Do yourself a favor and don't buy Netgear products. I bought the AX 6600 thinking it would be all that, but apparently you have to set up right away or the activation key expire leaving you with a worthless, expensive Wifi router. Go ahead and call Netgear and you will get someone from anther country that barely speaks english telling you that you have to purchase another activation key. You will feel real safe giving them your credit card information...NOT. Save yourself the trrouble and get something else.
Wi-Fi 7 isn’t automatically “better” than Wi-Fi 6 in every case. Right now, Wi-Fi 7 routers at the low end (like the BE3600) are basically entry-level devices with the new label slapped on. They’ll support the Wi-Fi 7 standard, but with fewer streams, weaker hardware, and lower real-world performance than some of the more mature Wi-Fi 6/6E models you listed.
For your use case (WFH, PS5, Quest 2):
* AX5400 / AX6600 / AXE75 will likely give you better range and consistency because they have stronger radios and more streams, even if they’re “only” Wi-Fi 6/6E.
* The BE3600 will work fine for basic tasks, but don’t expect it to outperform a higher-end Wi-Fi 6 router just because it says Wi-Fi 7.
So at \~$140 CAD, the BE3600 is more of a budget router with future branding. If you can stretch a bit, the AX5400 or AXE75 are safer picks for stability and gaming.
Only thing I will add to the wifi statements being made. They're not exactly wrong. Both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands are 2x2 streams, in spite of being wifi 6. One of the benefits of some of the slightly more expensive models, will be that you'll get more streams on each band, which helps with the ability to use the bandwidth and achieve higher data throughput and efficiency.
This wifi router might be fine for your situation, but I'd do a quick assessment of how many devces you have in your house, which wifi they use (4,5 or 6) and what you plan to use them for and figure out how data hungry they'll be. If it's only a small number of devices, a 4 stream wifi router can still be perfectly fine, but you will benefit from a device with more streams available (3x3, 4x4 would probably be the max you'd have to consider, if you have a pretty standard setup at home). For example, for the upgrade this is what I bought [https://www.netgear.com/au/home/wifi/routers/rax70/](https://www.netgear.com/au/home/wifi/routers/rax70/) managed to find it at a good price (seems to have disappeared everywhere I look atm) which will be fine for my use case, maybe even a little overkill in some ways, but also has the 6ghz band. But this type of spec is also worth considering.
I currenttly have a Wifi6 Netgear Nighthawk. I just upgrade my ISP speed from Fiber 1GB to Fiber 2GB, and this router does not support a 2GB input (only 1), so I want to take advantage of the speed.
Now, everyone here says Ubuquity this and that, but, I do not care about network management, or really customizing it or setting up a ton of different things. What I care about is speed, and coverage for my entire house.
This current single router (that is positioned at the center-about of my house), covers the entirety of our 2000 sq foot house. Outside the house like on teh patio the signal starts to get dropped. I am using all 4 of its LAN ports, 2 for gaming computers, and 2 for gaming devices. We have multiple 4K tv's running off Wifi, we have at any given moment 2-4 people all gaming with no lag at all (one of them is on a 1600 mbps wifi 6 card that seems to work really well), we have many cell phones, ovens, fridges, whatever, there's like 100 devices connected to this thing through wifi I don't even know them all, split amongst all 3 of its bands. We have ZERO issues and its been a great router. I simply want to upgrade from 1GBS to 2GBS signal so we continue to have even less issues and download things faster and future proof ourselves as new devices come out.
Does this Ubiquity (UDR7?) router fit the bill? I don't really want to buy any mesh or extension pieces or whatever, because it doesn't seem like I need them, if this single 3 year old Netgear router handles all this pretty well. Otherwise I'm looking at Asus ROG wifi7 routers, may be the new Nighthawk, though that doesn't seem the best anymore (?), but overall I've liked Netgear honestly, they've been my last 3 routers.
Yes the ISP gave me a year deal for the same price as 1GB, I get 2GB, but then realized my router doesn't actually support it. We do game a lot, all of us, and there is the occasional lag, though I'm not sure that's us. Honestly 1GB has been totally fine so far.
Yeah I'm not going to be setting up VLANs or segment devices or any of that, I'm not really that involved with the network. Just want everyone and every device to be happy out the box 😄
Interesting, thanks. I'm trying to avoid spending a bunch of money which is why traditionally I just went with a single powerful router. Also it helps managing the network in general, though I try to avoid that as I know just the bare minimum of messing with routers.
No-Professor-6507
