Nighthawk R7000P

If you're saying 1200 square feet on each floor for a total of 2400, my recommendation is basically any router with long external antennas. Mount the router in the center of your home. A lot of people will say mesh, which isn't a bad idea, but you didn't ask for mesh recommendations. My recommendation comes from my experience with Netgear and tp-link routers. I have two Netgear routers, one with long antennas and one with shorter antennas. The tp-link router has long antennas. The shorter antenna Netgear router has significantly worse signal strength and reliability than the other two routers. For comparison, the short antenna model is rax10, the long antenna model is r7000p and that thing has unbelievable range. I have it in the basement up against the brick and cinder block foundation wall near my walk out door, and I get wifi coverage 1200 feet down the street.

Not an expert but sharing my very recent experience. I had an old nighthawk Netgear router from 2018 that started to act up, so I got a newer WiFi 7 router from Netgear (RS90) and it was even worse than the old one. After hours on the phone with tech support they couldn’t do much, so I returned it and went with a TP-Link WiFi 6 mesh (Deco X55 AX3000) and it has been working great.

FreshTomato on Asus RT-AC66U / B1 Similar answer for Netgear R7000. FreshTomato is current and actively updated. VLAN supported well.

I have a UCG Fiber gateway and U7 Pro Max, best investment since testing Eero max 7, that Netgear nighthawk 700s thing and even the ASUS BE-98 pro. Yes you can get a POE injector and power up the AP and place where you want it to go. You will need to adopt it initially, but after that, it will use mesh if it cannot get a wired connection. Highly highly recommend UniFi over consumer overpriced junk. I love ASUS, but it’s often expensive and overkill, and offers no huge benefits.

I can personally vouch for the r7000 as well. Plus, the r7000 can run FreshTomato and OpenWRT as well. So it gives you LOTS of options.

Well, that's why I got the RT-AX86U after hearing about the potential TP-Link ban. After the airport went out of support, my first router was a Nighthawk R7000, and Netgear's firmware was so buggy I put DD-WRT on it, and then eventually got a Tp-Link to try. That's when I found out about the lack of firmware updates, and quit using it the first one which was a tri-band WiFi 5 model, I got a WiFi 6 one, and that was better with updates, but then I heard about the potential ban, so I got rid all TP-Link routers and got the Asus as AsusWRT is a lot like DD-WRT, which I really like. Anyway, I found out after I got things set that I didn't need all the extras Asus offers, and that was close to around the time I thought the RT-AX86U was done with support, and nothing official came the TP-Link ban talk. First, I got the Asus BE92U, and used it for about almost a year and it developed issues I couldn't resolved with it well known issues, and that's when I decided to just go simple again, and got the BE9300 from TP-Link. That brings you up to date.e. So this process is throughout many years, not all at once. So like I said, the only reason I brought the topic up again is because posts on Reddit are starting again, about a Tp-Link ban. As already mentioned, my plan now is to stick with the TP-link until I have problems, or they are banned, and go back to the Asus as my backup, unless I really need a WiFi 7 router sometime in the future.

I have a Netgear R7000 and has been great for me and best bang for buck and is still a very good router. There are other Netgear routers but from forum pros on ddwrt this is one of the better ones.