RT-AC68U vs RT-AC87U

[Olli]

I have an option to upgrade from a RT-AC68U to RT-AC87U with a fairly low price. I currently achieve speeds of 933/524 over LAN and 533/583 over Wi-Fi. Would I achieve any improvement if I upgraded?

 

[Locoblade]

I've been looking at both along with the AC86 and the AC87 seems to be a bit of an out of date lame duck and isn't very popular. One thing I've learnt in recent days is don't take the numerical numbering of the models as a direct indicator that one is better than the other, for AC8x it seems the best for most would be the AC86, followed by the AC88 then the AC87

 

[RMerlin]

I have an option to upgrade from a RT-AC68U to RT-AC87U with a fairly low price. I currently achieve speeds of 933/524 over LAN and 533/583 over Wi-Fi. Would I achieve any improvement if I upgraded?

No. The RT-AC87U's only improvement is having support for four stream versus three - your clients are only able to use two based on the rates you posted, so it would make zero difference. Plus, the RT-AC87U uses an oddball for its 5 GHz band, which tends to have more compatibility issues than the tried and proven BCM4360 used by the RT-AC68U.

Stick with your RT-AC68U.

 

[Olli]

Thanks for the advice. My devices are MacBook Pro mid-2017 w/Touch Bar and an iPhone X. Do they really support three streams only? The 5 GHz is important for me so I'm thinking not to upgrade as you recommended. However I'd like to improve the speeds of the RT-AC68U if possible?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the advice. My devices are MacBook Pro mid-2017 w/Touch Bar and an iPhone X. Do they really support three streams only? The 5 GHz is important for me so I'm thinking not to upgrade as you recommended. However I'd like to improve the speeds of the RT-AC68U if possible?

Almost nothing out there supports four streams, except a handful of PCI-Express adapters.

You won't be able to improve performance over your RT-AC68U without either moving the router location or replacing the NICs in your devices. Something probably not possible with Apple's MacBooks.

 

[Olli]

RMerlin, thanks again. This helped me a lot with the decision.