Nighthawk X4 AC2350 Smart WiFi Router

I have no experience with this router, so I cannot vouch for this specific model. That said, I feel like I should present what is probably an unpopular opinion on Reddit: Deals for consumer\gamer level networking gear like this tend to get downvote bombed because the popular opinion is that semi business level gear from Ubiquiti and others is so much better that no should be buying anything else. I went down that road for several years when helping friends and family with network upgrades (usually Edgerouter-X and a Unifi AP). What I found was that it was no more reliable than a decent home router\AP, and in a lot of cases it was actually MORE finicky, with well known issues and complications. The fixes for those, if they existed, were at times beyond my skill level as someone who isn't a networking professional and has no knowledge of the Linux command line (if it was MS-DOS I might do better... LOL). So, I had to rely 100% on solutions people came up with online, and the actual homeowner could basically do nothing on their own. Anyway, some of those users have since switched back to a decent consumer level gear from Asus or others and they never have any throughput or reliability issues when I ask them. Me personally? I bought a Netgear R7500v2 for $50 on post-black-friday clearance from Walmart in 2015 (it was $200 normally) and it has worked flawlessly for 10 years. The wireless throughput is plenty for my devices and it has been rock solid (up to date third party firmware is available for this model). The secret to having reliable internet for me has been to have my router + modem on a battery backup. So, it only goes down when I manually reset it or the ISP is having issues, and small dips in power do not cause the router to get stuck in a non-functional state. So yeah, if you are interested in learning about networking, the slightly more pro-oriented gear is probably good, but don't disregard consumer level gear. It can most definitely work fine, even for PC enthusiasts.

Of course! We have Netgear Nighthawk (X3)

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.

With a descent router wireless is nearly as good as wired these days. I speak as someone who was once a 'wired network' purist for the same reasons as you, and also someone who works from home. A good router, set in a centralized place will probably be a cheaper and simpler solution than wiring everything together. I use one of those nighthawk routers with four antenna. Alternatively, doing data cabling runs throughout your house can be in DIY territory. It would be much cheaper than hiring a contractor and you could be done with it in about a day depending on how many rooms you want patched in and how much you care about wire enclosures being visible. Lots of people just put cable mounts in the corner near the ceiling and run them outside the wall.

With a descent router wireless is nearly as good as wired these days. I speak as someone who was once a 'wired network' purist for the same reasons as you, and also someone who works from home. A good router, set in a centralized place will probably be a cheaper and simpler solution than wiring everything together. I use one of those nighthawk routers with four antenna. Alternatively, doing data cabling runs throughout your house can be in DIY territory. It would be much cheaper than hiring a contractor and you could be done with it in about a day depending on how many rooms you want patched in and how much you care about wire enclosures being visible. Lots of people just put cable mounts in the corner near the ceiling and run them outside the wall.

Yeah, I gave up on consumer grade crap too, after I had a Netgear Nighthawk system that would randomly start spazzing out and start dropping packets on the wireless network and need a full power cycle every once in a while. Ended up going with Ubiquiti a few months ago and I've been pretty happy with it so far.

I agree. I have tried numerous Netgear products, going back to a PCMCIA card, and all of them have had problems. The last Nighthawk I had constantly resulted in "Connected, No internet" for too many devices.

I moved from a Netgear Nighthawk router and extender to an Orbi network... Well worth it to me.