ASUS RT-N66U or Netgear WNDR4500?

[advenbbs]

Read online reviews, most saying RT-N66U clearly outperforms WNDR4500 in nearly all aspects, though RT-N66U is a little bit more expensive and some minor soft features are not as good as WNDR4500.
These two seem to have almost identical hardware/chips except one uses external antenna while the other uses internal one and ASUS has double memory. So what makes RT-N66U so much faster? Can WNDR4500 catch up by releasing newer firmware?
So here's my base view of these two, can you guys verify with your experience?
1. Wireless speed: RT-N66U >> WNDR4500
2. Wireless range: RT-N66U > WNDR4500
3. Reliability (dropping Wireless, need frequent reboot, dead after # months): which one is better? This is important, if the unit gets down frequently (even if it doesn't for a lucky unit but you keep worrying about so) then no matter how much faster it is, it is set to be returned...
4. USB storage speed: RT-N66U >> WNDR4500
5. DLNA capability: RT-N66U << WNDR4500
6. Apple support (airprint via LAN, control from ipad/iphone, etc): RT-N66U < WNDR4500
7. Price: RT-N66U > WNDR4500
What else can clearly draw a line between these two for me to make a decision? Thanks.

 

[advenbbs]

Anyone dumped WNDR4500 to get RT-N66U instead?

I guess here a lot of Asus users are survivals from this complicated wireless router market, which got a lot of unreliable, slow, crappy routers. And you might have just switched exactly from WNDR4500 and settled down with your nice (hopefully) RT-N66U. Can you please share your experience? You liked the switch or regretted? What so good or bad about this Asus?

 

[jerry6]

Not sure if this still applies , but netgear is slack on FW updates , Asus seems to keep on developing FW until it's right , they still release for mr RT-16 , and look at all the releases for the N-66 .
When I had a netgear 2700 v1 the fw releases were few , not sure they even release for the 3700 v1 now .
Also like the GUI of the Asus and all the options .

 

[SoCalReviews]

I concur with jerry6's comments. My WNDR3700v2 is not longer supported with official firmware updates even though I purchased the router just over a year ago. The same is true with my Cisco/Linksys E4200v1. Some of the other major companies completely stop providing firmware updates to products that are only one year old. Luckily both of those routers can be updated with third party open source firmware.

I am not sure about third party open source firmware support for the WNDR4500. The Broadcom based chip sets usually are capable of supporting third party firmware but some of the more recent models from the major router manufacturers are not. Asus routers seem to have been designed from the ground up for long term open source firmware support which means you should have access to improved firmware updates many years into the future.

Before I decided to purchase the Asus I did some research on the hardware design. My conclusion was that the Asus external antennas, 256MB RAM and large internal passive heat sink design made it the best in it's class of this generation of Broadcom chip set based routers. I currently own three RT-N66U routers and with the exception of a previous wireless stability issues that were related to the 4.246 firmware (of which I recently upgraded to firmware 4.260) all of them have been performing great.

 

[hclarkjr]

i went to best buy today with every intention of getting the 4500 today but ended up with the black knight, i got the last one they had in the store. the damn box even looks better

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Good choice you made. I had WNDR4000, 4500 and now RT-N66U.
4500 was worse than 4000 and RT-N66U is best of threel for my use.