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Time for an upgrade

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What would best fit my needs?

  • Netgear R7800

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • ASUS AC5300

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Netgear R800P

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • ASUS AC2900

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Netgear Orbi

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 16.7%

  • Total voters
    6

Buds

New Around Here
Long time visitor to this site but first time posting. I've probably gotten myself into a similar situation as many on here, information overload. Anyways, I'm in desperate need of a new wireless router for my home to take advantage of my gigabit internet (I hardwire what I can). Anyways, I've currently been using an Apple AirportExtreme (A1521) and while the performance has been okay, it just doesn't offer me the customization options as the newer stuff on the market.

I work from home (3 bedrooms, open floor plan about 2000 sq ft) for a major entertainment company testing video streaming from their app on a multitude of devices (Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, mobile devices, game consoles, etc). Needless to say, I put a high demand on my network and could have upwards of 30 devices connected at once. On top of that, I have a 14-year-old daughter who is constantly streaming or gaming. I try to limit what I can at the router level, but I'm handcuffed by the AirPort Extreme. I'd like to keep my cost under $350 but I do have a little flexibility. I like what I read about of the R7800 but I'm concerned that its a fairly old device at this point. I'm definitely open to suggestions.
 
R7800 isn’t really that old it still has probably the best 5Ghz performance in the consumer space. It can hit 700+ Mbps throughput even without hardware NAT acceleration unlike the 86U, due to it using Qualcomm Krait 300 CPU core similar in performance to the ARM Cortex A15 .

The 86U has better VPN performance though due to AES acceleration if you need that. Either router can handle your load, plus gaming takes very little bandwidth but is more latency sensitive.

Just don’t buy units that are very new models or you will end up a guinea pig / beta tester. Usually with routers old is gold as firmware is usually stabilized and bugs worked out. Even the older AC68U and R7000 are still fairly decent WiFi coverage wise. Avoid the R8000P it’s not as good as the 86U or R7800.
 
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Welcome, Buds.

As long as it's centrally placed, you should be fine with a single radio array -- ie. an all-in-one wireless router. With gigabit internet (envious!), you'll definitely want something that is either hardware-NAT accelerated (almost all the higher-end consumer AIO's are), and/or a model with a beefy-enough CPU to sustain a desired speed if/when traffic has to route non-accelerated (ie. whatever services are turned on that force traffic through the software instead of the NAT chip).

Looking into the future, if you end up wanting more wired speed than the all-in-one can offer for the above reasons, or if it's simply lacking in whatever features, you could re-purpose it as just an access point (ie. no routing, DHCP, DNS, etc.), then drop in a wired router and/or switch(es) (ex: a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter or OpenWRT x86 box, maybe a solid HPE comware switch off eBay, etc.). If you want to take wifi to the next level, you could retire the all-in-one in favor of a mesh system like Orbi or Eero (or really put your big-boy pants on and go with Ruckus or Aruba -- overkill and pricey, I know). Then perhaps re-purpose the all-in-one as a client media bridge. Regardless of how far you take things, if you do your upgrades in roughly that order, you'll be able to bolster your network in very noticeable ways and spread the cost out over time as well.

Best of luck!
 
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