Simple router for use with Virgin Media Hub - Archer C50 or C7?

[Ian Manning]

I need a router for use in conjunction with a Virgin Media Hub 3.0 (in modem mode) and a separate mesh network (BT Whole Home Wifi). Since I already have a mesh network, the wireless performance is not an issue as it'll probably be turned off. I've been using an Asus RT-AC68U up to now, but I think the ethernet and WAN ports are faulty so it needs to be replaced, and frankly I haven't been impressed with its overall reliability anyway over the last couple of years.
The only reason I need a router (rather than relying solely on the Virgin Hub) is that I have a house full of devices configured to use the 192.168.1.x subnet, and the Virgin Hub can't be configured to use this address range, which is pretty annoying. I have an extensive set of port forwarding rules and reserved DHCP addresses.
I saw the Archer C7 recommended somewhere, but also noticed that the Archer C50 is available for a significantly lower price. Can anyone tell me whether the C50 would perform as well as the C70 as a basic router (with wireless switched off)? Alternatively, is there anything else that I should be considering in this price range (£40-80)?

 

[umarmung]

If you are going TP-Link, then Archer A7 is a safer option than the older C7 because there are many C7 revisions and the only two that are critically tested to have strong WiFi are v2 and v5. The A7 is a rebrand of the C7 v5, so its basically a guaranteed way to get the v5.

I believe most revisions of the Archer C7 support OpenWRT, which is very handy if you ever need more advanced functionality, like VLANs, or if TP-Link stop with firmware updates.

I do not know about other TP-Link consumer routers and I would only recommend tried and tested models.

Within the price range there are other options, e.g. the great GL.iNet travel routers like the GL-AR750S-Ext which also runs OpenWRT (it has less physical ports though than the A7 though), the SMB router TP-Link TL-R600VPN (good if you really need cheap and easy to use WAN load balancing. It also supports VLANs) and, of course, the various Mikrotik routers (very advanced routing, but equally very challenging learning curve and poor consumer feature support like OpenVPN).

I wouldn't bother with anything else in that price range because they have no distinct advantages over the options I have outlined above, with the possible exception of AVM Fritzbox models if you wanted non-routing features like NAS support.

If you paid just a little more, you could get the Asus RT-AC66U B1, which is the cheapest router that supports a Traffic Analyzer (and also Asuswrt-Merlin firmware), if you needed it.