Moving- To Upgrade or Not

[hobooflove]

I am getting ready to be moving from an 1,100sqft home into one well over 2,000sqft and think it's about time I upgraded from my Asus RT-N66U. All of my main devices are AC now, and in the past few weeks my router has been super unstable. I got it used a year or two ago and it has always had some problems no matter what I did to it. Anyways, there will be four adults with their associated devices. I will be standing up a Plex server as well (obviously that will be wired), but I want to make sure that I can stream from there.

I would just go to the RT-AC68U without a second thought, but after watching prices, I think I can find one of the ones below in the same (general) price range. I know that MU-MIMO is not highly regarded around these parts, but both my wife's phone and my own support it, as well as my laptop. The performance charts for it slightly scare me though. Should I avoid it until it is more stable, even though I could use it? Also, has anyone had good experiences with Smart Connect? Lastly, I want to stay under $200 dollars.

In short, should I even bother upgrading yet, if so, is a MU-MIMO router worth it, and what are you guys' experience with these?

I have pretty much narrowed it down to these and would love some thoughts from you guys:
TP-Link Archer C2600
Netgear R7500
Netgear R7000
ASUS RT-AC87U
ASUS RT-AC3200

 

[L&LD]

I would agree it's time to move from the RT-N66U (even if it was stable for you).

None of the choices you list are what I would recommend. Neither would MU-MIMO or Smart Connect play into my purchase decision. Both of those 'features' are far from prime time.

I would recommend the RT-AC68U, the RT-AC1900P (BestBuy exclusive and the modern successor to the RT-AC68U) or the RT-AC3100 (I know, well beyond your budget).

Any of the above would be running RMerlin's firmware (or one of the forks thereof) and will handle your network needs better than the models you have listed, imo.

 

[hobooflove]

Thanks! That helps a lot. The RT-AC3100 just went on sale for $191 and I'll probably end up doing that.

 

[thiggins]

L&LD: If you don't recommend MU-MIMO, why put the RT-AC3100 on your recommended list?

 

[L&LD]

Thanks! That helps a lot. The RT-AC3100 just went on sale for $191 and I'll probably end up doing that.

Easily the best option at that price. I hope you will be as pleased as my customer was (and continues to be) with the RT-AC3100 (see link in reply to Tim below).

L&LD: If you don't recommend MU-MIMO, why put the RT-AC3100 on your recommended list?

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/sh...-go-with-the-rt-ac1900p-v3.34748/#post-281391


Tim, as I usually find, the latest models with the usually better hardware and arguably the better designs (RF, electrical, firmware/drivers and otherwise) are almost always better than what was offered even a few short years ago. At $191, the RT-AC3100 deserves to be the prosumer router of the year.

Features like smart connect (which I would never use or recommend, even if it worked for 'most', because 'auto' settings take away control from me, the user of the equipment in one way or another) and future features like MU-MIMO are not a reason to buy (or not). These are a far secondary 'bonus' that may or may not prove themselves in the future. Whether they do or not won't affect a buying decision today though (the link above shows what is important though; I buy/recommend/upgrade a router for a better network experience 'today', if it does that, it is worth buying, period).

My customer in the above link bought the RT-AC3100 at full price ($400) and paid me substantially to configure it fully (including the consultation to get a Fibre over cable ISP, among other decisions) and still thinks it was money well spent, as do I.

Smart connect is pure gimmick, imo, if you want consistency and high performance (always). MU-MIMO will become important in the near to medium future (when 8 antennae/8 stream routers are more prevalent, imo), if it actually takes off at all (I think it will, if manufacturers can see this through to a working and fully fleshed out model at a reasonable price).

But better routing and better, pure WiFi performance (throughput) is what makes the latest router almost always more desirable than older, 'known' good models.

Some points,
When I had the RT-AC3100 connected to my network with exactly the same setup (thanks to john9527's NVRAM Save/Restore scripts) as my RT-AC68U, the comparison was eye opening.

On the 2.4GHz band, my speeds went from the high 50Mbps (on a 100/20 d/u ISP connection) to just under wired speeds, easily, on almost all my devices.

On the 5GHz band, my speeds didn't seem to increase at all (short to medium range from the router) on tests like Ookla speed test and dslreports. Yes, these now matched wired speeds. But even better was how consistent the throughput was, not just in WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN traffic, but also just LAN to LAN traffic too. The little RT-AC68U was thoroughly trounced here.

When I compared the CPU usage, the RT-AC3100 obviously had much more breathing room when my ISP speeds were being maxed (particularly upload), over the RT-AC68U. This was expected.

What was a further sign that we need more and better (higher end) hardware in our routers was the memory usage. Yes, both routers were showing around the mid/high 30% (39% for the '68U and 34% for the '3100). But the absolute memory used was what was interesting to me though; 97MB for the '68U and almost 180MB for the '3100 to do the exact same functions. To me, this is very telling that we need more ram in our routers.


I don't recommend (or not recommend) certain hardware because of features it has (but I don't like or use). I recommend a router for the base job it does versus what it will possibly replace. If the need is high enough, the price doesn't matter for those with a budget that can accommodate that premium.

When the price of the much better tech falls to below what I paid for my RT-AC68U? Well, that is just a little gift from the tech gods.

 

[bodean]

I think the netgear R7000 and/orR7500 is now EOL (End of Life).

 

[netwrks]

The R7500v1 is EOL.
The R7000 is still alive - Netgear just released a new firmware version for the R7000. R7500v2 is still alive also.

 

[thiggins]

I think the netgear R7000 and/orR7500 is now EOL (End of Life).

NETGEAR has no plans to kill or change the moneymaker that the R7000 is.