now it’s the only way I’ll cook the stuff.. Bacon isn’t difficult to cook, thanks to all that delicious fat running through it. It is, however, messy — particularly when cooked on a stovetop, where grease splatters onto anything within a few feet, including the person cooking it.. Only one kitchen gadget makes perfect strips in under 8 minutes. David Watsky/CNET. I’d previously switched from the stovetop to an oven approach, but the rate at which I use my air fryer had me wondering if this might be the key to fast and easy bacon.. To find out, I ran a test comparing bacon made in the frying pan, the oven and the air fryer. My aim was simple: see which kitchen tool makes the crispiest strips with the least amount of work and cleanup.. I also gave the microwave a chance: While it technically works, the bacon often emerged dry or rubbery, so I took it out of the running.. Here’s how the three main contenders fared.. Frying pan. Cooking time: 10 minutes. Hassle: 8/10. How much bacon: 7-8 strips. I grew up on pan-fried bacon but my test revealed there’s a better way. Mike Mackinven/Getty Images. This is the way I grew up cooking bacon and it’s perfectly fine. There isn’t much skill needed to fry bacon in a pan, though just about every batch I’ve ever made sends a healthy splatter over the stove. In more unfortunate instances, that infernal grease lands directly on my skin or clothes, which presents two different but equally aggravating problems.. Pan-fried bacon soaks up a ton of grease, which is why many turn to paper towels to drain it after cooking. Pan-frying these strips of pork belly also tends to curl them into little bacon balls. While that has no impact on the taste, it can make for a suboptimal presentation.. I can feel the splatter bombs just looking at this photo. David Watsky/CNET. Another drawback of cooking bacon in the frying pan is its limited capacity. A 10-in frying pan can hold only about 7 average-sized strips of bacon at a time, although you can add more as they shrink during cooking.. Then there’s the matter of cleaning said pan after use. It’s not recommended to put most cookware in the dishwasher, so you’ll have to manage that grease-soaked surface yourself.. Oven. Cooking time: 18 minutes. Hassle: 6/10. How much bacon: 10-12 strips. Oven bacon is best for cooking large batches. CNET. While it involves more prep, oven bacon has clear advantages over pan-frying. For one, there is little concern about capacity, as a standard cookie sheet or baking tray can hold nearly a full package of bacon, making the oven ideal for cooking large quantities.. Using a baking tray and rack allows the grease to drip down below. That makes for crispier, less greasy results, but it does present a headache when it’s time to clean. Cookie  

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Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Sunday, March 15

​Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Today’s wasn’t terribly tough, but read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.. Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword. Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for March 15, 2026. NYT/Screenshot by CNET. Mini across clues and answers. 1A clue: On-call doctor’s device. Answer: PAGER. 6A clue: Amazon virtual assistant. Answer: ALEXA. 7A clue: Host of the 2026 Oscars. Answer: CONAN. 8A clue: Stumped on a puzzle, say. Answer: STUCK. 9A clue: Aves. and blvds.. Answer: STS. Mini down clues and answers. 1D clue: Election-influencing groups, for short. Answer: PACS. 2D clue: Quite a few. Answer: ALOT. 3D clue: The “Tyrannosaurus” of Tyrannosaurus rex. Answer: GENUS. 4D clue: Right on. Answer: EXACT. 5D clue: Puts in order from best to worst, maybe. Answer: RANKS  

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Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for March 15, #538

​Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.. Today is Selection Sunday, and the Connections: Sports Edition puzzle is all about the NCAA basketball tournament. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.. Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.. Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta. Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups. Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.. Yellow group hint: Oops!. Green group hint: Not the second word.. Blue group hint: They direct the team.. Purple group hint: They made it to the Big Dance.. Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups. Yellow group: Basketball fouls.. Green group: First words in NCAA tournament rounds.. Blue group: Women’s college basketball coaches.. Purple group: Teams qualified for the 2026 Men’s NCAA tournament.. Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words. What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?. The completed NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 15, 2026. NYT/Screenshot by CNET. The yellow words in today’s Connections. The theme is basketball fouls. The four answers are block, charge, hold and reach-in.. The green words in today’s Connections. The theme is first words in NCAA tournament rounds. The four answers are elite, final, second and sweet.. The blue words in today’s Connections. The theme is women’s college basketball coaches. The four answers are Auriemma, Close, Ivey and Staley.. The purple words in today’s Connections. The theme is teams qualified for the 2026 Men’s NCAA tournament. The four answers are Gonzaga, High Point, Queens and Troy.  

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