ASUS - RT-BE86U

I like ASUS for consumer needs like yours. They have gaming features, but they're gimmicks. Look at the Asus RT-BE88U for a larger router, or the RT-BE86U for a bit smaller. These are the wifi 7 models which you may not need ot want. You can find the Wifi 6 models as RT-AX88U and RT-AX86U respectively on Amazon. They have some other models as well. I wouldn't pay a premium for any TUF or ROG branded "gaming" routers, the others do the same thing.

I'm using the 1800s as a node and my main router is the RT-BE86U. I can say that the 1800s is holding up super well as a node. I recommend the ASUS.

Gaming routers are marketing. If you're going to spend $400 to $500 on a router get an Asus, BE86U or BE88U are the cream of the crop right now, but you could probably spend half that and have perfectly good performance and coverage and have some left over to buy a second less expensive one to use as a mesh node. Of course If I was looking to invest that kind of money I'd get a dedicated router and separate access points from Ubiquiti or possibly the TP Link Omada line, but that setup isn't for everyone.

They replaced it with BE86U, which I think locked up once but for the most part over the last few months have been rock stable.

Pros and Cons from what I seen: BE92U: 2.0GHz quad-core processor None detachable antennas WIFI 6E band BE86U: 2.6GHz quad-core processor Detachable antennas No WIFI 6E band So better CPU and detachable antennas is what sold me on the BE86U over the BE92U. The only other big difference is WiFi 6e, it gives you a lot of bandwidth (but not a lot of distance) so if you have WifI 6e devices, you might want to look at BE92U with the understanding that it is a crap shoot if you will get a router that will just work for you).

It's similar to any other dual band wifi 7 router with 4x4 streams on the 5 Ghz band, Asus BE-RT-82U is better and has a 2 Ghz CPU with an extra LAN port. The TPlink BE6500 is on sale for a much better price in Amazon.

I have an 82u and a 86s in a mesh configuration and that works well. EDIT: Just be aware that if you use the Asus/TrendMicro security suite with their routers, the router sends your routing data to TrendMicro and their partners. Even though it is nice to have, I have all that turned off because of this.

This is awful advice. You need to take into consideration what the needs are. For example I have 29 devices paired with smart home automation and a 1.5gbps connection. If I use an AXE5400 then I am speed capped over wifi to only get a max of about 850mbps download speeds instead of the full 1.5gbps due to the AXE5400 only having gigibit ethernet ports (Routers with 2.5gbps ports are rare and expensive). The Wifi 6 performance on the AXE5400 is also dreadful. I am getting an AXE75 to see if it's any better because I am so disappointed with the AXE5400. You are probably the sort of person that would have said in the 90s "28 Megs of memory is plenty enough!". My Asus 86u router is also slower over 5g wifi than the crappy AXE5400.

Was doing research on deco mesh systems and one thing i noticed is that there’s a lot of complaints about hardware revisions and firmware. I was interested in the ability to select preferred connection between decos and device preferred connection. That way i could set the mesh topology as i wanted while steering non mobile devices to specific decos where signals are strong from multiple decos to the correct one. Simple right? Nope. The updated firmware for this feature only applied to specific versions of hw. So a v1 xe75 got it but not a v2 at the time. Then an xe200 didnt have it at all and it some older popular models never got it at all. It just seemed like a mess and the model i ordered didnt have it but amazon lost the pkg so i got an asus instead that feature is just naturally in their firmware… Their wifi7 models all support it but it’s like they just stop supporting previous popular hardware and move on so quickly

Asus zenwifi is worth considering. Just got 2 nodes of the 6E one from 2023 for $200 @ microcenter. After some issues with a new fully updated asus wifi7 router constantly rebooting & some similar claims across a few of their wifi7 devices i fear they've got a bug. The 6E has been running fantastic for ~4days now