Need help buying new asus router

[Martin_D]

Hi

I am looking at updating my home router to the ASUS RT-AC5300 from a ASUS RT-AC3200
It needs to be able to run merlin so is the ac5300 a good router. ?

thank you for the help

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Merlin has something for pretty much all of the newer Asus routers on the market so it really comes down to what features you are looking for. I'm running the RT-AC88U with Merlin's 380.65_2 firmware and it's the best its ever run as I couldn't get the factory firmware to keep an IPv6 connection and the dual wan stays in standby now like its supposed to.

 

[RMerlin]

If you absolutely need the three bands, the RT-AC5300 would be the direct successor. Don't expect any big performance gain from wifi tho, the main difference is the CPU, which mostly help when dealing with fast Internet connections, VPN, USB sharing, etc...

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Last year I tried using a netgear r8000 with dual 5ghz radios and it was nothing but trouble. It would continuously drop each one of them and if you didn't have 2.4 setup as a fallback it would force my cell phones onto their cell networks consuming large amounts of my data plans and even forced overages as we all thought we were on the Wi-Fi. By chance I used a Wi-Fi analyzer which caught them in the act and I ditched that unit and would avoid any router that uses the same setup which is why I opted for the RT-AC88U instead of the 5300.

 

[jerry6]

I've been using a 3200 since they released , don't see the point of moving to the 5300 which runs Merlin FW, no real big gains . Is there some problem with your 3200 ? I have 9 computers 8 cell phones several tablets , 2 NAS running 24/7 with major data transfers/backups day and night with zero problems .