Ubiquiti - Alien

I had the UniFi Amplify Alien mesh system and it was ok, but like the other posters said, it’s 1000x better to go wired even if just to one other spot. I upgraded to a dream machine and a few APs and it’s night and day now, especially if you have friends or kids who do a lot of WiFi gaming.

I have two aliens and they are the best and most reliable routers I’ve ever had.

I love the range of my Amplifi Alien Mesh system. I don't like the limited configuration options though. I needed the range.

I had a WiFi 6 Orbi set up. It worked for about a week and then the mesh point died. The problem was that it died silently. It said it was working but nothing would connect to it. Netgear support was marginal, but once they determined it was faulty, they wanted me to send it back on my dime and they'd send me a new one. Again, the unit was a week old. I returned it and went back to using (already old) Airport Extremes for another year. I had 3 around the house and they started needing to be rebooted regularly. Given their age I couldn't complain at all but I replaced them with Amplifi Aliens. Those have been rock solid. I'll never buy Netgear products again.

The newest latest is WiFi 7. You could get two UniFi Express 7s, a Dream Router 7 and a POE AP 7, or 2 Eero 7s/Pro 7s/Max 7 Budget you could go with UniFi AmpliFi Alien or Eero 6+ that gets you WiFi6 AX (2 generations behind WiFi7, but adequate for most users). Do not bother with anything AC WiFi 5 or older.

I have two of them, running as AP’s. I think they’re pretty great if you need a desktop/shelf form factor with dedicated power, it looks much nicer in a living room than a big circular AP. The other one is in our master bedroom with the AppleTV hardwired into the 2nd port. WiFi coverage is good, but not as good as the Aliens that I previously had, noticeably weaker to rooms above/below whereas the Alien is much more omnidirectional.

First thing I'd do is get a relatively cheap 75' or 100' ethernet cable from your local big box store. Run that through the townhome as needed to provide immediate connectivity and a fallback for later steps. Then, I'd try a decent router+satellite system. My go-to recommendation is the Amplifi Alien system, although that is getting a bit long in the tooth these days. The important thing is the ability to use an "ethernet backhaul" between the router and satellite. Using your long ethernet cable, experiment with best placements for the router (probably limited) and satellite to give low-latency wifi throughout the house. If you are happy there, this is the link you want to hard wire into place via the walls. Note that if your townhouse is extraordinarily large you may need 2 or more satellites. Running the ethernet cable in the walls isn't hard, but will require a few skills you might not have yet: * Be able to map where you are on one floor to the next; ex, in the basement, know which room you are under and where the walls are. * Drilling through wall headers/footers. Not hard, just need to keep the drill absolutely vertical and go through the center of the 2x4. * Fishing wires through walls. * Minor drywall repair and repaint. * Bulk ethernet termination (you fish unterminated, in-wall-rated ethernet cable, then have to terminate it). If you don't have those skills and don't want to learn them, hire someone to do the ethernet run. It won't be *super* expensive (obviously more expensive than you doing it though). Cable companies and security companies hire unskilled labor off the street and have them doing this in their customers' homes a few days later; it really isn't a hard set of skills to learn, and youtube etc is there to show you everything you need to know. That said, an *experienced* technician will end up with a much more polished end product than the meth head the cable company sends out, but still this is well within the DIY realm for the average homeowner. Personally, I've done this in four houses over the past \~30 years. As I said, it doesn't take much once you've got a handle on the basics, and the results are always leaps and bounds better than what other people hire out (in two of those four houses similar work had previously been done, but poorly), mostly because you'll be the one living with it so you tend to care more about doing things "right".

Go straight to a Unifi system with Cat6 back haul. I started with an AmpliFi and now have a UDM SE 5 APs. But a proper system will run close to $1,000, but you should expect that for the area you're looking to cover. How many users & devices are you looking at?

Okay. So here’s the deal, as someone who went from an Anplifi setup to a Unifi one. They’re not the same. Unifi CAN mesh. AMPLIFI was built for it. At a technical level the AMPLIFI gear has dedicated radios to build the mesh. Not so on the Unifi side. You’re going to want to run cable. And at that point, it’s dealers choice as to what APs you get.

I've had success with Asus Zen Wifi and Amplifi; but I think Asus is a better product personally. I have Ubiquiti in my home right now and don't particularly like it.

Ubiquity Amplifi. It's unfortunately end of life now and it appears Ubiquity is no longer interested in the home wireless market segment. Still works great though and you can often find the system used for cheap.