Hello. We have a dying Asus RT-AC68U (TM-AC1900) running Asus Merlin. It was rock solid for years, but recently the 5 Ghz band has completely stopped working and the 2.4 GHz band drops intermittently with the router becoming unpingable.
I hoping to get opinions between these two routers that are currently on sale: Asus RT-AX68U ($130 USD on Newegg) or Asus RT-AX86U Pro ($220 on Amazon). Our home connection is a 500 Mbps down / 12 Mbps up, and we will not upgrade to anything faster anytime soon (rural area). No problems with local wireless network congestion (though neighbors are using 2.4 GHz channels 2, 5, and 10 for some reason)
It's a 2 story, 4 bedroom, ~2500 square feet house with a basement. No Ethernet running through the house. Router is on a central location on the second floor. There's a mix of 802.11 n, ac, and ax clients (WIFI 4/5/6). We also have a Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT in Client Bridge mode with a 2 year uptime to connect a wired Brother printer to the network. Used for home office work, streaming, schoolwork, and PC gaming. Maybe some VR gaming in the future. In order of importance I'd say reliability>range=performance>price, but we don't want to spend more than we have to (e.g. we definitely don't need the AX88U, GT-AX6000, or various gaming routers). Would most likely use Asus Merlin firmware.
Thoughts on best choice of the two based on my described use case?
I hoping to get opinions between these two routers that are currently on sale: Asus RT-AX68U ($130 USD on Newegg) or Asus RT-AX86U Pro ($220 on Amazon). Our home connection is a 500 Mbps down / 12 Mbps up, and we will not upgrade to anything faster anytime soon (rural area). No problems with local wireless network congestion (though neighbors are using 2.4 GHz channels 2, 5, and 10 for some reason)
It's a 2 story, 4 bedroom, ~2500 square feet house with a basement. No Ethernet running through the house. Router is on a central location on the second floor. There's a mix of 802.11 n, ac, and ax clients (WIFI 4/5/6). We also have a Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT in Client Bridge mode with a 2 year uptime to connect a wired Brother printer to the network. Used for home office work, streaming, schoolwork, and PC gaming. Maybe some VR gaming in the future. In order of importance I'd say reliability>range=performance>price, but we don't want to spend more than we have to (e.g. we definitely don't need the AX88U, GT-AX6000, or various gaming routers). Would most likely use Asus Merlin firmware.
Thoughts on best choice of the two based on my described use case?