Velop AX5300 (MX5300)

We've moved on from that, it's now about the mx5300 (a set of two is sold under mx10600). Less ram, better CPU, 4x4 mimo, 160MHz channel widths on 5G radios. Basically better suited for higher throughput SQM and wireless backhaul.

Yeah they fooled me once with this, bought it thinking it was the nicer tri-band and was pretty confused why it was a dual band router that showed up. Luckily most of my stuff is hardwired anyway but if you really need the mesh aspect it would have been a big disappointment

If you have the wireless mesh constantly falling out, I've found that having your SSID broadcast fixes that. I hate that I can't hide my SSID but having nodes dropping every 3 days was getting to be annoying.

For the router / mesh. It depends on your place, apartment, house, multilevel, thick walls, etc. Mesh is great for covering a wider area esp when the floorplan is spread out or has an upstairs / downstairs. In my case a regular router works best. Mesh has its issues though. As the top comment said, wireless accesspoints kinda suck, because the wireless still has the same issues as reg devices. If you go mesh its best to run ethernet between them. Just think to yourself if you have any connection issues in a room where you want / need to use the wifi that a regular router doesnt reach at all. You can then put a mesh access point between the main one and that room and it should give better connectivity. For the modem spectrum saying to swap it. Definitely since they make it quite easy. The modem tech has changed and matured over time. More channels, better speeds and latency. If you are using a rental or a modem / router combo. Definitely best to seperate them in the majority of cases. No stress on missing this deal. There is the other mesh posted up on this sub (MX5503) and for regular routers I have had great luck on ebay and r/hardwareswap for used. Recently bought a tplink AX55 pro for 35 on ebay for my brother and his apartment. Just factory reset and update firmware when buying used. Reg retail \~80$ with no issues. Sorry for the wall of text

Yes I have, my previous WiFi system was a Linksys 3-unit WiFi 6 mesh system. As they're dual band (& dual radio) systems which most are, they halve the speed each node you hop and as I wrote above, if OP needs to go full wireless, even though they're more expensive, make sure the units have a dedicated radio for wireless backhaul which largely solves this problem. Always go wired when possible if you want the best experience, even if it's only to wire the backhaul.