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Time to replace my router? What to get?

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KidJoe

Occasional Visitor
I've had a Netgear R6300 v1 for just over 5 years now. In the last 6 months or so I've noticed the range doesn't extend as far in the house or out to by the pool (we now have dead spots we didn't have before) and wireless devices will show they are connected to the R6300 but not be able to get to the internet or connect to other devices on the network... So I'm thinking its time to finally get a new router.

Oh, and Trying wifi analyzer apps, I've tried picking channels for the router that are "free". That didn't help.

I have devices like my primary PC, my media server, HP Officejet printer, 2 Amazon FireTV2nd gen, 2 Fire TV 1st gen, Chromecast Ultra, WiiU, PS3, PS4, and 3 bluray players connected via wires.

For wireless devices its my work Surface Pro 4, my wife's personal Surface Pro 4, her work dell laptop, about 4 ipads (Air, Air2, Mini 2 and 3), Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, Amazon Echo, Eufy Genie, and many cell phones and tablets that I have/use for work (about 7-10 could be active at a time). We expect to get 3 or 4 Amazon Echo Dots on black Friday.

The house is two story plus basement and is about 4300 sq ft. We have a Comcast cable modem in the basement in bridge mode, with the R6300 up stairs in the master bedroom. But the router is off center, so the far bedroom which had coverage before, now doesn't. A stop gap was to take an old Dlink router I had, convert it to AP, and connect it to the wall jack just outside the far bedroom to provide wifi in there. The router also doesn't reach as far out in to the back yard by the pool as it originally did too...

I've looked at Netgear primarily. From what I've read, it appears I'd probably do well to get the X4S (R7800) or the X6S (R8000P). The R7800 because of good reviews and the good write up on this site. It appears to have great wireless range and throughput. The R8000P because, well its tri-band and I've accumulated more wireless devices so I was thinking it might help, but based on what I gathered from the reviews and testing results, the wireless might not be as good (at least the 5GHZ anway) as the R7800.

The review of the R7800 was written in March 2016, so I expect many of the bugs to have been shaken out of the firmware. But I also wonder how much longer the device will receive support? i.e. is it now "too old"? Where as the R8000P appears to be newer, so might have more bugs/issues in the firmware yet.

I considered mesh systems like Orbi, etc. but most seem to have wireless backhaul, so I'm concerned about placement of the nodes to get ideal coverage. Reading some of the posts in Netgear's community for the Orbi makes me worry about forced firmware updates and what looks like the inability to roll back should a new bug be introduced. Plus the R7800 fits my wallet a little better.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? Am I looking at the right router choices? would I be better off with one of these vs the other? should I be looking at a different router that I'm not looking at?
 
You have 4300sqft to cover across multiple floors and walls. No single BHR is going to provide the coverage and performance you need/want. If I were in your shoes, I would be looking at getting either a mesh system or better yet, getting a couple of hard wired lines in 2-3 places across the house and deploy dedicated APs to handle your WiFi duties.
 

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